Green Options

Members of European parliament voted this morning to ban seal products, further tightening the noose on Canada’s archaic and cruel commercial seal hunt. With members voting 550 to 49 in favor of the ban, Europe has sent Canada a clear message: Europeans do not support the hunt.
The International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) welcomed the EU decision. The ban represents a welcome victory in the IFAW’s forty year campaign to end the hunt.

Sunday March 22, 2009 is World Water Day. With the world water crisis representing one of the most significant public health issues facing the world today, we need to find ways to conserve this precious resource now more than ever.
The UN expects that 3.4 billion people will be living in countries defined as water-scarce by 2025. When water is scarce, people are forced to consume contaminated water.

Here are ten simple things you can do to cut down on your water consumption today:

The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) has issued an interim policy regarding dogs victimized by dog fighting. The policy recommends that dogs be evaluated on an individual basis rather than being condemned to euthanization as a group.

The HSUS was widely criticized in recent weeks for supporting a court ruling that ordered 145 pit bulls destroyed after they were confiscated from Wildside Kennels in Wilkes County North Carolina. The dogs, which included approximately 70 puppies, were euthanized earlier this month.

With milk prices plummeting and dairy farmers facing increased feeding costs, many are culling their herds in record numbers. It seems that the value of a dairy cow is not what it once was in the industry. Other dairy farmers are not buying. Selling cows that have become too expensive to feed to the beef industry has become the only viable option for the struggling dairy farmer trying to raise cash.

In a further effort to reduce costs, male calves are being subjected to even more callous treatment and cruelty as evidenced by the recent dumping of 30 dead calves at the side of the road in San Joaquin County, California.

Despite extensive opposition and the rallying of animal activists and Hollywood celebrities alike, Los Angeles City Council voted today to go ahead with a $42 million elephant exhibit. About $12 million has already been spent towards the completion of the new exhibit, which is now 30 percent done.

Council also decided that the city will continue to keep Billy the elephant confined at the zoo instead of sending him to an animal sanctuary where he would have been afforded more space to roam. The planned six acre exhibit would be seven times larger than Billy’s current enclosure and feature approximately four acres of open space. Opponents argue that this falls far short of an elephant’s space requirements.

Canadian officials are in Brussels this week to ask the European Union not to pass proposed legislation that would ban the import of seal products.

The trip was organized by the Canadian federal Fisheries and Oceans Department.  According to the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation), the delegates are hoping to sway members of European parliament to vote against the ban.

British conservationists are ecstatic over what they hope is the return of the Large Tortoiseshell butterfly, thought to be extinct in Britain. The butterfly, once common, dwindled in numbers in the early twentieth century to the point where it disappeared entirely.

Some experts fear that sightings of the Large Tortoiseshell may in fact be of migrants from mainland Europe (where the butterfly is still common), or of escaped specimens from breeders. Conservationists, however, are hopeful that the butterfly is breeding again in England.

Walmart Canada removed slippers containing real fur from their inventory after receiving a complaint from The Animal Defense League of Canada. The slippers, made in China, had been labeled as faux fur. It was determined that the slippers were in fact made of rabbit fur. Walmart has a no-fur policy and immediately removed the offending item from their shelves when the mistake was brought to their attention.

This is yet another instance of the deliberate mislabeling of a Chinese-made product involving fur.

Officials at the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency (TWRA) are bracing themselves for a long-term wildlife study at the TVA spill site. The area was severely contaminated after a massive release of coal ash on Dec. 22, 2008. The spill originated from a holding pond belonging to the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) Kingston Steam Plant on Watts Bar Reservoir.

A large number of fish were killed immediately following the spill which dumped 5.4 million cubic yards (more than 1 billion gallons) of toxic sludge directly into the Emory River and surrounding lands. The spill occurred when the earthen wall of a storage pond breached. The scale of the accident is much larger than initially reported.

A disproportionate amount of Brown Pelicans have been dying along the California coast in recent days. This is especially troubling since the pelicans have been on the endangered list since 1970.  The birds were nearly decimated before the chemical pesticide DDT was banned in 1972.

This grim development is being monitored by wildlife conservation and rescue groups including WildRescue, operated by Rebecca Dmytryk.