Wildlife Watch

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) used the headline “Vegan is the New Kosher,” when it reported that Rabbi David Rosen joined 70 rabbis worldwide urging Jews to become vegan.  Rabbi Rosen is the International Director of Interreligious Affairs at the American Jewish Committee in Jerusalem.  He’s also the Honorary president of the International Jewish Vegetarian Society.

He said in part, “…people should no longer collaborate or be party to an industry which is problematic ethically, environmentally, or in terms of economic justice.

He’s not saying to go “cold turkey,” but to make more plant-based choices when you can.

Israel is credited with having the largest number of vegans in the world per capita including both Jews and Muslims.

Since the meat industry is a major contributor to CO2 emissions, deforestation, and water consumption, Silicon Valley tech companies are funding research to develop meat analogs.  According to the BBC report, funding is coming from Bill Gates and Richard Branson, as well as traditional meat suppliers like Cargill and Tyson Foods.  They no doubt see the writing on the wall!

I can tell you that my husband, dogs, and I love analogs that are primarily from the Gardein brand. My cats unfortunately don’t go for it yet!

The chief executive of Impossible Foods, the company producing the bleeding meat, is Pat Brown.  His goal is to replace animals completely by 2035!  He said that the meat industry is more destructive than that of fossil fuels, mining, transportation, and logging.

This BBC article backs that up https://www.bbc.com/news/business-43802572.  They say livestock production is responsible for 18% of total greenhouse gasses, and animal protein requires 11 times the amount of fossil fuel to produce compared to plant protein, according to the Centre for Agriculture and Bioscience International.

Mr. Brown works with biochemists to mass-produce heme – a plant-based protein that resembles blood.  He said it’s the “secret sauce” that gives the burger its advantage.

Other meat analog companies have jumped in with different technologies and are being supported by Silicon Valley companies. Two are Memphis Meats and Just Inc. According to the BBC report, their labs are sophisticated and show that the scale of veggie meat production matches the biggest slaughterhouse in the US, but instead of cows it has 50,000-gallon bioreactors.

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Visit:

www.impossiblefoods.com

http://www.memphismeats.com

You can see Impossible Foods’ YouTube video about heme here

In March of this year, the Norwegian University of Life Sciences published this incredible report:

HUMAN HUNTING HAS CHANGED THE CHARACTERISTICS OF MOTHER BEARS’ BEHAVIOR TO THEIR CUBS.

The professor who headed the research, Jon Swenson, said that a single female in Sweden is four times more likely to be shot than one with a cub. “In the period from 2005 to 2015, the number of females keeping their cubs an additional year increased from 7% to 36%.   More cubs stay with their mothers an additional year (up from 1.5 years to 2.5 years).

He insightfully adds that “Man is now an evolutionary force in the lives of the bears.”  Females who keep their cubs longer live safer lives, but they reproduce less often.  This reduces their total number of offspring throughout their lives.

We at Wildlife Watch believe this is an intelligent decision on the part of the bears to outsmart the hunters, and not merely an incognizant or unconscious reaction to hunting.

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Wildlife Watch is grateful to Jim Robertson, a rare ethical photographer of wildlife, for allowing us the use of his photos that are taken without lures and artificial props, and without causing the wild animals any disturbance that would alter their behavior.  You can see more photos on his website:

www.animalsinthewild.org

It’s the stated objective of the Bureau of Wildlife (BOW), that operates within the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC), to increase “game” species for hunters and trappers. Sometimes the unknowing public, even children, can be recruited to help in their efforts, without knowing the real purpose

BOW benefits by being called “DEC” for they are given a false image of having environmental concerns, when in fact their primary concern is to get firearms revenue from hunting and to sell hunting permits.

Marilyn Leybra spotted the following announcement by the DEC:  “Wildlife biologists are seeking the public’s help to learn about new black bear dens in NY.  The bears may be fitted with radio collars to help track their activities throughout the year and locate dens.

… A bear den may be in a rock crevice, tree cavity, or under heavy bush or fallen trees. Females give birth in January or early February and if you are near a den you may hear the cubs’ high-pitched squeals.”    Marilyn, who has been a wildlife rehabilitator for over 30 years, and whose large animal rescues belong in Ripley’s Believe It or Not, was extremely sensitive to this little cub’s feelings about it all.

 She wrote: Did u see latest DEC Weekly Bulletin, in case you ever wondered what an infant bear cub’s eyes look like when being damagingly exposed to daylight, while having a nightmare about being ripped from den & mom’s belly & being man-handled?  Wildlife management ‘biologists’ at work monitoring ‘cub production,’  for ‘harvesting’ & asking for our help to locate dens. Sure.

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Marilyn Leybra can be contacted through Wildwatch@verizon.net

Wildlife Watch has written about Prime Minister of New Zealand, Jacinda Ardern, before. She came to office in October 2017 in a big celebration with her cat.  Apparently she is sticking to her campaign pledges of protecting the environment.   According to The Guardian, “…her coalition government made tackling climate change one of the cornerstones of its policies, committing to transition to 100% of electricity generation from renewable sources by 2035 and making the economy carbon neutral by 2050.

Greenpeace New Zealand said the government’s announcement was a ‘historic moment’ for the country and ‘a huge win for our climate and people power’”.

The PM said: “We have been a world leader on critical issues to humanity by being nuclear free…and now we could be world leading in becoming carbon neutral.”

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if our president would follow her lead?

This year, a bill was introduced to amend the education  law  in  relation  to  requiring  public schools to offer plant-based food options. The bill was initiated by the League of Humane Voters® (LOHV®) and introduced  by  Assembly Member Richard Gottfried.

It reads as follows:

The  People of the State of New York, represented in Senate and Assembly, do enact as follows:

Section 1. The education law is amended by adding a new section 915-a to read as follows:

3  §  915-a.  Plant-based  food  options. 1. Upon request by a student or

4  person in parental relation to the student, every  public  school  shall

5  offer  the  student a plant-based food option as an alternative to every

6  meal or snack offered in food service to the  student.  The  plant-based

7  food option shall be offered at no additional cost to the student beyond

8  what would be charged for a comparable non-plant-based food option.

9  2.  The  school  shall  respond in a reasonable manner and time to any

10  request made under this section,  consistent  with  guidance  by  school

11  authorities.  The  request  shall  be effective for every school meal or

12  snack in which the student is reasonably expected to  participate.  This

13  section  does  not  preclude the offering of plant-based food options to

14  students who have not requested it, and does not preclude an  individual

15  who  has requested a plant-based food option from selecting a non-plant-

16  based food option.

17  3. As used in this section:

18  (a) “Plant-based food option” means food or beverages that are free of

19  animal products and, as relates to the  “protein”  portion  of  a  meal,

20  recognized  by  the  United  States  Department of Agriculture as a meat

21  alternate for purposes of the national school lunch program.

22   (b) “Animal product” means meat, poultry, seafood, dairy, eggs, honey,

23  and any derivative thereof.

24  4. In implementing this section, the  school  and  school  authorities

25  shall  consult  with  the  school  district nutrition advisory committee

26  under section nine hundred eighteen of this article, where applicable.

27    § 2. This act shall take effect immediately and shall apply to  public

28  school  food  service  beginning with the school year, as defined in the

29  education law, beginning one year after it shall have become a law.

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Please contact Jeffery Termini, Legislative Director of LOHV® to see how you can help this bill to pass.

jefferytermini@gmail.com

We totally get that it’s not the geese, it’s the poop, but we at Wildlife Watch promote only non-lethal methods of goose dissuasion and are more than happy to let our readers know about anything that helps our mission to humanely resolve human-wildlife conflicts.

On the site of the Goosinator, you will see this little machine work on grass, sand, water, snow, even ice.

They say it’s “affordable,” and they appear to have a lot of happy customers. I would check it out at https://www.goosinator.com

In a report put out by Citizens for Alternatives to Animal Research and Experimentation (CAARE), researchers at Johns Hopkins University show that computers can predict the safety of chemicals better than animal testing, and at a much lower cost. The software program is called REACHAcross™  and it uses big data and Artificial Intelligence to analyze tens of thousands of chemicals to evaluate how they might react in the human body.

To see the full report and many others, please contact: Barbara Stagno, President CAARE, at

barbara@caareusa.org

and visit: https://www.caareusa.org

BY JIM ROBERTSON, AN ETHICAL PHOTOGRAPHER

This grizzly bear (aka Alaska brown bear) whose image I “captured” here was never confined, prodded or restricted in any way for this “shot.” She was in fact going about her business as though I weren’t even there, cashing in on a bountiful salmon run following the incoming tide off the Shelikof Strait. Although it looks like she’s staring into the camera, she’s actually focusing on a fish struggling upstream beyond where I was crouched nearby.

To a hunter, the temptation to blast away and take home the trophy head or hide would have been overwhelming. But as a wildlife photographer, I got all I could hope for from the encounter, including the satisfaction that the bear would live out her life free of human greed and exploitation while passing her genes, knowledge and know-how on to future free-living ursines.

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To see more amazing photography by Jim Robertson, please visit: http://www.animalsinthewild.org