Wildlife Rescue Series!

I received an email from YouTube this morning letting me know that a group called NoTankers had found my oil spill video and was inviting me to join them in protesting the reintroduction of oil tanker traffic in ecologically sensitive north coast areas. Recent breaches of the moratorium, in place since 1972, have gone uncontested, and at least six more projects requiring tanker traffic are in the works.
The group is circulating a petition that will go to Canada’s Federal Government urging a strengthening of the moratorium.

Please click here and take two minutes to sign their petition.

Thanks.

I miss you.

If you would like to know more about Mouse, or about the UBC Animal Welfare Scholarship founded in his honour, please click on SCHOLARSHIP at the top of this screen.

My latest column appeared in last Wednesday’s Burnaby NOW. I even received my first “fan” letter (thanks again, Jim!). Click here to read the full text, or see below for an excerpt. It begins like this …

“Have you ever noticed that when you learn a new word, suddenly it’s everywhere? It’s as if your learning the word brought it into being.Truth is, it was there all the time, but you just couldn’t see or hear it because you didn’t know it existed. Take “biophila,” for example. “Bio” means life, and “philia” means attraction to, or love.

Now just watch: your two-year-old will use it in a sentence, or it’ll be tomorrow’s Word of the Day in The Vancouver Sun. Biophilia is the love of life and the living world. But it also refers to the affinity we human beings have for other life forms.

My name is Diane Haynes, and I am a biophile.”

I’ve always loved that email message that has probably made it around the world several times over the past few years. The one about the storm that leaves thousands of starfish stranded on a beach. A man is walking the beach early in the morning after the storm, and discovers a little girl picking up starfish, one at a time, and flinging them with all her might back into the ocean. She hardly seems to be making a dent in the numbers, and the man asks her whether she really thinks she can make any difference.

She holds a starfish up to him and says, “For this one, I can make all the difference in the world.” And then she flings the starfish into the sea.

Yesterday I was at a friend’s place in Coquitlam and happened to spot the cover story of their local paper: “Dozens of dead sea stars at Belcarra.” Last month’s oil spill continues to take its toll. Unseen, unheard. But the evidence will out, and people care — enough to take photos, call the media, call park services, call the city. The NOW called the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife but did not hear back before their publication deadline.

We are not letting this off the radar this time. Both last summer and this have been blackened by oil. But is it enough? How much oil will be enough? Enough to make changes? Change the laws, change the penalties, change the response mechanism, change the emergency prep situation and the response funding situation?

Is this enough oil?

Are there enough dead starfish? Oiled geese? Toxic whales?

How many? How many until we’re prepared to make a difference?

There are four things we need to do:

1. use less energy (drive less, consume less at home and at work)
2. have less kids, or none (we are at 6 billion and headed for 11 billion within four years)
3. eat less meat, or none (deforestation for the purpose of feeding “meat” animals is the number-one cause of global warming, whatever your carnivorous, slogan-shouting politicians may say)
4. speak up — write City Hall, take a photo, call your MLA or MP, march, volunteer, DO … something

Do something. It does make a difference. One small star at a time. You matter. Do something.

Last night, kc dyer and James McCann launched their newest books at Vancouver KidsBooks on Broadway. The event was one in a series they’re holding over the summer to celebrate the publication of Ms. Zephyr’s Notebook (dyer) and Pyre (McCann). If you missed this one, never fear; the two authors will appear at Edgemont Village KidsBooks this Sunday, August 26, with a discussion about how they arrived at their stories, readings from the books, and coffee and chocolates.

McCann, a staffer at KidsBooks and a writing teacher as well as an author, published Rancour in 2005 with Simply Read Books (click on the link to check out the cool flash animation and sound effects!). He describes his first YA novel as a love story, but beware: it’s a vampire love story! Actually, vampires, werewolves, time travel and senior high school (scaaaary!) all figure prominently in the story. The book itself is beautiful, featuring a full-colour illustrated cover, black and white illustrations inside, black endpapers and chapter dividers, and a map — one of McCann’s trademark touches.

I describe Rancour because that’s the book I bought. Pyre is McCann’s new book. Now, here’s where it gets confusing. Pyre is a prequel to Rancour. So technically, I could have bought and read Pyre first. But James wrote Rancour first, so I’m operating on the principle that I should read first what he wrote first in order to follow the whole story the way he created it. I’ll let you know how that works.

kc dyer’s Ms. Zephyr’s Notebook follows a trilogy of (unrelated) historical fiction/time travel books called the Eagle Glen Trilogy, published by Dundurn Books. Again, I have to comment on the look of the book itself. It appears, at first glance, to be a red and black Hilroy notebook. The design is wonderful. “Dundurn” (the publisher’s name) appears in place of “Hilroy,” the author’s name sits in the “Name” blank, a testimonial from another author appears in place of doodling on the front cover, and even the coil rings, the edges of the lined notebook pages and the UPC code are all there.

The idea for dyer’s latest book came to her while she sat in a hospital waiting room over several weeks, worrying about a young friend. It’s about a 15-year-old boy with Crohn’s disease, an 11-year-old boy with kidney failure and a 13-year-old girl with an eating disorder, all of whom meet on the Children’s Ward of the local hospital. Their story unfolds in the notebook of Ms. Zephyr, the hospital teacher assigned to work with these three kids, and is told through the kids’ own journal entries as well as memos and post-its and messages from hospital administrators, school teachers and parents.

It’s not a story about illness, believe it or not, but about friendship and forgiveness and healing. It’s also something of a mystery story, with “clues” being revealed as the characters delve further and further into the notebook. I arrived home from the launch just after 10pm last night, and was up past midnight reading it. I  stopped only because I couldn’t keep my eyes open any longer.

Keep the Sunday event in mind, and I’ll keep you posted about upcoming events where you can meet these and other great BC authors who are launching new books this fall.

“A barge carrying heavy equipment and a diesel fuel truck overturned off northern Vancouver Island near Alert Bay today, raising fears that killer whales who frequent the area could be in danger.” Click here for the breaking story at 680News.

Is this blog starting to sound like a broken record? Oil spill story after oil spill story? Consider instead BC’s track record for spills: two this summer (so far) and two last summer. And those are the majors. BC’s coast guard estimates as many as 1200 spills occur in our waters every years, most unreported.

I am sick at heart, and worried for the whales.

According to Native traditions, whales are like living libraries, recorders of the history of the earth since the beginning of time. Many whales now are considered toxic waste, so polluted are they from having lived in the waters we’ve desecrated. They have nowhere to go. Nowhere to go. No way to leave the water. They must swim and eat and breed and live in our garbage. The stories our whales–our living libraries–are telling us are of our own shame and greed and willful stupidity.

I am so sick of these stories. Sick and sad.

There has been another oil spill. I will follow the story and keep you posted. And I will pray for the whales.

Asian elephant Maharani gave birth to a 140-kg (308 lb) female calf at the Calgary Zoo yesterday (Thursday, August 9). The little one has not yet been named.

This is Maharani’s second calf in three years. She gave birth in November of 2004 as well, but rejected the calf, and without the mother-child bond that is so necessary in high-level, highly social mammals, the calf failed to thrive, and soon died.
As a result, the zoo team sweated Maharani’s 22-month pregnancy this time around. The captive breeding program is part of a worldwide effort to save Asian elephants from extinction. Every birth is celebrated, and with every death, we fail a population that is disappearing to habitat encroachment and poaching.

The fear that Maharani may again fail to bond with her infant may be one reason the zoo is holding off naming the baby. Once we name something, we connect to it. And once we’re connected, any loss hurts all the more. But when you see a photo of this newborn elephant, bewildered by birth and struggling for life, you will feel connected, name or no name.

This elephant’s birth reminds me of another elephant born in captivity not so very long ago - April 26, 1970. Tina spent 34 years of her life in a small enclosure at the Greater Vancouver Zoo, much of it in a state of extreme boredom and loneliness and suffering serious foot problems because of the surfaces on which she stood. When it came to light that the Zoo was planning to sell her to a circus operator known to have abused his other animals, journalist Nicholas Read sparked a huge media campaign, bringing in Peter Fricker of the Vancouver Humane Society and Julie Woodyer of Zoocheck Canada, and leading to an enormous outcry from a public who had long held Tina in great affection. The result was a massive rescue effort that led to Tina’s journey to the Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee, where she spent the last year of her life in the company of her own kind, in as much freedom as she had ever seen in her lifetime.

It took me less than a second — the time it takes to see a photograph, to absorb its content and process what that content means to me — to fall in love with Maharani’s new baby. I can even applaud the Calgary’s Zoo’s contribution to conservation efforts; wild animals don’t belong in zoos, but in so many cases now, zoos may have become their only hope for survival as a species.

But I can’t forget Tina, or how much she suffered (despite how much she was loved). We have Zoocheck to tell us how well our zoos are doing on the animal welfare front. But we don’t have the laws in place to enforce Zoocheck’s standards, should a zoo fail to meet them.

It is not enough to bring them into the world. We need to make the world a safer place to bring them into. We need to do more. We need to change the laws.

Go look at her photo, little whatever-her-name-will-be. Fall in love. And then find out what you can about the laws designed to protect her. We are her guardians.

Reduce, Reuse and Recycle

A Chengdu panda-breeding center used to spend $770 USD every month on daily cleanup of nearly a ton of panda poop. Not any more! And what do they do with it now, you ask?

Souvenirs. The dung is sterilized under a new plan to use it for profit. It is then made into odor-free, Olympic-themed statues … such as giant pandas.

Nothing says “I love you” like bringing back a bit of formed feces for a friend who couldn’t afford to attend the Games in person.
The Power of One (Really, Really Influential Person)

Steven Spielberg is artistic advisor to the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. Thanks to pressure from fans who are also human-rights activists, the director told the Beijing Olympic Committee organizers that he would quit unless China took a hard stance toward its trade partner, the Sudan, with respect to the genocide that is taking place in the Sudan’s Darfur Region. Days later, China backed a UN resolution that will send 26,000 peacekeepers to Darfur.

So if you read my previous post and figure you can’t make a difference to animals in China, think again. Heck, you might even want to ‘cc’ your letter to Steven Spielberg.

Panda Poop and Steven Spileberg bits shamelessly plagiarized from the August 13 issue of Time Magazine.

I received notice yesterday from the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) that the Chinese government is conducting massive dog eradication programs in the name of “city cleanup” as Beijing prepares to host the 2008 Summer Olympics.

According to the IFAW briefing, in Yunnan Province alone, 55,000 dogs were killed, many in front of their owners. Fear of rabies is another of the motivators behind the killings, and breeds that have been targeted in the sweep include collies, terriers, golden retrievers, Labradors, English foxhounds, setters, Saint Bernards and Shetland sheepdogs.

IFAW helps fund a shelter in Beijing where over 510 dogs and 280 cats are being cared for by veterinarians and shelter staff and volunteers, but of course the shelter is overflowing and the resources are tight.

IFAW is asking people to write to the Beijing Olympic Committee and to please address the following points:

• congratulate Beijing on being the host for the 2008 Summer Olympics
• urge the organizers to use this opportunity to showcase Beijing as a model city for both animals and people
• ask the organizers to encourage municipal governments to enact humane dog regulations that eliminate the ban on ownership of large dogs, and to promote responsible pet ownership through pet registration, rabies vaccination and sterilization

Address your letters to:

The Beijing 2008 Olympic Committee, c/o IFAW, 1 Nicholas Street, Suite 612, Ottawa ON, K1N 7B7

IFAW-organized protests have worked before to halt dog killings in China. Beijing knows the world is watching, and cares what people think. It will make a difference to them to know that thousands of us on the other side of the world care enough about what they’re doing to speak out. Please consider taking 10 minutes to respond.

Click here to read IFAW’s Animal Rescue Blog.

Donations to the shelter may be made c/o IFAW.

The press conference started at 10 am today; CBC, CTV, Global TV, the BC Ministry of Environment and The Province newspaper were there. And so was I!

Chris Battaglia of Focus Wildlife gave an introductory interview and explanation of the nine-step protocol for dealing with wild animals in an oil spill situation. Media were there to see an oiled Canada Goose undergo the wash and rinse process. I was thrilled to see that since my volunteer shift on Monday, four geese had already made it through the process and were preening themselves calmly in one of the outdoor pools.

The wash and rinse process took about 45 minutes. As I’ve said here before, it can be one of the most stressful things a wild animal ever has to endure in its lifetime. The handlers are experienced (the one you’ll see in the video below helped wash the 20,000 penguins caught in a spill off the coast of Africa) and extremely gentle with the animals. But that doesn’t change the fact that they’re wild, frightened, and bent on escape.

Click here to see a YouTube video I posted showing a portion of the rinse process; it’s Chris Battaglia’s voice you can hear in the background. Go ahead and laugh; I’m still figuring out the technology, and as a consequence shot this video, uh, sideways. Just turn your head a little.

Janice Dickie of the Wildlife Rescue Association of BC (WRA) was there as well, and commented to me later that since Wabamun and the two BC spills of last summer, the media have become much more aware of the issues surrounding oiled wildlife response and much more sophisticated in their questions. With the amount of coverage this morning’s event will generate, there will be no way for Canada’s federal environment ministry to avoid addressing the idea of a ‘polluter pay principle.’

WRA is calling upon the Environment Canada Minister and his government to review the Canadian Wildlife Service’s management of oiled birds, which lags behind that of the United States and most other developed countries. In the US, for example, the government has produced a 90-page protocol document that is handed to spillers in the immediate aftermath of a spill, detailing exactly what is expected of them in terms of response, cleanup, wildlife rehabilitation, cost coverage and restitution. Also in the US, oil companies are required to pay a barrel tax into an emergency response fund. Neither such practice exists in Canada.

WRA is asking the Canadian government to develop an effective national strategy to deal with all oiled wildlife — not just species at risk — and to support a ‘polluter pay principle’ that includes oiled wildlife response as a regular component of overall spill cleanup.

As media saw clearly today, this job, like perhaps most others, can only be done properly by trained and experienced professionals if it is to be safe, effective and successful for everyone involved — including the animals.