Two young dolphins on their way to greece

Two young dolphins on their way to greece
19.07.2016
Plailly
Two young dolphins on their way to greece
Exploitation for shows

Two dolphins from Park Asterix will soon leave France. The zoo which will rehome them is in a country in the midst of an economic crisis. One Voice demands this transfer to be stopped immediately.

The cabin door shuts with a bang on Ekinox and Naska. The two dolphins jump in their harnesses, despite the huge doses of sedatives that they have received. Soon, the airplane will vibrate from the roaring motor as the plane flies towards Greece. The two young dolphins, only five and six years of age, have just left their mothers forever. Farewell Bailly! Farewell Femke! Despite the fact that they are way off being adults yet, the park thinks they are mature enough to be sent to new aquariums, as part of the « European Endangered Species Programme (EEP), for the breeding and conservation of endangered species, » which dolphins are not.

All of their life, these young ‘stallions’ will encounter unknown inmates, furious to see them disembark into an always confined space. Each transfer is a nightmare for them. Recently, in 2014, the young Angel died of stress on the tarmac. In 2016, Galéo exposed the glaring problem of a bad social integration in an out of control community of detainees.

This is the fate that awaits these two young males who will be leaving Park Asterix. In a few weeks, they will be sent to Attica Zoo. They won’t be the only ones: Veera, Delfi, Leevi, and Eevertti will also soon join the Greek aquarium from the Tampere dolphinarium in Finland. Lacking visitors, the establishment was forced to close last October. After trying for some time to send them to a marine sanctuary, the Särkänniemi theme park finally decided to send the four survivors to Greece. But these survivors consist of an old couple of tired dolphins and their two young sick dolphins. And the remaining two Lithuanian dolphins from Attica Zoo will be the dolphins with which these French dolphins will share their new life? Are they hoping to recreate a new family with this motley crew?

At first populated by 11 Lithuanian dolphins, 3 of which were caught in the Black Sea, the Attica Zoo dolphinarium, like all of the others, can’t offer good conditions for dolphins. Two dolphins died and two were still-born between 2010 and 2015. And Park Asterix and the Särkänniemi theme park have decided to send their ‘specimens’ there instead of looking at a rehabilitation solution in a sheltered sea location.

Why? It should be known that for a few months now, there have been strange movements afoot in the European dolphinariums. Harderwijk seems to want to rid itself of its surplus in Spain or Dubai, whilst other dolphins circulate from one country to another in strict secrecy, discretely discharged and re-embarked. Is the dolphin market already reorganising itself?

One thing is certain, that supplying new dolphins to the Attica Zoo will reinforce its position. In Greece, the law banning wild animal shows was voted by parliament in 2012. Still not in application, it is just as valid for circus animals as it is for dolphins. In artificially increasing the population at Attica, the industry undoubtedly hopes to prevent its definitive closure and indefinitely slow the implementation of this law.

In their damp hammock, their skin covered in white lanolin, their eardrums screaming under the horrendous pressure, shivering with cold, our exiled dolphins don’t think about all of the above. They simply have to endure the long voyage and suffer the sadness and anguish, as they travel further away from their mothers and their family, left much too early to never be seen again.

This isn’t how wild dolphins travel. This isn’t how they create new ‘pods’ either.

Who would still like to lead us to believe that dolphinariums care about the dolphins that they exploit? How can Park Asterix justify such a commercial decision?

One Voice has written to them to ask them, backed up by experts, to put an immediate stop to the reproduction and exchange programmes for the dolphins.

Three elephants in the prairie

Three elephants in the prairie
11.07.2016
Périgord
Three elephants in the prairie
Exploitation for shows

Lechmee, Mina and Kamala, who are now quite old, are still locked up in the Medrano circus. Thanks to Code Animal and One Voice, they can have the retirement that they deserve in a sanctuary in France. It is just up to the circus to make this choice.

Three elephants walk in the prairie. The blind Lechmee is guided by her friends, Mina and Kamala, to the chestnut trees where she inhales the smell of the leaves and delightedly muzzles the rough bark with her trunk. Hills and scattered clumps of trees stretch out around them, with crop fields and the road on the foggy horizon. Lechmee can’t see any of this, just vague shapes, but she feels it, she listens, and she shakes her ears. She is happy. The noise of the circus is behind her. After fourty-three years of noisy fanfares and cracks of the whip, she finally discovers birdsong, mumbling conversation with her two companions and endless promenades in the heather land against the setting sun.

How peaceful! How exquisite it is to finally live for these much-travelled elephants! Born in Asia in the 1960’s, they were taken away from their families and then bought as children by Tyseley Pet Stores. Once in Britain, Lechmee, Mina and Kamala were first sold to the Chipperfield circus, and then found themselves under the iron rule of the Medran circus, but luckily always together.

Today, their suffering has ended. Lechmee and her friends have come to the Elephant Haven sanctuary, in the Périgord-Limousin regional park, receiving the very best care from the elephant experts there. They have joined other elephants, all tired by a life in captivity, who occasionally jump into a compulsive dance from one foot to the other, or swing their trunk manically. The trace of chains will remain in their minds long after the physical signs have gone, probably forever. Their memory is powerful, they can recall every detail of their violent lives: the prods in their groin, barked orders, the shouting of the crowd, the shows, the travelling, the carparks and the freezing mornings with the pain in their joints against the metal lorry floors. Lechmee has lost the use of her front right foot, and can only move slowly now. But her friends wait for her and stay close, as they always have done.

We have to stop dreaming now…This happy picture is still just a dream. Lechmee, Mina and Kamala are still shackled to the Medrano circus and still take part in shows. Lechmee is required by the 18^th of March 2011 decree to be placed in a fixed residence, due to her state of health. But not on her own, this would kill her, and would destroy her two companions. These old elephants, who have been inseparable for half a century, should be able to live the rest of their lives together in peace. This is what Code Animal and One Voice are asking for with Elephant Haven.

Their destiny is hanging by a thread. One word. One decision. The circus can allow for a dignified and peaceful retirement for its elephants in a natural sanctuary. This gesture would be received by the public with gratitude.

If this decision is not taken, Lechmee, Kamala and Mila will die one by one from exhaustion, without ever having found the happiness of walking free, unchained, as when they were children. And that will be a failure for everyone.

But we don’t think for an instant the Medrano circus will make the right decision!

Arturo, polar bear

Arturo, polar bear
05.07.2016
Mendoza
Arturo, polar bear
Exploitation for shows

Arturo has just died in Mendoza zoo, having spent 31 years of his life suffering in a cage. One Voice is demanding a ban against keeping polar bears in zoos in France and around the world.

Lying on the floor with his mouth open, eyes closed, Arturo has just been put down. His lifeless body can be seen through the cage bars. These are the final images of the « world’s saddest bear ».

Born in the United States in 1985, Arturo was transferred in 1993 to the grim Mendoza Zoo, near Buenos Aires, which is temporarily closed at present following the deaths of too many animals. Arturo endured the Argentinian sun and heatwaves but at least he was not alone. For 23 years, he just had a small puddle of lukewarm water a couple of centimetres deep to refresh himself in, and a small red ball to play with around the cell perimeter. But in 2012, his friend Pelusa died of cancer. Arturo’s fragile world came crashing down, and he plunged into a depression which would last until his final days.

As he battled the heat by spreading himself out as long as possible on the floor, and his state of health deteriorated in front of the worried international public, 1.5m people signed a petition demanding his transfer to Canada. Assiniboine Park in Winnipeg was prepared to offer him a place of refuge, where he could see snow for the first time in the company of other bears.

But the offer fell on deaf ears. Gustavo Pronotto, the director of the Mendoza Zoo affirmed that the old bear would not cope with the journey and that he wasn’t used to the cold. On the 3^rd of July 2016, at the age of 31, Arturo died just before his euthanasia, despair in his heart.

We know that all polar bears suffer in captivity, with all of them demonstrating behavioural problems to various degrees, like Rasputin in Marineland, Antibes. And all of them without exception have to cope with climates that are far from being ‘polar’. Arturo is probably the most tragic symbol of their distress.

But why? What good does this suffering do? Has Arturo’s despair been in vain? Did Argentinian visitors act to save the Antarctic after having seen him in his cage? Was Arturo a martyr who prompted the rescue of other polar bears? No, of course not. The only way to save the polar bears is to respect the minimal commitments of the COP21, to stop building useless airports on wetlands, to urgently stop the global warming which is destroying the bear’s habitat as well as ours. But it is important to remember that if the polar bear or the panda have been chosen as ambassadors for menaced species, rather than the southwestern water vole, it is because of their spectacular image and the positive impact on a zoo’s turnover that a bear’s birth can have.

Captivity is a stretched out torture for polar bears in France, Europe, Chile, South Africa, and all around the world. Russia captures dozens every year to sell to Chinese zoos. Little by little, the leisure industry is becoming their principal threat. This is why France must set the example and stop exhibiting these wild and magnificent creatures in attraction parks. The tragic death of Arturo should not be in vain.

Fort Boyard: circus and vermin

Fort Boyard : circus and vermin
02.07.2016
Fort Boyard
Fort Boyard : circus and vermin
Exploitation for shows

Fort Boyard is back on our screens with its big cats and mishandled « vermin ». One Voice is firmly opposed to these cruel games and demands the ban of all animals trained for television.

At the same time as the movement in many French towns against circuses with animals gains ground, France 2 is screening the second edition of its televised ‘middle-age style’ circus show, Fort Boyard, which starts this Saturday.

It is a shame that a public TV channel is broadcasting these types of programmes. Without doubt, the sports challenges and the boldness of the competitors are admirable, which alone is worth seeing. But the Fort Boyard concept repeats the Fear Factor principal, a phobia based game which involves the presence of some four hundred animals shut up night and day, from June to August in a fort in the La Rochelle sea, who are used to scare the players, make the spectators tremble, and to impress viewers.

The ‘ferocious’ big cats are always part of the game, even if in the real world it should be their decimation that is generating concern, not them. Myn, Cali and Kanji, the tigers in the programme, were born in captivity. Trained from the beginning of their lives, they mope around all day long in their damp cells on the ground floor, bored, beneath the Treasure room. They wouldn’t hurt a fly, well aware of the price they would pay for a roar too far. Yet they perform the role of the blood thirsty tiger. Big cats don’t cope well with production sets and bright stage lighting. This is why contemporary cinema has stopped using them, as well as large primates and other animals, and has replaced their use by computer images. But French TV hasn’t stopped, or at least, not yet.

The eels, maggots, cockroaches, bats, craps, toads, grasshoppers, frogs, lizards, flies, tarantulas, rats, scorpions, snakes, mice and other little swarming creatures who participate against their will in the Fort Boyard challenges since 1998 play into the old cliché, from ancient times, defining ‘vermin’.

Vermin, for the much older generations, was the dark mass of pests swarming under the wooden boards of the thatched cottages, and descended from the devil. According to the chemist Van Helmont, this shady fauna was born spontaneously, a generation at a time, in a dirty shirt rolled into a ball in a bottle, in a time when the noxious vapours of pests, black bile and rat invasions were chased by processions. This same evil vermin was thrown at people’s heads to treat anxiety. Just some poor rats that drown, some spiders that are crushed, some cockroaches that are trodden on, some snakes handled violently, some mice bred to feed the snakes, all conscious and sentient beings, who experience fear and are capable of suffering.

By incessantly repeating the same phobic stereotypes regarding ‘vermin’ and big cats, France 2 can maintain the public’s interest. Nothing is more fun than reaffirming old anxieties and preconceived ideas. But surely the role of public television is to move forward, to distance itself from this blind clamouring for market position and to renew TV content with modern paradigms? Jacques Chancel said: « We mustn’t give people what they like, we must give them what they could like »; a citizen-based approach, based on morals and respect for the living, for example? Surely people would like this!