Written by Alisa Mullins
A newspaper exposé has led to an investigation by Ontario's Environment Ministry into four mass animal graves at the province's Marineland theme park. According to a former park employee, the graves contain the bodies of more than 1,000 animals, including orcas, dolphins, seals, walruses, bears, bison, and deer.
Former marine-mammal trainer Phil Demers described one particularly gruesome incident to a reporter from the Toronto Star. After an orca named Kandu died in December 2005, he was buried on the park's grounds. But staffers failed to obtain brain tissue samples during the whale's necropsy, so Demers and another trainer were assigned the macabre task of exhuming Kandu's body two weeks later.
"He was not frozen and it smelled so bad and there was blood all over the place," says Demers. "I was elbow deep in the pit in a reddish orangey sludge and we both kept coming up to vomit. It was gross."
Graveyard of Niagara Falls
The graves may be illegal, since Ontario requires waste permits to dispose of animal corpses and the park apparently had no such permits. Government officials are also concerned about possible contamination of the water and soil, especially because of the graves' close proximity to the Welland River, which feeds nearby Niagara Falls.
PETA has been campaigning against Marineland for years, citing the park's abysmal conditions and the high mortality rate among young whales and dolphins. The park also has a long history of obtaining wild-caught beluga whales, dolphins, and orcas, including Keiko, aka "Willy" from the movie Free Willy, whom Marineland sold to an even more depressing park in Mexico, where he languished for years before being rescued and rehabilitated. This summer, Demers and seven other former trainers came forward to report numerous instances of neglect and abuse, including serious damage to animals' skin and eyes because of filthy, tainted water.
Alarmingly, Ontario is Canada's only province that does not regulate the keeping and displaying of exotic animals or conduct public-safety inspections. Parks like Marineland are allowed to "police" themselves, and Marineland's mass graves are silent testimony to how good—or bad—of a job it's doing.
You Can Help
Refuse to patronize any marine park, including SeaWorld, which also has a tragic track record. Please voice your objections about the lack of adequate captive-animal protection laws in Ontario to Premier Dalton McGuinty:
The Honourable Dalton McGuinty
Premier of OntarioRm. 281, Main Legislative Bldg., Queen's ParkToronto, Ontario M7A 1A4416-325-7578 (fax)
Written by Paula Moore
The Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta is coming under heavy fire for its outrageous plan to import 18 wild-caught beluga whales from Russia, subject them to a nonlife in captivity, and use them as breeding machines to churn out more babies for profiteers at marine parks and aquariums across the country.
In an article for National Geographic titled "Should We Import Belugas for Display?" Virginia Morell takes issue with the idea that aquariums "need" more captive beluga whales. "Those in captivity now will grow old, perhaps lonely, and die," says Morell. "But to replace them will cause other belugas harm and grief—because it can only be done by tearing apart families that are doing fine now in the wild." Exactly!
Morell describes for readers the rich lives that belugas lead in their natural homes:
[T]hey are highly social, gregarious creatures; they make long migrations; they have an impressive range of calls, and like dolphins (to which they are distantly related) use these in a variety of ways, including imitating one another. (A just-released study shows that captive belugas can also imitate humans.) They like to hang out in the summer in shallow coastal waters in large groups (sometimes numbering in the thousands), which are most likely made up of close relatives—mothers, dads, and kids, aunts and uncles, and cousins. Sometimes, they make solo journeys just to visit other groups—a behavior that reminds me of elephants, who sometimes leave their families to visit clan members far away.
Compare this to life in their own diluted waste in a small cement tank, where belugas and other marine mammals spend their days swimming in endless circles, deprived of everything that they enjoy, even the use of echolocation. Aquarium visitors come, spend a few hours, buy some souvenirs, and then go home and carry on with their lives. Animals in aquariums will remain in the same tanks until the day they die.
Your Voice Is Needed!
Please help us stop the Georgia Aquarium's cruel and misguided plans. Take a moment today to contact the National Marine Fisheries Service and let officials know why they should deny the Georgia Aquarium a permit to import wild-caught beluga whales.
Written by PETA
We weren't surprised when we heard that SeaWorld hired animal pimp "entertainer" Jack Hanna to defend its abuse of marine mammals as well as SeaWorld's abysmal record of injuries and deaths of both trainers and animals. This is the same man who called Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey "the finest circus in the world," after all.
Hanna—who actually compared whale trainers to astronauts (?!)—has his own long and sordid history of exploiting animals at the expense of the safety of the animals and the humans around them. The baby animals Hanna regularly turns into unwilling performers are unweaned infants who were torn from their mothers shortly after birth. His traveling wildlife are subjected to the crippling stress of large crowds and are trapped in an unnatural, alien environment.
Hanna's antics perpetuate the misguided notion that dangerous and exotic animals are desirable "pets," yet even an "animal expert" such as himself can't take the wild nature out of the animals he carts around. His "pet" lion bit off the arm of a 3-year-old. A chimpanzee he brought to a church, bit off a 5-year-old girl's finger. A fox he displayed on Good Morning America severely bit the host's finger, and a baby cougar he brought to a conference bit a politician on the chin. By using animal suppliers and assistants with poor records of animal care, Hanna supports individuals and organizations who have been cited by the U.S. Department of Agriculture for violations of the Animal Welfare Act.
Hanna + SeaWorld = double the suffering for animals. Want to tell these abusers to "Hit the road, Jack!"? Urge SeaWorld to end its use of marine mammals immediately.
Written by Logan Scherer
President Obama's new proposal to help pay for the healthcare revamp by taxing tanning salons is almost as brilliant as that tanning-bed afterglow. Obama's tan tax—which some proposals have put as high as 10 percent—attaches a monetary price to the health risk that tanners take when they expose themselves to radiation.
Now, as it turns out, some people have this tan tax business all mixed up, but in their confusion they've actually come up with a great idea. Perhaps addled by the toxins that he breathes every day, a leather tannery employee has sent us hate mail about the "PETA-based tan tax" that he fears could hurt the leather business. We're thick-skinned (geddit?), so the vitriol doesn't get to us, but we really like this tannery tax idea.
Although the president hasn't yet officially included leather tanneries in his proposal, it would be a terrific next step in raising funds for healthcare—especially considering that governmental agencies have already deemed tanneries to be a threat to human health and the environment. Most leather produced in the U.S. is chrome-tanned, despite the fact that the Environmental Protection Agency considers all wastes containing chromium to be hazardous. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention even found that the incidence of leukemia among residents in an area surrounding one tannery in Kentucky was five times the national average. Arsenic, a common tannery chemical, has long been associated with lung cancer in workers who are exposed to it on a regular basis. And each chrome-tanning facility wastes nearly 15,000 gallons of water and produces up to 2,200 pounds of solid waste—including hair, flesh, and trimmings—for every ton of hides that it processes.
Leukemia, lung cancer, environmental destruction, and the exploitation and mutilation of cows—we can't stand any of it. How long do you think it would take a new "tannery tax" to ruin tanneries that are already destroying our health and the planet?
In a historic first, decades in the making, Madeleine Pickens—founder of the National Wild Horse Foundation—has secured a spot on a soon-to-be-formed national committee dedicated to ending the crisis faced by thousands of wild horses across the country.
Pickens' solution to the crisis—in which the animals are currently confined in usually unkempt pens where they are often subjected to extreme temperatures without shade and with little to no room to roam—is to create a wild-horse sanctuary to provide long-term care and protection for the animals. She recently met with Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar to tell him that paying ranchers or other contractors to warehouse wild horses until they die is an unacceptable method of dealing with the horse population, and her proposed solution prompted Salazar to announce the formation of a committee to address the issue.
Right now, more than 30,000 wild horses and burros are in holding facilities. Please lend your voice to them: Join Pickens in urging senators, congressmembers, and other government officials to stop the capture of thousands of American wild horses immediately.
Earlier this afternoon, another trainer at SeaWorld in Orlando was killed after being pulled into the tank by an orca named Tilikum (or Tilly, for short). According to a witness, the whale, who has been involved in two previous fatal incidents involving human beings and who our captive wildlife director, Debbie Leahy, describes as "12,300 pounds of sheer rage," leapt out of the tank and grabbed the trainer by the waist, pulled her into the water, threw her around like a rag doll, and then held her underwater until she drowned. SeaWorld officials canceled the dolphin and whale shows for the rest of the day, but SeaWorld remains open (have they no shame?!) and will continue to exploit and abuse these captive animals despite the many horrific injuries and deaths of trainers and animals that have occurred throughout the theme park's history.
PETA has long been asking SeaWorld to stop taking wild, ocean-going mammals from their families and ocean homes and confining them with no semblance of a life to an area that, to them, is the size of a bathtub. No wonder these huge, intelligent animals, like the beaten elephants in the Ringling Bros. circus, lash out after being forced into subservience and forced to perform stupid circus tricks for their food for so long. For years, PETA has been calling on SeaWorld to switch to hugely popular robotic replacements like those used in the amazing "Walking With the Dinosaurs" exhibit. The public needs to stand up now against this cruelty and stop patronizing aquariums and whale and dolphin shows. Please join us in saying, "Enough!"
"Louis Vuitton foxtail handbag accessories make me sick. Please do not purchase those! It's heinous."—tweet from Sharon Osbourne
We're not the only ones loving Sharon Osbourne's compassionate tweet against Louis Vuitton—her wise words have been retweeted again and again by people across the Internet. Sharon—who donated her furs to PETA in 2004—speaks her mind and takes flack from nobody, which is why she's definitely my pick for who's going to win the upcoming season of Celebrity Apprentice.
Louis Vuitton, because of your bloody bags, YOU'RE FIRED!
If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? Apparently, people have lost sleep trying to answer this philosophical question. The answer seems obvious to me: Animals live in forests and animals have ears, so they would hear the sound of a falling tree.
Next …?
How about the one asked by the adorable (and offensive) T-shirt below from our friends at Portland's Food Fight! Grocery?
I know, the answer to this one is a no-brainer too. So go ahead and ante up your answer—in just one sentence. (And keep it clean, guys: no uncensored swear words.) The three people who submit the cleverest, snappiest responses will each score a shirt.
The contest ends on March 10, 2010, and we'll choose three winners on March 12, 2010. Be sure to read our privacy policy and terms and conditions, as you're agreeing to both by commenting. Good luck!
Written by Karin Bennett
In The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the dolphins know to leave Earth before the planet is destroyed—and it looks like Douglas Adams was on to something.
No, the planet isn't in immediate peril (depending on your definition of "immediate"), but dolphins really are geniuses, second only to humans in intelligence, according to a new study.
This study revealed that the brain cortex of dolphins has the same complicated folds associated with human intelligence, and it has the scientific community buzzing. Thomas White, professor of ethics at Loyola Marymount University, argues that dolphins (i.e. "non-human persons") deserve rights and "qualify for moral understanding as individuals." PETA couldn't agree more! And because we wouldn't force our relatives to live in cages tanks, we're writing a letter to the National Marine Fisheries Service, asking it to place a permanent ban on issuing permits allowing dolphins to be captured and used as attractions at theme parks and resort hotels.
Dolphins are thoughtful animals with distinct personalities, and each dolphin has a strong sense of self. They think, plan, and communicate with one another. In the wild, they spend their entire lives in large groups; removing them from their natural communities is traumatizing and often results in stress-related illness and premature death. If we don't start treating our cognitive cousins with more respect, in the end we might really be left holding that note that reads, "So long, and thanks for all the fish."
OK, well, that's pretty much all that these four lovelies from PETA Asia-Pacific were wearing outside the Manila Zoo, but they certainly drew the crowd's attention to their campaign to improve conditions for animals at the cramped, decrepit zoo.
Thanks go out to these ladies and the rest of the team at PETA Asia-Pacific for their efforts to get the Manila Zoo to shape up its act.
If you have a general question for PETA and would like a response, please e-mail Info@peta.org. If you need to report cruelty to an animal, please click here. If you are reporting an animal in imminent danger and know where to find the animal and if the abuse is taking place right now, please call your local police department. If the police are unresponsive, please call PETA immediately at 757-622-7382 and press 2.
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