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In Tenerife, Loro Parque will stop at nothing to make a profit from Morgan

In Tenerife, Loro Parque will stop at nothing to make a profit from Morgan

In Tenerife, Loro Parque will stop at nothing to make a profit from Morgan
27.06.2023
In Tenerife, Loro Parque will stop at nothing to make a profit from Morgan
Dolphinariums

Last May, along with Ingrid Visser, a biologist specialising in orcas, we went to see Morgan and her captive companions Keto, Tekoa, and Adan in Tenerife. In the Loro Parque pools, she was exploited relentlessly to attract yet more visitors. We have been fighting for almost fifteen years for her to be transferred to a marine sanctuary.

Morgan was captured off the coast of the Netherlands in 2010, alone and emaciated, when she was just a youngster. Yet while the programme authorising her to be seized laid out the conditions for her to get back into shape then to be freed into the North Sea, where her family were waiting for her, this never happened. Instead, she was sent to the tropical latitudes of Spanish dolphinarium Loro Parque, off the coast of Africa, to boost the captivity industry.

A few years after her arrival in the Canaries, Morgan gave birth to her first baby. “An accident” according the park, who failed to prevent the death of her baby Ula less than three years later. Today, Loro Parque does not see any problem with keeping the 16-year-old orca and Keto, Ula’s father, in the same pool… They are no doubt looking for her to get pregnant again, thus making it possible for them to profit a bit more off the back of a new captive.

An orca used as a lucrative attraction

Morgan is put at the centre of the show for the public. She has to do a series of leaps out of the water, splashing the seating area so that she can… eat. On the big screen, the dolphinarium tells the moving story, while completely changing it, of her ‘rescue’. To justify her being kept captive and continuing to profit off the back of her, they do not mind telling lies.

Telling anyone about the aggression between orcas and towards the trainers is carefully avoided. However, Tekoa’s father is Tilikum, the infamous hero from the Blackfish documentary that allowed many people to open their eyes to the reality of these detention centres.

Loro Parque has gone so far as to present the image of a happy family of orcas, instead of a group of individuals unbalanced by boredom and, in particular, a lack of space. Keto’s violent matings on the only female of the group are romanticised, and the awful confrontations between Adan and Tekoa, whose body in covered in bite marks, are left unspoken. However, as well as little Ula being born with a fin deformity, two other orcas have died in the last two years: Skyla and Kohana.

Morgan, who is suffering from dental issues and behavioural problems, is now the only orca born in the wild to be kept in a European park. Her exploitation must stop!

Alongside the New-Zealander marine biologist Ingrid Visser and the Free Morgan Foundation, we have been fighting since the start for her to be freed from the concrete pool where she is imprisoned. Together, we are asking that she be transferred to a sanctuary where she can finally live with free will, far from the violence of the shows forced upon her. And perhaps find her family again, located along the Norwegian coast.

Translated from the French by Joely Justice

Animals classified as species likely to cause damage: hunters’ black list

Animals classified as species likely to cause damage: hunters’ black list

Animals classified as species likely to cause damage: hunters’ black list
15.06.2023
Animals classified as species likely to cause damage: hunters’ black list
Wildlife

They were considered as ‘pests’. Nowadays they are a ‘species likely to cause damage’. Grouped under this label, as unfair as it is scandalous, foxes, martens, jays, and many other animals trying to survive in our threatened natural spaces are on death row. We will not let it happen.

A massacre is brewing in the hushed prefecture corridors. From the end of the summer, a new ministerial decree will come into force. A long black and white list of those condemned as a species likely to cause damage will be written in each department in France. With this law, numerous animals will be hunted down, trapped, and continuously exterminated all year long, outside of the periods that have already been authorised. This classification, concocted every three years by trappers, wolf hunters, and State representatives, is nothing but an outright extension of the right to kill being granted to hunters during the ‘normal’ opening season for hunting.

Species likely to cause damage: environmental nonsense

The term ‘pest’, toned down in the French with the use of an acronym [ESOD: Espèces Susceptibles d’Occasionner des Dégâts], is nonsense. In the wild, good and evil do not exist. And biodiversity, to be in a good state, needs everyone. Every animal has its place here. In one year, a single fox can eat between 3900 and 6300 rodents, which are lovers of agricultural crops. Foxes are health agents and also prevent the propagation of Lyme disease, carried by ticks. Yes, foxes play the role of a natural regulator, much more respectful of the environment than the spreading of polluting chemical products.

A death sentence played out in advance

But the real aim of this abominable list is to please the hunting lobby. They are involved at all stages of its development. Given by prefects at the Ministry of the Ecological Transition, the classification as a species likely to cause damage firstly passes through each Departmental Commission for Hunting and Wildlife, which gives its opinion or makes its own classification requests. What about animal welfare associations? Scientific opinions? Checks on the ground? There is nothing to support the validity of this arbitrary list, established on a simple declaration. The animals therefore have no one to defend them. No chance of getting out alive. Their fate is played out in advance.

We are fighting, department by department

To counter this decree, we have already been working for months on end. Legal experts dedicated to the issue are again contacting prefectures every day to obtain documents. As usual, administrations are dragging things out or not even responding. We are therefore forced to refer to the Committee for Access to Administrative Documents [Commission d’Accès aux Documents Administratifs (CADA)]. We know these time-consuming proceedings well. But we are belligerent. Each document received is analysed. We are checking every loophole, every inconsistency. To implement a counter-attack, we have also called on naturalists and we are relying on scientific studies and investigating on site, alongside our contacts on the ground.

‘Pests’, as they call them, are living, sensitive, intelligent beings. They all have their place within already weakened ecosystems. Do they have to perish, shot at point-blank range or trapped in vile cages, strangled, mutilated, in a state of unbearable stress? We oppose this with all our power.

participate in the public consultation

Translated from the French by Joely Justice

Peace for badgers this summer in fourteen departments!

Peace for badgers this summer in fourteen departments!

Peace for badgers this summer in fourteen departments!
15.06.2023
Peace for badgers this summer in fourteen departments!
Hunting

This year, in fourteen departments, badgers and their families will be left in peace in spring and summer. The decisions returned by administrative tribunals have just confirmed the arguments that we have been putting forward for years and have opened new perspectives in the fight to abolish underground hunting with hounds. Although a few judges still refuse to state the illegality of this type of hunting as being among one of the cruellest, the movement set in motion can only grow in the months and years to come.

Unprecedented for badgers and their cubs!

For several weeks, there have been a flurry of victories for badgers! In eighteen departments, we have attacked the opening of additional periods for underground hunting with hounds in spring and summer before the courts. The most recent suspensions to date: in Aube and Meuse, and in Loiret and Eure-et-Loir, where judges have swept away hunters’ and prefectures’ arguments.

These are added to the ten departments where the tribunals have said stop. Yes, badger cubs are dependant on their parents at this time of the year! Yes, underground hunting with hounds will inevitably lead to the young being killed if it is authorised in spring and summer in addition to the season when it is already allowed!

The Amiens Tribunal was not mistaken when qualifying this fatal hobby as ‘blind hunting’. And some jurisdictions have gone even further. The Poitiers Tribunal has also confirmed that which we have been stating for a long time: badgers must be considered as ‘young’ for quite some time, until they reach sexual maturity, and not, as stated by Prefectures whose laws are often blown up by hunting federations, until they are weaned (because it is only food!).

Thanks to the administrative proceedings urgently filed and pleaded, almost three thousand individuals will have their lives saved in the months to come. The young can grow peacefully without the fear of hunters’ shovels, guns, and knives.

… and a few defeats that raise questions

In Lyon (for the Rhône and Loire decrees), Bordeaux (Lot-et-Garonne), and Nantes (Vendée), urgent applications judges have decided to choose to take the opposite position to their colleagues in Limoges, Pau, Toulouse, Clermont-Ferrand, Caen, Amiens, Châlons-en-Champagne, and Nancy, however. And their decisions are (sadly) full of lessons.

For Vendée, the Nantes Administrative Tribunal indicated to us that for them, hunting with hounds does not pose a problem with regard to animal suffering because hunters would use ‘non-invasive pliers’ (as if that changes anything about the disastrous outcome of such a hunt) and, the cherry on the cake, that they can decide not to kill the animals that they have dragged out of the setts! All while admitting that those who will not benefit from this preferential treatment could be killed with a bladed weapon. Who could understand this?

When it comes to the Bordeaux Tribunal’s decision for Lot-et-Garonne, they surprised us because it looked exactly the same as the one returned a few days before by the Lyon one… Of course: the document header was that of the Lyon Administrative Tribunal! Corrected a few days later, this copy and paste nevertheless remains very concerning regarding the way in which rejection decisions are made by judges, given that they are not even written on a case-by-case basis.

Our fight for badgers is far from over

With FNE, the LPO, and Animal Cross, we have attacked Savoie’s decree: the hearing is on 16 June at 9:30am at the Grenoble Administrative Tribunal.
For Haute-Loire, AVES is joining this coalition and the hearing will take place on 20 June at 9:30am in Clermont-Ferrand.
For Aisne, along with AVES once again, we will defend the badgers on 16 June at 9:30am in Amiens.
Finally, we will be present alone in Dijon on 23 June at 2:15pm for Saône-et-Loire.

With a view to protecting badgers and for a ban on underground hunting with hounds thanks to a radical reform on hunting (progress that you can support by signing our petitions), we will continue to fight on local, national, and international levels.

With your help, we will pursue our legal attack as completely and thoroughly as necessary. Thanks to your support, we will not let it happen and we will fight until the end for badgers!

I support One Voice’s fight for badgers

Translated from the French by Joely Justice