Briana figures she’s probably killed more than 300,000 animals throughout her career. Most of them mice. The occasional rat. Sometimes a hamster. At the biomedical research facility where she used to work, at a university in the United Kingdom, the method of execution wasn’t always the same. Some test subjects were killed by an overdose of anaesthetics, others by a rising concentration of carbon dioxide that was slowly pumped into a sealed enclosure.
But the most common technique was something called cervical dislocation. Ten times a day, on average, for more than 10 years, Briana’s job involved taking a mouse by the tail in one hand, pinching its neck with the other, and yanking hard to dislocate its vertebrae.
“The last week before Christmas was always the worst; I’d spend an entire day just breaking necks,” she tells VICE World News over email. “Having to kill so many animals and be part of their suffering left me feeling like there wasn’t much point in my existence.”
“Artists have a powerful medium for reporting on the consciousness of our current civilization and can paint visual records of the unpalatable realities of our time. The aim is to move the viewer to feel those realities and engage them in a dialogue towards recovering our lost humanity.” ~ Mark Barone
Mark Barone has paved the way for compassion by creating a stirring collection of 5500 portraits of shelter dogs, (illustrating the approximate number destroyed every day), and with his wife, Marina Barone, they run their charity (An Act of Dog); using the power of art for social change. PBS created a 30-minute documentary about The 5500 shelter dog project.
An Act of Dog uses art to educate for change and donates to Semper Fi Service Dogs because they save shelter pets with 72 hours left to live and train them to be service dogs to zero out the 22 Veterans who commit suicide every day.
Mark has been an Artist for over 40 years, with his work featured in top art publications, awarded, and exhibited throughout America, with much of his work hanging in private and corporation collections around the world. https://artofsobriety.org
Hobby hunter has cat torn to pieces by hunting dog
In Triebes in the Free State of Thuringia, a hobby hunter was filmed committing a serious offense.
Disgusting scenes in a video from the everyday life of hobby hunters were leaked to IG Wild beim Wild by a whistleblower.
This hobby hunter, too, is completely numb and internally crippled. Typical symptoms of years of hunting. A hunting license always gives you two things: a license to kill and a license to become stupid. The faces, eyes, and activities of these older hobby hunters speak volumes.
Video on Page
As is so often the case, the hobby hunter has absolutely no control over his dog. Time and again, we receive videos of hobby hunters setting their dogs on defenseless animals. It’s hard to imagine what happens in the forests, where wild animals are defenselessly at the mercy of these sadists. These are not isolated cases, so hobby hunting must finally be banned, and the children of hobby hunters must be protected.
The person who recorded the video is an old man who can only move with pain using a walker and therefore could not intervene.
Little Luna was unfortunately the victim of this cruel act. She was a very special and trusting kitten. However, because of this act, she never even lived to be two years old.
The cat’s owner is shocked. The community is wondering how sick the alleged former managing director of the German Hunting Terrier Club (name withheld from the editors) is to give his hunting dog such commands, or even to watch.
The cat presumably suffered for a few more minutes before succumbing to her injuries. Her body has not yet been returned to her owner. This suggests that the hobby hunter later disposed of little Luna after her death.
Legal action has been initiated and the local animal welfare association is providing support.
The hobby hunter—the police have no doubt about this—is a 64-year-old local man. Officials are now investigating him on suspicion of violating the Animal Welfare Act.
Dogs are abused for hunting
The abuse of dogs for recreational hunting is systematic. For their “training,” they are forced into obedience with electric shock devices, spiked collars, kicks on the paws, pinches in the ears, and sometimes even beatings.
The wild animals that hobby hunters set their four-legged friends on also pose a great danger: When dogs are forced to chase foxes or badgers out of their dens, bloody life-and-death fights often ensue. It’s not uncommon for the four-legged friends to be bitten by the terrified wild animals. Because the animals are sent headfirst into the den, they often suffer injuries to their eyes, lips, jaws, and necks. However, most dogs are injured by wild boar. Training dogs on live foxes in dens or on ducks is common practice.
NOAA’s Office of Law Enforcement offering a reward of up to $20,000 for information.
Stranded bottlenose dolphin in North Carolina marsh. Credit: UNCW
NOAA Fisheries Office of Law Enforcement is investigating the death and decapitation of a dead bottlenose dolphin on Lea-Hutaff Island. We are asking the public for any information about who may have been involved. We are offering a reward of up to $20,000 for information leading to a criminal conviction or the assessment of a civil penalty.
A member of the public originally reported the stranding of a dead dolphin on Lea Island, near marker 105, to the Southeast Marine Mammal Stranding Hotline on April 15. The area is a remote, undeveloped barrier island north of Wilmington, North Carolina, only accessible by boat. When our stranding network partner, University of North Carolina at Wilmington, went to the reported location, the 8-foot dolphin had been intentionally mutilated and its head removed. They determined that someone intentionally removed its head between April 16 and April 18, after they received the initial stranding report.
Based on their initial health assessment of the dolphin, the University suspects the animal is carrying Brucella, a bacteria that causes the infectious bacterial disease brucellosis. The disease can be transferred to humans through direct contact. Our stranding network partner performed a necropsy (animal autopsy) and complete results and cause of death are pending.
Approximate location of dolphin carcass, Lea-Hutaff Island, North Carolina.
This animal was intentionally decapitated, a violation of the Marine Mammal Protection Act. The remote location where the dolphin was found adds to the difficulty of investigating this incident and cause of death. We are calling on your help to find those responsible.
Anyone with information about this incident should call the NOAA Enforcement Hotline at (800) 853-1964. You can leave tips anonymously, but to be eligible for the reward you must include your name and contact information.
The Royal Artillery Hunt said it had been the victim of more than 200 incidents since fox hunting was banned in 2004 Credit: John Eccles
The demands of the Royal Artillery Hunt seem simple – they just want law enforcement to treat them like everyone else.
But after years of attacks by masked saboteurs – and an alleged lack of action from authorities despite dozens of police reports detailing harassment, abuse and physical assault – they are beginning to lose hope.
“If what happened to the trail hunting community happened in other walks of life, then people would almost immediately be arrested, but it doesn’t happen with the sabs,” James Harris, a hunt master, told The Telegraph.
For the first time, the hunt has released its record of attacks by saboteurs. It shows that while there have been more than 200 incidents since fox hunting was banned in 2004, the number of cases has increased dramatically in recent years.
Over the course of the two seasons from 2022, a period covering 14 months, there were 103 incidents recorded and 67 police reports. But there was not a single prosecution.
Perhaps it is no coincidence that the start of the spike was the year that Jim McMahon, Labour’s then shadow environment secretary, vowed to ban trail hunting.
Have the political attacks emboldened the activists? “They have upped the ante,” Mr Harris said. “They smell blood.”
He described his hunt as a “prime target”. As a military pack, they hunt a trail on Ministry of Defence (MoD) land, so following them and making complaints to the landowner allows the activists to put pressure on the Government.
“The hunt saboteurs claim to be monitoring trail hunts but that is a misnomer – the clue is in their title,” Mr Harris said. “Their remit is to incite and upset and disrupt our activities.”
He added: “They are continually masked and they claim to the public that that is for their own protection but that is an out-and-out lie.
“We know their names, we know exactly who they are, they are masked because they are constantly breaking the law and with intent to do so. Hiding their identities means that they cannot be prosecuted, that is the true reason why they are masked.”
….
A member of the Royal Artillery Hunt is confronted by an activist
Predators were once virtually extinct in Europe, but thanks to conservation efforts their numbers have rebounded
Wolves face being hunted in greater numbers after the European Union voted to downgrade their protected status.
The European Commission’s proposal, backed by a qualified majority of EU ambassadors, would allow greater flexibility in organising hunts by downgrading the wolf from “strictly protected” to “protected”.
Ministers will meet to formally vote on the proposal on Thursday, with only Ireland and Spain expected to vote against it, diplomatic sources said. Other member states are expected to abstain.
Wolves were virtually extinct in Europe a century ago but, thanks in part to EU conservation efforts, numbers have rebounded, with more than 1,000 of the predators in some countries.
Amid a backlash against the burden of EU green rules triggered by the cost of living crisis, farmers have complained that rising numbers of the predators are endangering their livestock.
However, conservationists have criticised the “outrageous move” to ease the hunting restrictions.
Hunting of problem wolves is already allowed under exceptions to the EU protections. Limited legal wolf hunting is carried out in Finland, Norway, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Bulgaria, Romania and Slovakia, but it could now become more widespread.
The vote comes after European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen’s favourite horse, Dolly, was killed by a wolf in September 2022 at her home in Germany.
Ursula Von Der Leyen with her pony ‘Dolly’ who was killed by a wolf Credit: Instagram
The keen equestrian and mother-of-seven said her family was “horribly distressed” by the loss of the 30-year-old horse at the lower Saxony compound.
The culprit was identified through DNA evidence as a wolf known as GW950m. But a permit to kill it expired before it could be hunted down, meaning it could still be at large.
The keen equestrian and mother-of-seven said her family was “horribly distressed” by the loss of the 30-year-old horse at the lower Saxony compound.
The culprit was identified through DNA evidence as a wolf known as GW950m. But a permit to kill it expired before it could be hunted down, meaning it could still be at large.
Brussels was forced to deny that Mrs von der Leyen had intervened in the permit process to take revenge for the death of Dolly. The permit was applied for before the horse was killed.
The Eurogroup for Animals said wolf populations had increased but had not reached “favourable” conservation status, as it decried a move that “seriously jeopardises the conservation efforts of the past decade and prioritises politics over science”.
‘Long-overdue’
“Wolves are our allies, not our enemies and it is crucial to protect them,” said Léa Badoz, of the Eurogroup for Animals. More than 300,000 EU citizens had signed a petition to stop wolf hunting.
“This is a very outrageous move and shows that member states are ignoring their citizens’ calls and science,” she said. “We urge the other parties to the Bern Convention to reject this proposal.”
Centre-Right MEPs from Mrs von der Leyen’s European People’s Party (EPP), which campaigned to loosen the protections before June’s EU-wide elections, said the decision was the start of a “long-overdue process” to bring wolf populations under control.
“As these populations grow, their conservation status must evolve too,” said Alexander Bernhuber, an EPP member of the European Parliament’s environment committee.
Italy was among the most vocal countries demanding protections be weakened. The wolf was pushed to the verge of extinction in Italy by the 1970s, when the population dipped to just 100 individuals. Numbers are now estimated to be about 3,300.
“It is a step forward that fills us with satisfaction,” Paolo Borchia, an Italian MEP from the Right-wing League party, said on Wednesday. “It is unacceptable that it took years to come to terms with a situation that is clear for everyone to see.”
(It was only a matter of time when the backlash would come …)
The Springwatch host saw no issue being likened to St Francis of Assisi, making his holier-than-thou attitude worse than ever this week
Vanity is a bewitching drug for some of the BBC’s biggest stars. Jostling for most luminous position in the media firmament this week, next to Gary Lineker (who completely by mistake, and in the knowledge that the media watches his every social media move, managed to post to Instagram the suggestion that Jews were rats) was Chris Packham. …..
Queen Camilla is the patron of the Battersea Dogs and Cats home Credit: Instagram
The Queen has shared a picture of her new rescue dog.
The image of Moley, who was adopted from Battersea Dogs and Cats home, shows the animal perched on a wooden chair.
The King and Queen are expected to see the names of their dogs featured in a Chelsea Flower Show garden when they visit the attraction on Monday.
Monty Don, of BBC Gardeners’ World, is behind a dog-friendly garden which aims to celebrate the UK’s reputation as a nation of dog lovers and garden enthusiasts, opening to the public on Tuesday.
Work in animal activism is not easy – if you mean it and really do not spare yourself. It gets even more difficult if you have health issues (and I do not mean mental h. i.), because your strength is limited, and you forever hear from family, friends, doctors — do NOT overdo it. You know what’s at stake.
It’s called “compassion fatigue” or “secondary traumatic stress“.
But – and let me say this, Mark and I have met many, over the years, whose commitment, especially when handicapped, disabled, chronically ill, was, and to use a much abused term in US Politics at the moment, “ironclad”. In the best sense – so throwing caution, and their own welfare, to the wind, for the cause, for the animals they care so much about. Quite of few of those have since passed away …
Both, Mark and I, are struggling with health issues of our own – Mark with MS, me with advanced cancer. But, personally, and I think I can speak for Mark also, who has been “in it” longer than I have (live export being his special area of expertise) , I’ll be damned if I give up now.
Especially the issue at the kill shelters of the US, San Antonio (articles on this site), and others, is draining me currently. I happened upon it working on another issue two weeks ago, and was .. shocked. And believe me, it takes a bit to shock me, after the “Cat Torture” and various other, extreme, issues over the years. I do not spare myself – both of us don’t – and being blessed (!) with a photographic memory I never forget any of it …
Today I am waiting to see what dogs have been murdered (I say murdered, because that is what it is) at San Antonio, on Instagram. As every day clearly, it is too many, healthy and mostly young – going against every law of nature there is. Like hunting and shooting the individuals among wild animals that nature meant to reproduce – before they can do so – being turned into sick trophies.
It is beyond unbearable. And I fear the 4 little ones I have developed a special love for, Squirtle, Mudkip, Chicorita and Totodile may be among today’s killed and incinerated on site. How sick is that …
I wrote to the authorities two days ago, it was past midnight, to show mercy – for these, and so many others. I’ve heard nothing, mails came back as undeliverable.
It is that, more than anything, that drains us all – the ignorance, the denial, the refusal to listen, the helplessness – and the reckless, brutal and stubborn continuation of cruelty and mass murder, on and on and on.
We do not intend to give up – and personally, if it’s the last thing I do, I will stand up until my last breath. And so will Mark. But sadly too many colleagues and friends who have devoted their lives to animals, their welfare and rights, have decided to depart this world voluntarily, and prematurely – their compassionate souls too hurt to be able to cope with any more of it. They will, no doubt, join the animals they care so much about ..
And I find a quote very fitting, from someone who also, at his time, was a voice for the helpless innocent creatures we continue to fight for …
“All that is best in me I have given to animals and I mean to stand by them to the last and share their fate whatever it may be. If it is true that there is to be no haven of rest for them when their sufferings here are at an end, I, for one, am not going to bargain for any heaven for myself. I shall go without fear where they go, and by the side of my brothers and sisters from the forests and the fields, from skies to seas, lie down to merciful extinction in their mysterious underworld, safe from any further torments.”
Preface to The Story of San Michele by Axel Munthe
Ohio animal rights activist kills herself, 31 rescue dogs, police say
The founder of an animal rescue organization in Ohio committed suicide, taking dozens of pets with her, the Moreland Hills Police Department told CNN. …
In Memory of Animal Rights Activist Shimon Shuchat
Shimon Shuchat, a 22-year-old animal rights activist from Brooklyn, died on Tuesday, July 28th. In spite of being so young, Shimon was one of the most wise, humble, ethical, empathetic and hard-working activists in New York City. ….
… On 5 May last year, Ms Chien took her own life, using the same drug she used to put down animals. She said she wanted to help people understand what happens to strays in Taiwan. …
World Animals Voice 