Sunshine surface and cold depths: all at risk from proposed oil transport

Beneath Cold Seas: the Underwater Wilderness of the Pacific Northwest, by David Hall. Gtreystone and Suzuki Foundation, 2011

Some useful text but mostly taken up with spectacular colour photography this large-format delight reveals what you don't see by gazing across the surface of the seas. It is too easy, admiring the vista, the horizon and the skies above, to forget that the underwater world is like another planet, full of startlingly varied and intricately related plants and animals, from huge marine mammals to microscopic algae. Unless you are a diver, or you haul the beasts up brutally from the depths below, you won't get to view this world.

There are lots of online sources of imagery and information of course, but somehow nothing evokes wonder like a book you can set before you and leaf through page by page in the old-fashioned way. Another such gorgeous tome is The Sunshine Coast: From Gibsons to Powell River, 2nd edition, by Howard White and Dean Van't Schip. Harbour Publishing, 2011. Here we get geological history and contemporary glimpses of B.C.'s west coast communities both human and biological. Treescapes, harbours, inlets, villages and rock formations: all presented here are at risk from the shipping that plies this stormy, craggy and rock-island-strewn coast, and under much greater threat again from the increased tanker traffic and oil exploration drilling that some recommend.

It is all too easy to ignore what lives "beneath cold seas" -- it is a case of out of sight, out of mind for the public, a situation which the oil corporations and their politician-supporters rely on. These books bring the marine depths to mind, vividly, and should have a place in every public library.

Let's Make Canada a Giant Park ... Please ...

"Certain people in Canada," moaned Prime Minister Stephen Harper to Peter Mansbridge on the CBC, "would like to see Canada as one giant national park."

Absolutely! Maybe he finally gets it. Maybe he could tell his Cabinet. Canada IS one big natural wilderness park, albeit with human settlements woven into the habitats of the plants and animals native to it: to the second largest national land mass in the world, which consists of the largest boreal forest, plus Pacific, Arctic and Atlantic coast ecosystems, as well as prairie grasslands, an extraordinary network of rivers and lakes, and one of Earth's major mountain ranges -- the Rockies.

When Susanna Moodie and her co-settlers of this land arrived from elsewhere, it was not for nothing that she entitled her book Roughing It in the Bush. "The Bush" was nature, and humans have been plundering it in Canada ever since the time she wrote it (and, in terms of animal exploitation and extinctions, before).

It is the duty of Canadian citizens to guard and champion these ecosystems and species we find ourselves living among. That is why the majority of British Columbians have come out against the pipeline proposed to carry crude oil from Alberta to the unspoilt coast of B.C. which will without doubt, sooner or later, be clogged with spills if tankers carry that oil along the stormy and craggy coast on its destinations to Asia and the south. Harper and company merely gamble that it will be later, i.e. after their term in office is over (and after the foreign investors in Canadian oil production have secured their profits).

The west coast marine area of the inherent wilderness park which is Canada is one thing; the northern boreal forest is Earth's best hedge against climate change that threatens to harm life forms in general. Who lives in that boreal forest which our government should be protecting rather than logging and denuding? Some of the animals are: deer, elk, bison, muskox, Dall's and Bighorn sheep, fox, wolves, wolverine, bear (grizzly and polar), hares, lemmings, shrews, loons, swans, grebes, ducks, teals, owls, grouse, arctic terns, woodpeckers ... this is just a sample, and doesn't even include the insect and marine life (cetaceans, seals, marine birds ) ... what about them?

Who wants those animal species to disappear? Not those who recognize that northern North America is indeed a wildlife extravaganza. Some sad people, it is true, could not care less, and it is true that the Canadian public (or those who bothered to vote) voted for the current government. Now, the world is reaping the results. The doomed animals however did not vote thus, and they too are reaping the results.

The word "park" is etymologically related to the word "paradise." When Planet Earth becomes a paved and dead non-park, it will by contrast have become hell. It will be an empty world for humanity, devoid of other creatures and of anything green or natural, an indoor, factory-laced cyber-obsessed global shopping mall, instead of a nature park. So yes, Mr. Harper, of course we think Canada should be one national park. Humanity must fit its cities and hamlets in, with respect and awe for what surrounds them.

Nations are made (by politics and conflict); the planet is given. Nature-lovers worldwide care about Canada's northern North America wilderness. It's all one planet. The Natural Resources Defence Council aims to "protect the planet's wildlife and wild places" as do many other Northern Gateway pipeline opposers from all over the world. Please contact www.http://www.nrdc.org.

Good time for a hen party in Britain!

Happy New Year! January 1st was a great day for British hens: their cage-free commercial poultry policy 2012 has FINALLY come into effect.

The British Hen Welfare Trust (see www.bhwt.uk.org) takes care of birds past their top-laying period, but still only 2 years old. Instead of moving from battery cage hell to slaughter, thousands are at any time being transferred to people's gardens, as retired garden-helpers, pets and slow-layers with, finally, a chance to enjoy life. And hens really know how to enjoy it, given a chance - pecking and scratching, rolling in the dust, preening in the sun, chatting companionably to each other and following their human companions around the garden (and the house, if you let them) ... if they were cats they'd be purring.

British egg layers are still caged, but in larger cages where they can stretch their wings and walk about -- a fairly small change for producers that took a big time coming (several years prep). BHWT re-homed about 15,000 birds at the changeover in practices, the last hen, "Liberty," being liberated this week. Like all animal charities, BHWT needs donations, and has a fundraising store: check it out at their website. As we have seen from the tragic case of Jalupae the old Canadian gelding starved and then hanged by his "owner" who didn't want to pay vet bills (and abandoned by vets who didn't want not to be paid), senior animals everywhere are in dire need of retirement housing. Every community should have a space set aside for retired working animals, just as every town has a landfill site and a sewage system. It's part of civilization. Start by finding the ideal spot in YOUR town, and lobby for public and private funding to purchase and run it. Good luck.

Are you a compassionate xmas gift-buyer?

Bile farms exist for the Traditional Chinese Medicine trade, but some of this horrendous bear gall bladder product, extracted in Asian countries from immobilized traumatized bears through a process of unbelievable cruelty, finds its way into ordinary chewing gum, toothpaste and face cream. As consumers we can never be too vigilant about the sources of the seemingly innocent products we buy.

What is in the Christmas presents you are choosing this year? For instance, what have you bought in the line of shoes and handbags? Check out Jill Robinson's well-organized site www.animalsasia.org, and find shocking information on the reptile trade (which underlies shoe and handbag fashions). The live animal markets of the Far East are a horror, and they provide ingredients of many an interestingly packaged alternative "health" product.

Those with a "non-harm" ethic must be vigilant at Christmas. It is impossible to compute the scale of suffering that goes into the standard turkey dinner: the millions of birds who were raised in cramped factory farms, stuffed with growth hormones and medications and then slaughtered while still young, never having been out of doors or had a moment of free healthy movement. What does it mean that we humans centre a whole festival around a tormented bird?

Many of your stocking stuffers will have been tested on lab animals -- soaps and scents and bubble baths ... To get some idea of what is and what is not tested on animals these lists help (but are not comprehensive: ask each corporation what they do to animals by going to their websites ...)

http://www.peta.org/living/beauty-and-personal-care/companies/default.aspx
http://www.leapingbunny.org

So what to do? The best gift is to buy an animal or sanctuary sponsorship from one of the reliable animal welfare organizations like WSPA (World Society For the Protection of Animals) which has a choice of programs to support in the name of your ethical-minded friends and relatives; see their site www.reallywildgifts.ca to purchase gifts for as little as $20 which go to animals themselves, with e-cards which are sent to the friends and relatives in whose names you give them. Or: find a homeless pet shelter near you, and donate or adopt.

Avoid any plastic gift, they will end up in the environment where they will not break down because they were not part of nature to begin with: plastic will reduce itself down to blobs of toxicity, which will cause problems at the molecular level to many life forms. At the macro-physical level, it will enter the plastic islands in the oceans that spell death to marine birds, turtles, fish and myriad other creatures.

We need to resist the message that by buying things we will pump up the economy. The entire world begins a buying orgy every Christmas, measured by retailers minute by minute, but the ever-expanding human race cannot secure its own material safety by destroying the natural world around it. Please: choose gifts accordingly. We are not the only creature on the Ark.

Hickstead Runs His Heart Out

Above: Jalupae, starving before hanging

In an article in Equestrian, Brenda Nelson asks "Hickstead Dies, Is Horse Show Jumping Cruel?" Her answer:

"For the most part horse show jumping is less cruel than some other horse sports (not counting pleasure riding), but cruelty is always a factor in issues of competition."

So the answer is yes, show jumping is cruel, Hickstead literally jumped his heart out for his owners. He collapsed with a burst aorta, apparently a very agonizing way to go. Which part of that isn't cruel? Maybe the $3.7 million he reportedly had made for his owners wasn't enough.

Horses seldom get to retire; even chanpions are sold (and sold again and again) to carry on working as saddle horses, trail horses or in some other form of competition. A horse is expensive to house and feed, and has to keep earning its keep even when tired and lame. Euthanizing a horse costs more than many riders want to pay, so they work it to death. In the tragic case of the starving old gelding Jalupae, the present owners decided to hang him from a crane to kill him off. The sentencing after their criminal trial is scheduled for December 13th in Victoria, B.C.

Veterinarians seem to do a lot less for elderly horses than they could be doing, and retirement sanctuaries for these animals are few and far between. They don't get the attention and fundraising for sanctuaries that even cats and dogs do (and even they don't get enough to fill the need). Quite simply, as well as being expensive to maintain in retirement, too many horses are bred in the first place, in the endless quest of stables to breed and train champions for racetrack or show ring.

Joe Camp wrote a beautiful account of how humans could interact with horses. In The Soul of a Horse: Life Lessons from the Herd. (Three Rivers Press, 2009). Camp, an associate of Monty Roberts the "horse whisperer," gets imaginatively inside the horse mind. He experimented with a replication of natural range, studied horse behaviour and learned how they live in natural herds. The way they live in stables, even when warm and well fed, does not meet their physical or emotional needs:

First, says Camp, horses are flight animals: flight is their response to danger and fear, and flight is denied the working horse. Secondly, solitude is not natural, they cannot even sleep properly according to Camp when separated inside a stall. They need to sleep in snatches (in nature they spend 18 - 20 hours a day grazing) but they need to lie down for REM sleep (horses dream!), and they need to know other horses in a herd are standing sentry while they do it.

Additionally, horses need to be unshod so that the parts of their hooves can move flexibly and absorb shock for tendons and leg joints.

Horses are great communicators when people take the trouble to notice their signals, and they form strong attachments to humans they like, as well as to each other and to other animals (they will pal up with a barn cat or cow rather than be solitary). Evolution has formed them for herd living and constant movement; imagine how it feels to those that are isolated and stationary in a stall year in and year out.

Awkward Family Pet Photos - for the pet-lover who has everything?

As we come to the end of 2011 it is hard not to be gloomy about the State of the Animal Nations on planet Earth - things are still about where they were at the end of the last many years: accelerating extinction of species, takeover of wild animals' ranges, abuse of working animals, importation of exotics from everywhere to everywhere, hunting of everything with fins or paws ... That is what recent animal books seem mostly to be about. For some it may be a relief therefore to find one which is just for fun, albeit "awkward" fun.

Awkward Family Pet Photos, by Mike Bender and Doug Chernack (Three Rivers Press, 2011) is presented as an old-fashioned style family photo album of pet-pics, some of which will indeed make you squirm. Dogs, cats and hedgehogs wearing hats and slippers, babies riding pigs, monkeys in dresses, llamas and lap-skunks ... What makes people so keen on sending out Christmas photos of the "whole family" including the stunned-looking long-suffering pets? The book asks the question, and suggests that pets make us more loveable ourselves. Many a stressed-out, conflict-ridden family must be soothed and diverted by the presence of the sweet nonhumans within them. This concept is the subtext of Awkward Family Pet Photos (a sequel to AwkwardFamilyPhotos.com, launched in 2009), but the book is not heavy on theory, it merely illustrates the fun of people willing to laugh at themselves, and animals being counted on to say nothing -- non-judgmental friends that they are ("our role models, our little Buddhas," say the authors). This book is out for the Christmas gift season and most people probably know some cat or dog-loving family wo/man who will enjoy the visual humour.

Reindeer games turn deadly (caribou and pipelines)

'tis the season for reindeer - for celebrating their mythical part in the spreading of largess during the dark season. Santa Claus/St Nicholas chose the magic reindeer to help him distribute his gifts. And magic the reindeer, otherwise known as caribou, is indeed. Karsten Heuer found that out by living with them throughout their (North American) migration a few years ago. He and his wife, trudging through fly-infested heat and then bitter snow, all but became caribou, buoyed by the supernatural thrumbing noise they make while flowing like a great hooved river over the northern Canadian landscape. Read the story in Being Caribou: Five Months on Foot with an Arctic Herd (McClelland & Stewart, 2007, pbk)

That extraordinary river of ungulate fur-and-flesh is in danger of drying up, thanks to the Alberta tar sands project, pipelines, highways, logging, proposed mining, and drilling in Alaska. Our failure to control human population and the need for oil to service its needs, sacrifices wildlife to the American thirst for Canada's "dirty" (tar sands) fossil fuel.

If you think we cannot put a price on a magical perfectly-adapted signature species, voice your objections to Peter Kent, the federal Minister of the Environment at: peter.kent@parl.gc.ca.
(Ecojustice recently won a case forcing Canada to come up with a plan to protect the woodland caribou.)

To protest BC's plan to cross the north with pipelines from Alberta to the west coast, write to: Premier Christy Clark, premier@gov.bc.ca.

Saving a national species is almost always an international enterprise, not only because of Gaia's unity of geo-environmental forces, but because of intertwined economies. The Chinese company Sinotec, majority government-owned, is buying Canadian mines and investing in Canada's energy sector - with strings attached. Labour rights and animal welfare are not on the agenda. The Canadian government puts Chinese demands ahead of wildlife needs, and won't stop unless the public stands up and howls like the loons and wolves that preside over the threatened northern lands, wild witnesses of vast habitat spoliation.