Wildlife Rescue Series!

Di at Wildlife Rescue Association

Originally uploaded by Jane Ray’s Wildlife Rescue Series

HELLO TO MADAME BENTIVOGLIO’S CLASS FROM DIANE HAYNES!!!

Hi everybody! How are you doing? Thank you so much for inviting me to ‘visit’ your class to talk a little about my latest book, Gaia Wild! I’ve been visiting Madame Bentivoglio’s classes since 2005, when we first met at Earth Rangers, and we always have a great time. I’m really thankful for all the support she’s shown me as a new author on the Canadian publishing scene, and her students have always been among the most thoughtful I’ve encountered as I travel around the country.

It was in the fall of 2003 that I first pitched the idea of doing a book about an elephant to my publisher-to-be, Whitecap Books Ltd. I was actually pitching a series, and their editors wanted to see synopses for three books, and the first chapter of the first book. Because I was planning to base the series on my own volunteer work with the Wildlife Rescue Association of BC, I didn’t have much trouble choosing subjects for the first two books: I would write about an oil spill, because that’s how I first became involved with wildlife rescue and rehabilitation; and I would write about crows, because the media had gone crazy the year before when our little rescue centre chose to euthanize crows rather than put its staff and volunteers at risk of West Nile Virus. The third book idea was proving to be more of a challenge, though, because I couldn’t get an elephant out of my mind … and we sure as heck had never had an elephant at the rescue centre!

In the summer of 2003, Tina the elephant made the front page of the paper and the six o’clock news every night for over a month. At 34 years old, she had been held in captivity the whole of her life, and had spent most of that time alone, in a small, barren enclosure devoid of the companionship of others of her kind. By this time, she was overweight and sick, her feet were badly infected from the pressure of standing on concrete day after day, she was refusing to lie down, even to sleep, and she bobbed her head back and forth uselessly, for hours on end, in a behaviour called a “stereotypie” that is typical of caged wild animals who have become despondent and depressed.

Worst of all … I knew her. When I was six and my little sister was four, my mom and dad took us to what was then called The Vancouver Game Farm to see the animals, and one of the main attractions was a baby elephant the owner had bought from the United States to give rides to little kids. My sister and I lined up with the others and waited our turn to climb the crude wooden stairs up to the platform that was the same height as baby Tina’s back. From there, we climbed onto the colourful woven rug that covered her back, and then her keeper led her around a dusty dirt yard. The ride couldn’t have lasted more than a few minutes, but I can still remember the smells — the wild, musky smell of this wild animal, the dirt and leaves in the summer sunshine, the fresh, wet-hay smell of her poop! — and the thick, bristly, wrinkly feel of Tina’s skin. I absolutely loved her. I begged my parents to take us back to the Game Farm every chance I could, and in fact we went for two more summers, while Tina was still giving rides. When she got too big, we stopped going, and other than the times I looked at the photographs in our family album, I’m ashamed to say I forgot all about her.

But then, in 2003, there she was again, in the news every day. The reason? Her current owners — the managers of the Greater Vancouver Zoo, as it is now called — had decided she was no longer of any use to them, and wanted to sell her to a circus in Ontario. It was soon discovered, though, that the circus owner was known for beating his animals, including his elephants. In fact, he said so himself to a reporter. This fact made the news in Vancouver, and soon everyone in the city who had ever known, visited or loved that baby elephant — children like me who were all grown up by this time — was in an uproar about Tina!

Okay … want to know more?? Well, how about I blog some more for you next week. Meanwhile, I’d love to hear your comments and questions (you can post them directly to this blog), and I’d also love to know what section you’re on in Gaia Wild and what you think of the book! Can’t wait to hear from you! Talk to you again soon.

Diane

p.s. Think this can’t happen today? Do some detective work and see what you can find out about Lucy at the Edmonton Zoo …

Gaia Wild, the third book in Jane Ray’s Wildlife Rescue Series, is one of a growing collection of books, both fiction and non, that are raising awareness about the interconnected plight of animals, human animals and the environment all around the planet.

I have been reading Terry Glavin’s Waiting for the Macaws on and off since its publication in 2006, and I am back at it again. I seem to be in a non-fiction mood these days, and have recently raced through Roger Fouts’s Next of Kin and Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, staying up late and turning pages as though compelled by a drugstore whodunnit. I’m hungry, it seems, for real and thoughtful answers about the biggest questions we’re all facing right now, and can no longer (at least, not for the moment) distract myself with entertaining fiction.
Macaws’ subtitle is “… and other stories from the age of extinctions.” His argument is that all extinctions — of animal and plant species, of languages and of cultures — are related. He says “Extinctions tend to follow the collapse of order in human societies. Human-caused extinctions are often the result of old ‘feedback loops’ breaking down, and old restraints giving way. Where you have rapid advances in technology, dramatic shifts in political power, and profound economic disruption, extinction tends to follow. There is also a surprisingly direct correlation between the removal of vegetative cover — even ‘domesticated’ plant life — and the dying out of languages, cultures and ways of life.”

He also cites the following statistics: “Roughly 34,000 plants, or 12.5 percent of all the plants known to science, are threatened with extinction. One in eight bird species is threatened with extinction, along with one in four mammals, one in three of all known amphibians,four of every ten turtles and tortoises, and half of all the surveyed fish species in the world’s oceans, lakes, and rivers. We lose a distinct species, of one sort or another, every ten minutes.”
He quotes the poet ee cummings’s response to the sight of biologically extinct animals (those that are for all intents and purposes extinct from the wild) in captivity: “It’s not animals that we see. Instead, it is ‘a concatenation of differently functioning and variously labelled buy cheap viagra, all of which are alive …. No mere spectacle of monsters, however extraordinary, could so move us. The truth is not that we see monsters, but that we are monsters.’”

Are we?

Nyac Says Goodbye

Originally uploaded by Jane Ray’s Wildlife Rescue Series

Nyac, one of eight otters rescued from the Exxon Valdez oil spill and brought to the Vancouver Aquarium, died yesterday. She was 20 years old.

By July, Nyac was suffering from limited energy, tremors and some facial paralysis — symptoms of what turned out to be leukemia. The Vancouver Aquarium’s staff veterinarian Dr. Martin Haulena said, “Leukemia and some other cancers have been linked to exposure to petroleum products and hydrocarbons.” A 20-year-old oil spill is still wreaking its havoc.

Like apparently 11 million other people, I was completely captivated by the YouTube video of Nyac holding hands with her pen mate Milo. CTV also offers a gallery of photos of the sweet and social little creature (including the one shown here).

My first personal experience with an oil spill was in 2000, when a North Vancouver canola oil shipping plant allowed 400,000 litres of the substance to leak into Burrard Inlet one Sunday morning in February. Friends and I rescued a surf scoter that was being repeatedly smashed up against the seawall, and took it to the Wildlife Rescue Association of BC (WRA), where volunteers had been working round the clock to try to save the hundreds of animals that had been caught in the spill.

A bird coated in canola can’t thermoregulate; can’t therefore dive for food and becomes anaemic and malnourished; can’t lift its wings from the water and fly; can’t escape from predators.

If that bird is “lucky” enough to be rescued, the rehabilitator will have a harder time removing the canola oil than if it were crude. On the other hand, crude oil is far more immediately destructive — toxic on the inside and caustic on the outside.

Next, the “lucky” animal will undergo the most stressful experience of its life: a minimum of 30 minutes of handling by humans (natural predators), being held partially immersed in a tub of hot water, soaped up, rinsed off, again and again, until the water comes clean. Then held up, down, backwards and forwards, neck and wings extended, while the rinsing takes place.

If it survives the stress, it might stand a chance at making it back to the wild.

If, however, the rehabilitator leaves even a drop of oil the size of a baby fingernail on that bird, the oil will disperse through the feathers, destroying feathering and bouyancy and insulation once more, and requiring yet another session of washing. With each wash, the animal’s chances for recovery become slimmer.

Nyac was one of those odd “success” stories — and I put “success” in quotes, because Nyac wouldn’t have survived without rescue. Couldn’t be left in her natural environment. Spent the whole of her life in captivity. Lived longer, perhaps, than her wild counterparts, and then died of complications from the man-made disaster that overtook her just a month after she was born.

But she lived, and she learned and played and (to anthropomorphize … maybe), she loved. And she touched and taught over 11 million of us — more than any other wild otter might have done.

It’s up to us now to ensure that her unique life and legacy are carried forward. So the green refrain continues: consume less, walk more, know as much as you can about offshore drilling and northern pipeline projects, seek alternatives, be part of the answer.

And play. And hold hands.

Pets in rental housing in BC? Think again. If you have cats, you’re going to have to think outside the litterbox if you want to find a place to live that doesn’t require you to give up your animal companions. And if you have a dog, well, you’re barking up the wrong tree in BC!
The BC SPCA and other animal shelters end up with thousands of animals every year that have been handed over by distraught guardians who have been forced to choose between their love for their animals and shelter for themselves.

I was lucky–I had a place to stay that welcomed both me and my cats until I could find a home of our own. But I looked for MONTHS for an apartment or suite that would allow me to have Sadie and Frances, with me, and that didn’t cost over $1,000 a month … and this is in the suburbs!

Back in Ontario, when I was there in 2006, literally every apartment I checked out allowed pets.

The difference?

The laws.

If you’re interested in seeing the laws change governing the allowance of pets in rental housing in BC, click here and sign the petition. It reads as follows: