Category: General News

General News, Uncategorized

England: London transport: Puppy rescued from busy railway by man in middle of train driving lesson. Great Story.

London transport: Puppy rescued from busy railway by man in middle of train driving lesson

A lucky puppy was rescued from the tracks of a busy London railway by a trainee driver who was in the middle of a train driving lesson. Stefan Hug, from East London, who only started learning to drive a train in January, was dramatically forced to stop a Southern service from Beckenham Junction to London Bridge on Wednesday morning when he saw the small black puppy running alongside the train.

Stefan, 32, who was accompanied by his driving instructor Kevin Timmins, said dogs are a rare sight on the railway track but the skills he learned in the classroom quickly “kicked in” as he completed his first rescue mission on the job. He said: “I think because you talk about it so many times the procedure just kicks in and you just know you need to bring the train to a stand, take a deep breath and think logically the next thing to do.”

He added: “Of course, that was contacting the signaller to get permission and authorisation to do anything before we step outside and try to retrieve the puppy.”

The trainee and his teacher quickly rescued the puppy from the tracks who was thankfully uninjured. They brought her on to a nearby platform and fed her ham.

Stefan was pictured cradling the small puppy in his arms, while safely stood on the railway platform. Recalling the incident he said: “We had just left South Bermondsey. That was our last stop before London Bridge.

Driving instructor Kevin, 54, from Kent, was pictured standing next to his mentee stroking the puppy after the rescue. He said: “We have an area next to the running rail called the cess, which is the area between the running tracks and the railway boundaries. It was running in that area, which is where we first spotted the puppy.”

Kevin praised the trainee for his composure throughout the incident. He said: “Stefan alerted me that he’d seen a puppy running next to the front of the train. He immediately put it into the correct braking procedure to bring the train to a stand. It was really good to see Stefan do those procedures correctly, and I’m really proud of him.”

He added that he hopes that the incident serves as a reminder to dog owners to keep their pets safe on railway platforms. He said: “It just reinforces the point of making sure if people have dogs on the platforms, they should be on the leash all the time and to keep pets near to you.

“It’s so easy for dogs to run off and run on the rails and it’s very hard to get them back. It does put a lot of people in danger and it’s a big operation to get them off the tracks.

“Hopefully, this is a good wake-up call to keep all of your animals close to you on leashes whilst you’re on railway property.”

Authorities are now searching for the puppy’s owner.

Regards Mark

London transport: Puppy rescued from busy railway by man in middle of train driving lesson (msn.com)

Farm Animals, General News

USA: Opinion – Rescuing Farm Animals From Cruelty Should Be Legal.

Rescuing Farm Animals From Cruelty Should Be Legal

Opinion | Rescuing Farm Animals From Cruelty Should Be Legal – The New York Times (nytimes.com)

For about six weeks in the summer of 2021, an activist working with the animal rights group Direct Action Everywhere, or DxE, gained undercover access to one of the largest chicken slaughterhouses in California, a Foster Farms facility in the Central Valley city of Livingston.

Using hidden infrared cameras that can see in the dark, the DxE activist captured video showing a production line moving too quickly — about 140 chickens are killed every minute on each of the four slaughtering lines in Livingston — to offer any kind of humane death for the animals. Live birds are seen thrown, crushed, left for dead and suffocated under piles of dead birds. Some aren’t properly stunned before they’re killed. And while the DxE footage doesn’t show this, inspectors working for the U.S. Department of Agriculture have reported seeing evidence that birds at the Livingston facility had been dunked alive in a boiling water tank for defeathering.

Foster Farms denies any wrongdoing; in a statement, a spokesman told me that allegations of inhumane treatment “are without merit and a disservice to the thousands of Foster Farms team members that are dedicated to providing millions of families in the Western United States and beyond with a quality nutritious product.”

But the footage presents an ethical challenge to a society that claims to care for animal welfare: What should happen to people who try to save these chickens?

Two DxE activists, Alexandra Paul and Alicia Santurio, will go on trial next month on charges of misdemeanor theft for taking two chickens from a truck outside the Livingston slaughterhouse in September 2021. They argue that what they did was not steal but rescue — that after trying other ways to protect chickens at the Livingston facility, they took the only option left to them, no different from breaking a window to rescue a puppy locked in a hot car.

Over the past few years, DxE has conducted a string of such open rescues, in which activists record themselves, often in daylight, taking a small number of chickens, pigs, beagles and other animals from facilities where they have documented inhumane treatment. In addition to saving the lives of the animals, the rescues are an attempt to provoke law enforcement into pursuing criminal trials against the rescuers — trials in which the activists want to publicize the unseen brutality that pushed them to act.

Their larger goal is to establish a right to rescue animals that face inhumane treatment in agriculture. In any context other than factory farming, treating animals the way we see chickens treated in the Foster Farms slaughterhouse videos would be considered blatant cruelty. Many would also consider it cruel to stand by while someone else handled animals this way. “If there’s someone in my neighborhood watching me boil birds alive, we’d say this is monstrous behavior,” Wayne Hsiung, a founder of DxE, told me.

Shouldn’t the same be true of animals we’re going to eat? Don’t we have a moral obligation to do whatever we can to save animals from inhumane factory-farming facilities, or at the very least, to not punish people who try to help?

I’m not a vegan or even a vegetarian, but as I’ve written before, vegans and animal rights activists deserve society’s immense respect rather than mockery because they are clearly right about the big issues: that industrial-scale animal farming is an incomprehensible cruelty many of us try our best not to think about, lest it ruin our lunch; that the animals we grow to eat are biologically no less complex and deserving of dignity and humane treatment than the animals we keep as pets; and that the production of cheap and plentiful meat has been an environmental and public health catastrophe whose obvious solution — eat less meat! — nevertheless remains culturally and politically verboten.

In these rescues, activists are again putting themselves on the line to establish a worthy principle.

They may succeed, too. Last fall, a Utah jury acquitted Hsiung and another DxE activist, Paul Darwin Picklesimer, of burglary and theft for taking two sick piglets from a farm owned by Smithfield Foods, the world’s largest producer of pork. Even though the judge in the case barred much evidence of animal cruelty from being shown, jurors accepted the activists’ essential argument that they were rescuing animals, not stealing.

These cases turn the abstract suffering of farm animals into questions about specific animals suffering in specific ways. The pigs rescued from Smithfield were visibly severely ill. According to DxE, one of the chickens taken from Foster Farms died within days of the rescue, and the other required intensive veterinary care to recover. The one who died was given the name Ethan. Jax, the chicken who survived, is at a sanctuary in California. Even meat lovers don’t want to eat sick animals.

DxE submitted its Foster Farms findings to law enforcement and animal welfare authorities. California’s animal cruelty laws make it a felony to subject an animal to “needless suffering” or “unnecessary cruelty” or to cause it to be “cruelly killed.” While there is an exception that allows animals to be killed for food, there’s nothing in the law that exempts farm animals from humane treatment; it is just as illegal in California to mistreat a chicken at a slaughterhouse as a kitten in your house.

But DxE says it has no knowledge that officials took any action in response. Paul told me she felt that she had no choice but to personally rescue any birds that she could. She says she has turned down a plea deal that would have involved no jail time; if convicted, she could face up to six months in jail.

“I want to go to trial because I want to elevate the stories of these chickens,” Paul told me. She added that “the only reason that people know what’s happening to animals in these places — in factory farms, in labs or behind circus doors — is because of animal rights activists.”

For that reason alone, they should be praised, not punished.

Regards Mark

General News, Stray Animals

South Korea: Ex-head of animal rights group gets 2-year jail term for euthanizing 98 rescued dogs.
Park So-yeon, former leader of Care, speaks to reporters in front of the Seoul Central District Court, Feb. 14. Yonhap

Ex-head of animal rights group gets 2-year jail term for euthanizing 98 rescued dogs (koreatimes.co.kr)

Ex-head of animal rights group gets 2-year jail term for euthanizing 98 rescued dogs


A former chief of an animal rights organization was sentenced to two years behind bars Tuesday for euthanizing 98 rescued dogs under her group’s care due mainly to economic costs.

The Seoul Central District Court delivered the sentence against Park So-yeon, a former leader of Care, who was indicted on violations of the Animal Protection Act.

Park was accused of euthanizing 98 rescued dogs under the care of her organization between 2015 and 2018 to secure more space at its facilities and reduce the burden of medical costs needed to treat animals.

She was also charged with breaking into private animal farms in August 2018 and stealing five dogs worth some 1.3 million won ($1,025) in total.

Her wrongdoings were exposed by a former official of Care in 2019 and the case drew intense public ire at that time.

“Without seriously assessing the capacity of (Care’s) facilities, she immersed herself in animal rescue but put some of the rescued animals to death when the space became insufficient,” the court said.

Park had claimed her innocence, saying she rescued animals destined to be culled and euthanized about 10 percent of them in a humane manner without pain. (Yonhap)

Regards Mark

General News, Stray Animals, Uncategorized

India: ‘Animal Aid Unlimited’ Rescue Videos – Doing More To Help Street Dogs All The Time.

Dear Mark,     

Thank you for helping us expand our spay-neuter work to ensure happy lives for even more street dogs.

 

Work is underway at our Sterilization Center where we are refurbishing our Operating room and expanding our Pre and Post-Op room to accommodate a higher volume of surgeries each day.

At the start of this year, Animal Aid signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Udaipur Municipal Corporation giving Animal Aid the sole charge of running a city-wide CNVR (Capture, Neuter, Vaccinate, Return) program, ensuring humane treatment of the dogs and a scientific approach to managing the stray dog population. Animal Aid has also been given the charge of responding to reports of dog-biting and negative complaints about dogs, where we will work to educate the community, prevent cruelty to animals and do targeted spay and neuter in areas less welcoming of street dogs. This milestone will mean thousands more animals will receive the help they deserve, and it wouldn’t have been possible without your generous support!

This month we will be conducting a dog-population census which will help us set our monthly sterilization targets. Stay tuned!

Thank you so much–your help has made this exciting expansion possible.

Watch Eshan’s way of saying “I’m so happy to be alive!”

We received a call on our helpline about a dog who had been hit by a vehicle and was severely injured. From a distance we could see the enormous wound on his shoulder with muscles and skin ruptured and hanging from his leg. His pain must have been horrible.

Just click on ‘Watch on YouTube’ to view video:

We rushed him back to Animal Aid to prepare him for surgery to repair the wound and

stabilize him with fluids, antibiotics and painkillers. After surgery the remaining danger was infection, but luckily thanks to his general vitality, daily wound care and medicine, he started to heal beautifully.

If ever an animal seemed to say “thank you for saving me” it’s beautiful Eshan. Meet him now!

Help save an animal with so much more life to live – Please donate today.

For 6 frightening days, Lilac’s recovery was very uncertain.

But suddenly she bloomed! 

A little puppy had been injured and was laying motionless in the street when we found her. As our rescuers approached, they thought these might be her final breaths. But her eyes were wide open as they lifted her, and she whimpered. Her family of dogs and humans gathered around as we carried her to the ambulance. Some of them may have thought they were saying a final goodbye, but they would have been wrong.

In the hospital we discovered no fractures, although her condition was poor for the first few days because she couldn’t eat and would barely move. We suspected a spinal injury which needs carefully monitored quiet and rest.

But by Day 6, she decided she’d had quite enough quiet and rest, and her eager standing and eating proclaimed her intention to live! From forlorn and hovering on the edge of death to active! Alert! Playful and oh so alive. Meet Lilac now!

For animals when they need us most…. Please donate today

Call yourself “Sweetheart”

Founding family Erika, Claire and Jim, and the Animal Aid Unlimited team.that saves a precious life.

100% of the proceeds go to our street animal rescues

Shop now –  Animal Aid Unlimited Shop

We thank you deeply for all you do, are, and inspire for animals.

Founding family Erika, Claire and Jim, and the Animal Aid Unlimited team.

Regards Mark

Farm Animals, Fur and Fur Farming, General News

Poland: Fox Farming in Europe: Investigation on Polish Fur Farm Reveals Dark Reality for Foxes.

Fox farming in Europe: Investigation on Polish fur farm reveals dark reality for foxes

15 February 2023

Essere Animali

A new investigation released by Essere Animali has documented the conditions for foxes farmed for their fur in Europe. Foxes were shown to be confined in cramped and dilapidated individual cages, with poor access to food and water and without any enrichment.

The footage was obtained in February 2023 in Poland, Europe’s leading country for mink breeding for fur production and second for fox breeding, after Finland.

The videos collected in Poland by Essere Animali show:

● Foxes with stereotypical behaviour compulsively circling inside individual battery-operated cages, banging against the metal walls;

● Dirty, bare battery cages with no environmental enrichment;

● Cages with a floor made entirely of wire mesh, totally unsuitable for the animals and a source of additional pain to the paws;

● Poor systems for watering and feeding the animals: in the cages, the only way to water the animals is a single iron cup per animal and almost all the cups were empty when they entered the farm;

● A fox with health problems in its muzzle and mouth, which had very swollen gums due to hereditary hyperplastic gingivitis: this is a genetic disease that affects foxes selected for fur production and makes their condition much worse due to unhealthy life on farms. It often results in the premature slaughter of the animals.

Fur Free Europe is already a record-breaking initiative, demonstrating people’s sensitivity on this issue, but it is still important that thousands of citizens sign the European Citizens’ Initiative, thus showing the European Commission how urgent it is to legislate to protect these animals and ban the production, import and trade of fur in Europe. In these farms, all natural behaviours are denied to the animals, in no way different from our pets, and we cannot but ask ourselves if ethically we can still accept this. Our answer is obviously no: in a world in which we have so many more sustainable alternatives to animal furs and numerous brands that have decided to abandon fur, it is time to turn the page for good and also show manufacturers a better and more futuristic path, free of animal exploitation.

Brenda Ferretti – Campaigns Manager, Essere Animal

The documented conditions show the extreme and repressive confinement to which foxes are subjected. These animals have a complex social life in the wild, form pairs and family groups, and are used to digging dens with numerous tunnels and moving in a very large radius. Red foxes are able to walk up to 10 km a day, while arctic foxes in migratory seasons cover up to 100 km in a single period.

All of this is denied on farms, which do not guarantee any possibility for animals to express their natural behaviour.

The investigation is part of the Fur Free Europe European Citizens’ Initiative, which in just over nine months has collected more than 1.5 million signatures from European citizens who want to see an end to cruel, unnecessary and unethical fur production.

The signature collection will continue until 1 March 2023. Do you support this initiative? Sign now. 

All for the sake of a rich bitch fur hag !

Regards Mark

Fur Hag.

Environmental, Farm Animals, General News

Italy: New Report Reveals the Minimal Cost of Fish Welfare.
Essere Animali – Organizzazione per i Diritti Animali

New report reveals the minimal cost of fish welfare

14 February 2023

Essere Animali

A new report by Essere Animali finds that stunning fish before slaughter in aquaculture could have very little impact on production costs.

The Italian Ministry of Agriculture, Food Sovereignty and Forestry has developed a new “Sustainable Aquaculture” certification scheme in collaboration with sector associations. Unfortunately, key elements affecting the welfare of farmed fish are not addressed by the certification, despite the fact that the EU Strategic Guidelines for Aquaculture 2021-2030 treat animal welfare as an independent and priority topic.

According to Essere Animali, the most glaring shortcoming of the certification scheme is that, in total contradiction to the developmental directions taken by international regulations and certification standards, the Ministry’s specifications do not include the requirement for effective stunning before slaughter, effectively failing to guarantee animal welfare even during the end-of-life phases.

Currently, the vast majority of fish bred in Italy are subject to slaughtering practices that seriously affect the welfare of these animals. For example, sea bass and sea bream are commonly stunned by immersion in mixtures of ice and water, where, due to the thermal shock, they are immobilised even though it can take up to 40 minutes before they lose consciousness. 

Stunning methods more respectful of fish welfare already exist and, as the report produced by Essere Animali in collaboration with Animal Ask shows, applying them would have little impact on the production price.

For trout, the use of effective stunning methods would only account for 3% of the total production costs and would lead to an increase in the production price of 6 € cents/kg.

The same applies to sea bass and sea bream, where the use of effective stunning methods would only account for 1.2% of production costs with an increase in the production price of around 6 € cents/kg.

Selene Magnolia / We Animals Media

Even taking into account the initial investments needed to purchase the machinery, the increases in the production price would still be manageable (16 cents/kg for trout and 11 cents/kg for sea bream and sea bass), without considering that these investments could be financed within the 340 million euro coming to Italian aquaculture in the 2021-2027 plan of the Common Fisheries Policy, whose objective is precisely to support the development of systems with better animal welfare standards and more value for production.

The figures are similar to those in the European Commission’s own study from 2017 which found that stunning would increase the cost of seabass and seabream in Greece by around 5 cents/kg, and reduce the cost of trout in Italy by around 6 cents/kg.

By the end of 2023, the European Commission will present a package of four new proposals including a regulation on animals at the time of killing. This regulation is an opportunity to finally deliver European-wide rules for more humane stunning and slaughter provisions for fish.

Apart from the obvious shortcomings during the breeding stages, it is particularly serious that the certification does not even guarantee fish the reduction of suffering at the time of slaughter, an element that has been guaranteed for years to terrestrial species and on which there is already a European Regulation not fully implemented in our country. The European Commission has officially recognised that farmed fish need greater protection and it is extremely worrying to see not only that these indications seem not to be implemented in the ‘Sustainable Aquaculture’ specification, but that this has major negative repercussions for both fish and consumers, who are not fully guaranteed clear and transparent information.

Elisa Bianco, head of Essere Animali’s Corporate Engagement office

Download the reports for Italy and Greece below. 

Economic evaluation of humane slaughter methods for farmed fish in Italy

File

Italy_Humane Slaughter for Farmed Fish_0.pdf6.33 

Regards Mark

General News, Uncategorized

Turkey: Brave Volunteers Try To Save Animals From Rubble After Devastating Earthquake.

Not much, but …. please watch the video (link below)

Volunteers in Turkey Try to Save Animals Trapped in Rubble After Devastating Earthquake

Volunteers from Turkey’s Animal Rights Federation are working to save animals trapped under the rubble or abandoned in apartment buildings after a devastating 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck the country last week. Footage from AP.

Click here to see the video footage:

Volunteers in Turkey Try to Save Animals Trapped in Rubble After Devastating Earthquake (yahoo.com)

Regards Mark

General News, Hunting

Spain: Congress Excludes Hunting Dogs (Galgos) From New Animal Rights Law.

Spain’s Congress excludes hunting dogs from new animal rights law

MADRID, Feb 9 (Reuters) –

Spain’s parliament on Thursday passed a new animal rights bill that has stirred controversy as it excludes hunting dogs and other animals used in traditional rural activities, and which critics say panders to the country’s powerful hunting lobby.

The law will overhaul the treatment of domesticated and wild animals in captivity, ban the sale of pets in shops, impose prison sentences on animal abusers, and turn zoos into wildlife recovery centres.

In a last minute u-turn, the junior ruling coalition partner Unidas Podemos, which had advocated for the inclusion of hunting dogs, backed the law in order for it to pass and asked those fighting to protect hunting dogs for forgiveness.

“To leave hunting dogs out of this law is to leave abusers unpunished,” Social Rights Minister Ione Belarra, of Unidas Podemos, told lawmakers, adding: “We have come as far as we can with the strength we have”.

An intense debate has raged for weeks within Spain’s left wing-coalition after the main ruling Socialists backpedalled in December on regulating hunting dogs, fearing the issue could push rural voters toward right-leaning parties in a general election this year.

Spain’s hunting industry is worth an estimated 5 billion euros ($5.4 billion) a year and has a powerful lobby.

The Royal Spanish Hunting Federation, which represents 337,000 hunters, had argued that some sections of the bill, aimed at reducing the number of abandoned animals, would in practice legislate the disappearance of hunting with dogs.

The Socialists nevertheless hailed the law as a “historic advance” and argued that it would protect all animals from mistreatment and abandonment despite not specifically addressing hunting dogs.

About 167,000 dogs were abandoned in Spain in 2021, many following the end of the hunting season, according to Barcelona-based Affinity Foundation.

Dog rescue groups say the law was important to prevent owners from abandoning their canines no longer fit for hunting.

A few charities are coordinating foreign adoption of abandoned hunting dogs such as ‘galgo’ greyhounds. (Reporting by Corina Pons, additional reporting by Belen Carreno, editing by Andrei Khalip, Alexandra Hudson)

Spain’s Congress excludes hunting dogs from new animal rights law (msn.com)

Regards Mark

Check out all our posts on Galgos at  Search Results for “galgos” – World Animals Voice

General News, Uncategorized

Italy: Animal rights group blasts Pope, Krajewski for circus outing with elephants.

Animal rights group blasts Pope, Krajewski for circus outing with elephants

ROME – As the saying goes, “no good deed goes unpunished.” It’s a sentiment with which Pope Francis and his top official for charitable activity, Polish Cardinal Konrad Krajewski, may have a special sensitivity right now.

Thinking he was doing something nice for the poor, Krajewski took them to the circus over the weekend and now finds himself facing a protest from an animal rights group, which believes such spectacles amount to human beings subjecting animals to “painful constraints” for our own amusement.

On Saturday, Krajewski organized an outing for more than 200 poor and marginalized persons at Rome, taking them to a performance of the Rony Roller circus, a famed spectacle in the Eternal City that features musical performances, clowns, trapeze artists, animal tamers, and jugglers. The invitation was extended in the name of Pope Francis.

The guest list for Saturday’s performance included refugees, homeless persons, inmates, families with children from Ukraine, Syria, Congo and Sudan, as well squatters from various occupied buildings in Rome, all accompanied by a number of volunteers, including Missionaries of Charity sisters of Mother Teresa.

Cardinal Konrad Krajewski lies on stage while an elephant climbs over him during a Fab. 11 performance of Rony Roller Circus in Rome. (Credit: Screen capture.)

The event was part of an ongoing effort by Krajewski to offer not just material aid to the poor, but also opportunities for relaxation and amusement. Over the summers, for instance, he’s used a van to transport small groups of homeless persons from the area around the Vatican to a nearby beach, offering them an afternoon of surf and pizza.

During Saturday’s performance, one highlight came when Krajewski volunteered to stretch out on a stage and allow an elephant to climb over him, the idea being to demonstrate how well-trained the massive pachyderm actually is.

“Making participation in this show possible is a way to give a few hours of serenity to those who face a hard life, and who need help to find hope,” Krajewski said in advance.

Less than 24 hours afterwards, Francis and Krajewski found themselves facing a complaint from the “International Organization for the Protection of Animals,” a non-governmental organization founded in Italy in 1981 which has long objected to the use of animals in circus performances.

“I’m sorry that the pope somehow is sponsoring a circus with animals,” said Massimo Comparotto, the organization’s president, in a statement on Sunday.

“The pontiff often has expressed the importance of a greater respect for nature, above all in the encyclical Laudato si’ of 2015,” Comparotto said. “This choice seems contradictory to his so-called ‘ecological magisterium.’”

“Behind the exercises of the circus performances can be hidden deprivation, mistreatment and suffering for the animals, who live in captivity, behind bars, with limited space available and constantly under stress,” he said.

“They’re animals forced into a life that’s against nature,” Comparotto said.

The statement said the organization has no problem with circuses with human performers, such as jugglers, clowns and acrobats, who, the statement said, “display human talent and not the painful constraints of sentient beings forced by humans to put on a show with the force of heavy training.”

At the same time, Comparotto complained that Pope Francis in the past has suggested that human life is more important than other animals.

“In 2016, he affirmed that facing an injured animal, one feels pity, not mercy,” Comparotto said. “Often he’s put love for animals in opposition to love for children, as if love were something limited, which can be exhausted.”

“He receives and blesses circus performers in the Vatican who keep animals in captivity and force them into the role of clowns,” Comparotto said. “In sum, this is a pope not exactly on the side of the animals.”

“Those who feel that life is sacred love all life, beyond species,” Comparotto said.

Over the years, circus performers have been frequent guests at Vatican events. During the Great Jubilee year of 2000 under Pope John Paul II, a special day for circus performers and traveling shows was among the last events on the jubilee calendar.

Pope Francis has also hosted circus performers in the Vatican, welcoming some 6,000 of them during the Jubilee of Mercy in 2016. In the same year, he also sponsored a special performance of the Rony Roller for 2,000 poor and homeless persons, which opened with a song by a Spanish vocalist who had once been homeless himself.

Animal rights group blasts Pope, Krajewski for circus outing with elephants | Crux (cruxnow.com)

Regards Mark

General News, Stray Animals, Uncategorized

Zimbabwe: Woman-Led Legal Organisation Fights for Animal Rights – Great !

Woman-led legal organisation fights for animal rights in Zimbabwe

Zimbabwe’s wildlife landscape is gifted with 350 species of mammals, more than 500 birds, and 131 fish species all of which adorn its environment, yet due to the increasing number of poaching cases, the wildlife is seriously threatened.

According to the Africa Wildlife Foundation (AWF), elephants, rhinos and other iconic African wildlife may be gone within our lifetime.

According to a United Nations (UN) 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development report, despite 15 percent of the land being protected, biodiversity is still at risk. The UNDP 2021 report also stated that approximately 7,000 species of animals and plants are traded illegally.

“Wildlife crime is now rampant in most Southern African countries,” says Ever Chinoda International Animal Law Advocate and founder of Speak Out for Animals Trust (SOFA), an organisation of young passionate lawyers who are committed to combating wildlife crime, using the legal system.

The female-led SOFA is one of Zimbabwe’s leading animal conservation organisations that has for years been striving to promote Animal Law awareness in a bid to achieve protection of animals, raising awareness for the preservation and value of flora and fauna guided by the laws that protect them.

Mary – various sofa.jpeg© Mary Munde

“Our mission as Speak Out for Animals is to influence the human mindset and inspire behavioural change towards animal protection and preservation laws in Zimbabwe.

“Appreciation of Animal Law is not widespread in our country and in Africa, hence the work we do is pivotal in changing this narrative,” says Chinoda.

Founded in 2017, SOFA through case monitoring, legal awareness training, projects linked to animal law, educating students through student chapters and legal literature development has immensely contributed to sustainable protection and the better handling of wildlife crime cases in Zimbabwe.

“We conduct monitoring of animal (domestic and wildlife) cases in courts across Zimbabwe’s 10 provinces. This entails watching in brief and advising relevant stakeholders on gathering of evidence, proper drafting of the charge sheet, ensuring that the accused is brought before the court within 48 hours arguments with a goal to attain a befitting sentence, thus rendering justice for animals. For the past three years, we have assisted over a hundred cases,” she says.

“Currently in Zimbabwe, there is no law school that offers animal law as a course for study and to cover the gap, SOFA conducts animal law training for law students, practising lawyers, prosecutors and judicial officers to equip them with knowledge in animal law. We have also introduced wildlife law as a module at the University of Zimbabwe and the Great Zimbabwe University where I’m lecturing with the hope of catching future magistrates and prosecutors whilst they are still practising,” Chinoda said.

The law is an essential mechanism for protecting animals and many times loopholes in it are used against them. For years, SOFA has also been advocating for the reform of Zimbabwean wildlife laws to align them with international treaties to which the country is party to.

“Through our lobbying efforts, the wild dog was listed as a specially-protected animal for the first time through Statutory Instrument 71 and 72 of 2020. We have also successfully managed to lobby for the change of classification of the painted dog / wolf-dog from problem animal to endangered with the aid of organisations like Painted Dog Conservation.

“Going forward, we are aiming for the creation of an Environmental-Wildlife Court, a development we see as imperative if the conservation of flora and fauna in Zimbabwe is to be attainable,” she added.

This article is reproduced here as part of the African Conservation Journalism Programme, funded in Angola, Botswana, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe by USAID’s VukaNow: Activity. Implemented by the international conservation organization Space for Giants, it aims to expand the reach of conservation and environmental journalism in Africa, and bring more African voices into the international conservation debate. Written articles from the Mozambican and Angolan cohorts are translated from Portuguese. 

Regards Mark

Enjoy !