Hello all you compassionate people! Do you like vegan food, LUSH products, tripod dogs, massages, facials, world-saving jewelry, and videos of fatty puppies and kittens and sea lions? Come this Sunday to the Darwin Animal Doctors (DAD) Charity Pot Party by LUSH on the Upper West Side!

DAD is planning a December campaign in the Galapagos Islands, with a vet and two vet techs, to treat as many animals of Galapagos as possible before the Christmas holiday, and to spread as much humane education as possible. And before we embark on this trip, we’ll be supporting as many animals displaced or hurt by Hurricane Sandy as possible. To fundraise for all these efforts, LUSH is giving us a Charity Pot Party this Sunday.

Darwin Animal Doctors’ Spokesdog Piggy (left), taking care of Sneakers (middle) and Tobie (right), two displaced doggies from Hurricane Sandy

If you come, you can learn how LUSH helps to fund activism and causes like DAD’s humane education program in Galapagos, and watch videos of our work and humane education on the islands. Stay to get a massage for charity, enjoy a facial by LUSH, eat delicious bake sale items, meet our spokesdoggy Piggy, enter a LUSH raffle, and peruse our merchandise, including hand-made jewelry that locals on Galapagos have recycled from paper, plastic, and other waste on Galapagos. Proceeds will go to help fund our December campaign, as well as rescue efforts in post-hurricane NYC.

And most importantly, no one leaves a LUSH store or event without smelling AWESOME. See you there!

Where: LUSH, Broadway btwn W 76th and W 77th Sts.
When: Sunday, November 11th, from 1pm to 5pm
What: Massage chair (gas permitting transport of the chair), facials, LUSH raffle, sweet and savory bake sale items, hand-made Galapagos jewelry, merchandise with cute animals, and a tripod dog!
Facebook Page: http://www.facebook.com/events/125403100944403/?fref=ts

“The Whale” is a wonderful documentary screening at Cinema Village now until September 29th. The directors, Suzanne Chisholm and Michael Parfit, are attending question and answer sessions after screenings.

Amiably narrated by actor Ryan Reynolds, “The Whale” tells the story of Luna, a young orca who found himself abandoned in the remote coastal waters of British Columbia. In need of family, this intrepid two year-old killer whale adopted the people of a tiny town in Nootka Sound. He was pretty aggressive at first. To get attention, Luna would dance upside-down with his tail flapping in the air, he’d bump against the side of boats then present his nose for petting, eye-balling friends with open curiosity.

Mostly, the locals fell in love and warmly responded to Luna’s demands. People would seek him out to offer pets and adoration, and the occasional throw-the-floatie-thingy-while-Luna-tosses-it-back game. But the consequences of loving Luna soon stirred up conflict over what people felt was best for him. He’s a wild animal. Is human contact really good him? Should he stay isolated in the cove or be reunited with his family? To stop further socialization, the fish and wildlife service created a squad to patrol the cove and inform Luna’s would-be friends that if they touched him, they could be fined $100,000. Then, fish and wildlife came up with a scheme to (supposedly) return Luna to his family. The Native people launched a campaign to keep Luna in Nootka Sound. People took sides.

Who knew a little whale could stir up so much trouble in a sleepy fishing and logging town?

But Luna had his own ideas of what was best for him. When ignored, he made his needs known. Find out what happened when a lost little boy adopted a small town in this moving, funny story. You’ll be glad you did.

Cinema Village, 22 E. 12 St, corner of University Pl., 212-924-3364. Tickets are $11 and can be purchased online. Showtimes and tickets. Rated G. Film’s website: www.thewhalemovie.com.

Note for kids and sensitive souls: there are zero images of animal suffering or bloody violence in this film.

Of course you want one!

The Teal Cat Project is a great new fundraising/awareness-raising initiative benefitting feral cats.

The basic gist is: you donate $25. The money goes to a Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR) group. You get a unique teal cat sculpture in the mail. The project is a collaboration between Everyone’s Favorite Vegan Celebrity Chef (and NYC-deserter) Isa Chandra Moskowitz and fellow Omahan Denise Muller.

The first recipient organization is New York City Feral Cat Initiative–so awesome!

The cats are “upcycled” old tchotchkes. They’ve collected a ginormous colony of these vintage ceramic cats, spray-painted them teal, and given each a numbered tag. They look great, and are more unique, cheaper, and more deserving than anything similar looking you might pick up at Jonathan Adler. The website, looks great, too!

You can also help by donating cat tchotchkes or donating smaller amounts of money.

I kinda wished they’d eartipped them all, but I guess that’d be too much delicate work with ceramic cats.

I just bought mine. Go get your kitty!

Headlines flashing about the death tolls in Haiti report crazy high numbers of casualties, and those just account for human lives. If you’re thinking what we’re thinking, you’re wondering WHAT ABOUT THE ANIMALS?? We’ve compiled a list of groups that are helping domestic and feral animals and wildlife post-quake. We haven’t evaluated all of them but we wanted to let you know what’s up, right here, right now. If you know of other groups aiding animals, or if you come across more animal-related quake news, please comment or e-mail. We’ll update this post as we find out more.

Groups helping animals in Haiti

• Sodopreca (Spanish)
  This is the only Dominican animal group going to Haiti specifically to rescue animals. Want to go with? E-mail Marco fast; they leave for Haiti on Friday.
• International Fund for Animal Welfare
  It looks like they’re focusing on human needs first and animals second. They say on their website, “After … immediate human needs are met, IFAW’s Emergency Response team will be ready to assist the animal victims in any way that we can. In the meantime, please keep the people and animals of Haiti in your thoughts.”
• Christian Veterinary Mission
• Veterinarians Without Borders
  They haven’t mentioned Haiti yet, but we hope they’ll get involved!
• UPDATE: We are having a bake sale! Proceeds go to Sodopreca. It’ll be at Vegan Drinks on Thursday, January 28, 7 to 9 p.m. Help us by baking and/or emptying your wallets for cupcakes!
• And so are these guys, Mooshoes, Saturday, January 31, 11:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. Can you make it/bake it for both?

Animal-related news on Haiti

• You can find the Humane Society of the United States‘ statement here. HSUS says, “Humane Society International and The Humane Society of the United States are working with other animal welfare and humanitarian organizations to determine how best to assist animals and people affected by the disaster. We have offered our support in providing care to affected animals and will post updates as they become available.”
• The World Society for the Protection of Animals is keeping tabs on their Animals in Disasters blog. With the IFAW, the WSPA will be working on ground-level relief for animals. You can donate at the blog.
• Best Friends Animal Society is delivering updates via Facebook.

UPDATE, 1/21:

• People seem to be using this animalsinhaiti tag to refer to animal-related quake news on Twitter.
• You can find a list of resources on animals in Haiti, not unlike the one you’re reading now, here at Easy Vegan.
• International Food For Life will be providing vegan meals for people in Haiti. How cool is that?? They’re setting up a “vegan food relief base camp.” Wow, awesome. If you want to volunteer with them, go here. If you want to donate to them, that’s here.

Even dedicated meat-eaters are finally realizing that lobsters and crabs feel pain, and that even if their perceptions of pain and suffering aren’t quite the same as those of mammals (read: ours), it may not be OK to boil them alive for the eaters’ gustatory pleasure. What’s being done with these realizations, unfortunately, reads more like bad sci-fi than like any genuine acquisition of humane awareness.

A new “solution” to the problem of these animals experiencing pain and stress has been found, one that is supposed to allow seafood lovers to be nice to their lobsters and eat them too. Enter the CrustaStun, the hot new contraption on the “humane” meat market.

British inventor/entrepreneur Simon Buckhaven believes that crustaceans feel pain, and indeed, upon opening the home page of the CrustaStun website, the following text rolls out: “Crustaceans are sentient animals. Butchering or boiling alive causes them pain and stress.” He thinks it’s much better to shock them to death instead. That’s right folks–the CrustaStun is an electric chair for lobsters, crabs, and the like. Buckhaven has taken advantage of the fact that salt water can carry an electrical charge to give these creatures a shocking watery grave rather than a boiling one. Makes perfect sense, right?

One wonders whether, with his oh-so-deep concern for all things crustacean, it occurred to Buckhaven that his device does nothing to address the stress and discomfort caused by methods of trapping and/or farming and transportation of shellfish, or the crowded tanks in which the animals are kept until ready to be consumed. But hey, why worry about little details like that? Clearly a short, less painful death makes up for a long miserable life. Did he stop to consider that his invention might make concerned consumers feel better about eating these animals, thereby actually increasing demand for crustaceans, directly raising the number of animals who live torturous lives only to become expensive “gourmet” platters? Well, we know for sure one thing that he did think of: “The animals do not get stressed during the process and, as a result, the meat tastes better.” Touching.

The Sea Shepherd vessel Steve Irwin is touring Australia

Hello all. As you may know, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society sends a ship to Antarctica each year, to stop the Japanese whaling fleet from killing whales. What you may not know is that the entirely vegan Sea Shepherd ship must rely completely on donations from the public for its supply of food. And food is of course one of the only pleasures you’re going to get in Antarctica (so good food is prized more than gold there).

Well, Sea Shepherd has finally decided its ship’s food wish list for this year. Operation Waltzing Matilda, Sea Shepherd’s next Antarctic campaign to save the whales, takes off this December, so there’s still time to help stock the ship. The ship is currently in Australia, so it may be hard for NYC locals to donate to the ship of course, but if one reader has a friend who has a friend in Australia, or has a great deal on fedex and blenders, then who knows, concerned citizens from around the globe may all eventually pitch in to supply to the ship with all it needs. If you can, please help out! :)

Now, if you want to help but can’t get items to Australia affordably or fast, you can always donate money directly to Sea Shepherd so they can buy these items. Thank you!

Steve Irwin Current Wish List
Location: Circular Quay Sydney 10am till 5pm until Monday 12th October

Sea Shepherd Australia: australia@seashepherd.org

Need:
Sour dough starter
Industrial blender
Wooden Chopping boards
Tea towels
Scissors
Blender
Handwash
Hand blender
Food processor
Green power champion juicer
Black polar fleece balaclavas
Laptops

Food Needs:
Tempeh
Tofu
Soy milk
Olive oil
Brown rice
Icing sugar
Smoked paprika
Bragg’s bouillon/amino acids
Lemons
Limes
Soft drinks
Fruit juice
Fresh herbs (parsley, basil, cilantro, etc.)
Asian fake meat products
Tofutti products – cream cheese, sour cream, cheese slices)
Soy/veggie hot dogs/sausages
Nuts and seeds (cashews, almonds etc)
Dark vegan chocolate

Non-Food Related But Badly Needed:
AAA batteries.
Portable battery charger 6,12,24 volt.
Good quality hand held marine radios.

This is one of Supervegan’s posts for Vegan MoFo 2009.

Tod gives Roxy a squeeze, Simon looks to the sky, and Ben sits handsomely in the foreground. Photo by Liz Sullivan for The New York Post.

In a series for this very blog, SuperVegan’s Tod Emko turned upside-down my ingenuous perception of the Galapagos Islands. What I imagined to be, and what once was, an unscathed paradise for albatross, tortoises, finches, sea lions, and hundreds of other tropical-weather-loving species has become something of a perverted hell for human-introduced domesticated animals and the native species on which they prey. Disease-carrying feral pups and cats on Galapagos are decimating native species, and with no natural predators, the dog and cat populations are soaring. Hundreds of sick, injured, and abused feral mutts found their way to Tod while he was in the Galapagos this spring, and several even followed him home. Struggling to manage the overwhelming need for medical care and humane population control for these disregarded creatures, Tod enlisted the help of a veterinarian and the guidance and partnership of nonprofit Amigo Fiel to plan the Galapagos’s first animal hospital and shelter.

Tod spared several hours last week from the two jobs that fund his apartment-menagerie to describe the cause and plans for this ambitious project.

Samantha Cohen: Your blog series, Blog of a Vegan Pirate in Galapagos, details your travails in the area this spring, including your experience with the exploded dog and cat populations there. For those who haven’t had a chance to read your vibrant posts, could you explain the need for a Galapagos animal hospital?

Tod Emko: It may surprise a lot of people who haven’t been there recently, but the Galapagos islands are under a lot more unnatural pressure than they can handle. The animals of Galapagos are suffering from too much human interference and development, and there is almost nothing restoring balance to give the animals a chance at having a future there.

Since the islands are a cash cow for tourism, they’ve become the new land of opportunity. So in recent years, the number of SUVs, roads, towns, speedboats, fuel-spilling ships, cargo shipments, construction work, and bulldozing to clearcut Galapagos land have skyrocketed there, killing countless native animals and causing a huge influx of domestic animals, farm animals, parasites, and foreign diseases. The federal government currently outlaws all of the vaccines for those invasive animal diseases on Galapagos, so sicknesses like parvo and distemper are spreading through the islands like wildfire. This is especially concerning since endemic animals like sea lions have been proven to be able to catch distemper. Our project vet, Dr. Marilyn Cruz, who runs her tiny clinic out of the back of her home in Galapagos, is buried in a mountain of patient animals who are brought to her with parvo and distemper.

And the numbers are going to get much worse. Around 30,000 permanent residents live in Galapagos now, to support a tourism industry that brings 160,000 tourists to the tiny islands per year. Absolutely none of those hundreds of thousands of people on the Galapagos have any sewage treatment, and almost all the garbage they produce burns next to the Galapagos finch habitats or is dumped into the Galapagos forests. This amount of pollution has been contributing to a growing feral dog and cat population and spreading tons of parasites and disease. The small archipelago can’t handle that much destruction. The most heavily populated island of the Galapagos, with about 20,000 people on it, is only around 30 miles long, yet a desire to bring even more people has lead to the construction of two airports on Galapagos, with a third one in the works now.

SC: Why aren’t the parvo and distemper vaccines legal?

TE: The government does not acknowledge that these diseases exist on Galapagos, despite the constant and increasing flood of positive blood tests that show animals dying of these diseases all over the Galapagos. So they outlaw the vaccines, stating that if they import these vaccines to the islands, they will be introducing these diseases (albeit in vaccine form) to a pristine environment which has never had such germs.

SC: Are there any activists or activist groups on the island to counter the government’s claims?

TE: Yes, us. Dr. Cruz has been collecting positive blood tests and other research and continually appealing to the government to allow the vaccines to finally be legalized. They refuse to budge, however. And unfortunately, the outlawing of these vaccines is compounding the problem for another reason; pet owners and smugglers who illegally import new purebred dogs and cats for sale on Galapagos are now also smuggling in the vaccines themselves. Vaccines require special trained care and maintenance, or else they may become active, turning a parvo vaccine into a vial full of the deadly active parvo virus. The smugglers end up inadvertently injecting healthy animals with active parvo and distemper viruses, thus spreading the diseases further.

Also, I can’t say whether or not this has bearing on their decision, but the Galapagos is on the UN World Heritage Site in Danger list, a list the government has been trying very hard to get off because they don’t want the international scrutiny or bad press. Thus, they have been making a huge effort to tell everyone that nothing is wrong with the Galapagos, it’s still a pristine environment untouched by man, that it’s fully protected, and no one should be concerned. I don’t know if this played into their decision about the vaccines, but if they started acknowledging that these serious diseases are now all over the Galapagos, it would hurt their chances of getting off the Site in Danger list.

SC: How is your group approaching the government?

TE: We are trying to proliferate the data and studies to show concerned parties that the problem exists, regardless of what the federal policy says. The main industry on the Galapagos is the tourist trade, and the tourism machine won’t benefit at all if the island is decimated by invasive diseases that could have been stopped.

SC: So how do you get people’s attention? Leafletting? Protesting?

TE: To start the dialogue with the populace, we came up with surveys and passed them out to everyone—office workers, shopkeepers, policemen—hundreds of people. The surveys asked for people’s opinions on some simple animal matters, like, “Are animals important to you?” Some people responded that they loved animals, and others said they didn’t care for animals at all. The last question on the survey asked, “Do you think there should be an animal hospital on Galapagos?” If even a small but relevant minority percentage of people said yes, then I would’ve still tried to build this thing. But we were shocked. It was completely unanimous; every single person who took the survey said they believed there should be an animal hospital on Galapagos.

Another way we’re trying to get a relevant amount of attention down there is by going through the schools. We talked to teachers, who wanted to know about the animal welfare issues but simply did not have any school programs or material that explained the problems of Galapagos. Some groups there, like Ambiente Independiente, are waging campaigns, like anti-plastics education, to give the kids growing up there a good sense of how to protect their island’s future, but there are so many specific ecological concerns to address there that we all have to chime in. We’re trying to create a conservation education package that we can help teachers proliferate in schools.

SC: You brought back with you a couple of pups and a kitten. How’d you choose them out of the hundreds of feral dogs and cats on the island?

TE: I didn’t; they chose me. People around the island just started realizing that this guy, for some reason, will help animals you find, so I started getting calls from people who’d find this or that animal that needed help. Foxy came first. A friend found her and called me, and when I got there, Foxy was hanging out in typical style, sitting with humans she just met. All it took to adopt her was to say, “Wanna come home with me?” and she followed us maybe a half mile through town to my apartment. I sat on the ground to examine her and she just plopped into my lap like a monkey.

SC: There must have been many more than the three pictured here, though, right?

TE: Yeah, some animals got adopted there, some died (one gorgeous little loving dog died of distemper), and sometimes we just couldn’t find the animals that people called us to find. Injured animals will run and hide.

SC: What are the next steps to take to get the animal hospital in place?

TE: Right now, our project vet, Dr. Cruz, runs a small clinic out of her own home. She does as much as her expertise will allow, but we need to expand her clinic badly with more infrastructure and medicine. She doesn’t even charge clients who can’t afford healthcare for their animals, so the money for medicine has to come from somewhere. Also, a big problem is that she cannot board animals at her house clinic, so we intend to purchase land that we can fence to act as the animal sanctuary and boarding facility for any animals needing surgery or to be monitored after surgery, etc.

SC: Besides PayPal, how are you seeking funding?

TE: A good friend, a lawyer and conservationist who’s also a new board member of Amigo Fiel, is starting to explore the appropriate grant writing. However, right now, my main plan is to get a clue. Conservationist friends and even just people who hear about the project are being fantastic about offering their experiences and insights on how they created nonprofits, animal shelters, international conservation groups, etc. They don’t ask for me to do anything in return except to do a good job.

SC: What’s your fundraising goal?

TE: We’re still in the preliminary land-hunting and price-negotiating phase for the animal sanctuary and boarding facility, although we have found one possible plot of land in a practical location (practical meaning it is connected to the running water system and electricity). Even better, the seller is willing to give us a huge discount on his asking price because he takes in tons of stray animals and simply wants to see this animal hospital project happen. So, we cannot be specific, but if you want a ballpark figure, it would probably cost somewhere around $20,000 to purchase enough land to have an effective sanctuary and boarding facility. As for the expansion of the clinic, our project vet, who knows a lot more about the necessary equipment and supplies needed every month than I do, says that $30,000 will allow the clinic to handle everything that an island clinic in that circumstance needs to handle. Of course, any increase in funding will enlarge the number of animals we can keep alive per month. Now that I’m back in New York, it’s so strange to think that $50,000 can purchase, build, and run an entire hospital, boarding facility, and animal sanctuary.

SC: I imagine there are far more stray and feral cats and dogs in the Galapagos than there are here. How do they manage to survive in the wild? You said they feed on garbage, but what about shelter and predators (including humans)?

TE: There are no predators on Galapagos that hunt cats and dogs. Feral cats and dogs are the top predators of Galapagos, decimating the lizard, iguana, birds, etc that are their food supply in the wild. Everywhere you go on Galapagos, from the deserts to the beaches to the forests, there are now feral cats and dogs feeding on the unique Galapagos animals most people have learned to identify the islands with.

That brings us to the humans. Unfortunately, it is most people’s immediate reaction to say, “Something must be done about these invasive cats and dogs! They’re the problem!” This is a very popular, and impractical, conservation attitude. While it’s easy to demonize the cats and dogs who are simply trying to survive, they are not the ones voluntarily sneaking onto ships and planes to get to Galapagos to create a highly profitable illegal purebred animal smuggling ring. They are not the ones chaining themselves into tiny spaces creating nightmarish and illegal purebred commercial breeding programs on the islands. They are not the ones profiting from breaking the law, proliferating these animals to every island of the Galapagos to satisfy paying customers who will dish out up to $1,000 for a new purebred dog never before seen on their island (status symbol). They’re not the ones paying up to $400 for each purebred puppy illegally commercially bred from each of those smuggled animals.

SC: What is it they think should be done?

TE: For every extermination program held on Galapagos for conservation purposes, decimating newborn kittens, there are plenty of humans working to replenish the supply. It is impractical to blame cats and dogs for their own presence on Galapagos, because punishing/exterminating them will not affect the problem. It is humans who immediately replace any exterminated cats or dogs, with new illegally imported and commercially bred ones, ones that will not be neutered or spayed.

SC: In your opinion, then, what is the solution to an unsustainable cat and dog population?

TE: The answer is to start holding people accountable, to start actually enforcing the laws put in place to stop the widespread proliferation of cats and dogs. To start increasing the costs of not spaying or neutering your pet in a UN World Heritage Site in Danger. To convince people that it’s more important long-term to protect the ecosystem. I approached the municipalities of the Galapagos, pointing out that the penalties are ridiculously low for breaking conservation law IN THE GALAPAGOS. I asked, “Why can’t we increase the penalties so that people will stop illegally destroying the ecosystem? Increase the penalty so it won’t be worth their while to break conservation laws?” They looked at me incredulously and said, “Well if we increase the fines for breaking conservation laws, people won’t want to pay them.” They could not believe that I could not understand such a simple concept as that.

To donate to the animal hospital project, visit EcuadorAnimalShelter.org.
To take home beautiful Roxy or handsome Ben, both pictured here, e-mail RescueRoxyBen@gmail.com.

Usually, I love reading the Huffington Post. However, in the past week they posted a surprisingly scathing blog entry calling Sea Shepherd a terrorist group.

However, the blog made all its arguments based on many assumptions that many people seem to be making about conservation lately, so it seemed worth it to address the blog.

For the first part of this post, we will first address the main themes of the Huffington blog, for the benefit of most readers. Afterwards, we will have, for anyone who has the time or curiosity, a much longer section analyzing every other argument made in the Huffington blog, as it does address other arguments against conservation law enforcing.

The main themes

The central theme of the Huffington blog is mentioned time and time again, and put succinctly in its eighth paragraph:

“Of course the whalers, whatever you may think of their activities, are operating legally. It is Watson and the Sea Shepherds who are the criminals.”

So, although we’ve addressed this partially in previous posts, let’s cover it comprehensively here.

Here is a list of illegal activities that the whalers are performing on video, much of which was outlined by Paul Watson:

1. The Japanese are whaling in violation of the International Whaling Commission’s global moratorium on commercial whaling. The IWC scientific committee announced it does not recognize Japan’s whaling activities as “research,” and thus Japan is not exempt from the commercial whaling ban.

In 2008, Japan released its first research finding in many years from the annual slaughter. The research finding was as follows: “Injecting dead whale sperm into a cow, does not result in producing a cow-whale hybrid creature.”

2. The IWC doesn’t just ban commercial whaling, the IWC specifically bans whaling in the Southern Ocean Sanctuary where Japan whales.

3. The Japanese are in violation of IWC regulation 19. (a) The IWC regulations in the Schedule to the Convention forbid the use of factory ships to process any protected stock: 19. (a) It is forbidden to use a factory ship or a land station for the purpose of treating any whales which are classified as Protection Stocks in paragraph 10. Paragraph 10(c) provides a definition of Protection Stocks and states that Protection Stocks are listed in the Tables of the Schedule. Table 1 lists all the baleen whales, including minke, fin and humpback whales and states that all of them are Protection Stocks. The main ship in the Japanese whaling fleet is the Nisshin Maru, the whaling fleet factory ship, which allows the fleet to kill 1,000 whales a year at sea at a time.

4. In addition, the IWC regulations specifically ban the use of factory ships to process any whales except minke whales: Paragraph 10(d) provides: (d) Notwithstanding the other provisions of paragraph 10 there shall be a moratorium on the taking, killing or treating of whales, except minke whales, by factory ships or whale catchers attached to factory ships. This moratorium applies to sperm whales, killer whales and baleen whales, except minke whales.

5. The Antarctic Treaty specifies the area that Japan is whaling in, as Australia’s territory. Japan is a signing member of the Antarctic Treaty. According to a law it signed, Japan is violating Australia sovereign territory.

6. Before the 2007-2008 Japanese whale hunt, the highest federal court of Australia passed an order stating that it is illegal for Japan to whale in its Antarctic Territory.

7. Article 1 of The Antarctic Treaty specifies that the area in which Japan is bringing military personnel and military gear/weapons for military purposes, is a demilitarized zone in which it is illegal to bring military personnel and military gear for any non-peaceful purposes.

8. The Japanese are in violation of targeting whales protected by the UN’s CITES and the UN Law of the Sea. Japan is a member nation of CITES.

Now, the other half of that passage states that we as Sea Shepherd are criminals. We operate legally, however, under the UN World Charter for Nature, which gives any NGO or individual the right to stop poaching or illegal environmental destruction that’s outlawed by international conservation laws.

Japan has an extradition treaty with the US, and has filmed me during our engagements with them. They have said they will extradite all of us US criminals for prosecution, but have never done so, even though they are granted this right by international agreements. If we could legally extradite any terrorists who have attacked us, and we have film of them doing illegal actions, under which conditions would we NOT extradite them?

The Huffington blog also tries to do what many people try to do, which is reassure themselves that Japan must be taking whales that the world doesn’t need:

“Whatever it may be, minke whales, in particular, are not considered to be particularly threatened. Estimates have placed the minke population in the Southern Hemisphere in the range of 200,000-416,700 whales.”

Minke whales, in particular, are considered to be particularly threatened by the United Nations’ Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), which Japan is a member nation of, so even Japan officially considers the minke whale to be particularly threatened.

The other theme of the blog is stated in its fourth paragraph:

“And oh, by the way, the Sea Shepherds do almost nothing to protect the whales where they really do need protection.”

SSCS has campaigns against drift-netting, long-lining, and illegal fishing in all its forms that decimate whale populations around the world. We have devoted our scant resources to ending all forms of poaching that result in whale by-catch and accidental whale killings, and we work with sovereign governments to pass and enforce regulations to prevent accidental killings of whales by ships and fishing equipment.

In 2006-2007, Sea Shepherd directly lead law enforcement raids that seized tens of thousands of illegal shark fins bound for China (illegal long-lining operations that would cause countless by-catch), and SSCS waged investigations that directly lead to arrest warrants in large illegal operations that kill tons of by-catch. Last year, I served as Sea Shepherd’s comms specialist on a mission with the Ecuadorian rangers to create the very first conservation law enforcement and ranger base in the Northern Islands of the Galapagos, because that’s where a huge amount of the dolphin and whale by-catch from the entire Northwest quadrant of South America happens.

Independently of other governments, SSCS has rescued countless whales and dolphins from illegal purse netting, long-lining, and other accident scenarios in the Pacific Ocean by directly patrolling areas that are often used for such illegal fishing. And in the past four years, we have caught and stopped many illegal operations from Panama to China to the US to Ecuador to many others, that have been decimating whale and dolphin populations through by-catch.

The argument of this passage is that Sea Shepherd is doing “almost nothing” with the scant resources it has to protecting whales where they do need protection. The question is, how much are we expected to do with the tiny budget we have, to match expectations of what we could be accomplishing?

So those are the basic premises of the blog, which many people have been recounting since the premiere of Whale Wars.

The blog continues to mention many other assumptions, although the above reading may be enough for most people in one sitting.

Further reading for the curious

However, if you are curious enough, and have some time to kill this lunch break, then below, I have examined every single argument the Huffington blog makes from beginning to end because I have strange hobbies in my spare time:

First sentence:
“Tonight begins the second season of ‘Whale Wars’ in which a scruffy band of eco-crusaders, the Sea Shepherds, go to war against the evil whaling ships, by any means necessary.”

First sentence corrected:
Actually, it is not “by any means necessary.” Our methods are very strictly regulated, and we have all been given very well defined limits of what we can or cannot do during engagements, all in an effort to cause zero harm to humans, and to avoid any entanglements with international law. Thus, we have never been arrested or prosecuted for any violent crimes. The Japanese crew train multiple video cameras on us during every engagement, following our actions closely to try to catch any illegal violent behavior on our part, but they have never been able to actually get video of us doing any such thing because we strictly control how we engage with poaching vessels. The Japanese do sometimes claim that their crew have been injured by us, although we have shared all our video with any interested parties to show exactly where all of our shots go. Also, whenever we have injuries from grenade blasts etc, we have crew to produce with those injuries, but the Japanese have always stopped making their accusations as soon as they are asked to produce anyone who requires medical attention from an engagement.

Second paragraph:
“What’s not to like? The show is action on the high seas; ocean combat to save the whales! Everyone likes whales. I like whales. Who doesn’t like whales? What great television for those bored with shows about fishing off Alaska, Ice Road Truckers or the Real Housewives of Duluth!”

Second paragraph commentary:
It is a great show isn’t it?

Third paragraph opening:
“So what is the problem with ‘Whale Wars’? The problem is that it is cheap exploitation in praise of what is nothing less than eco-terrorism.”

Third paragraph opening, corrected:
Eco-terrorism is illegal. However, we do not do anything illegal in Antarctica, even though the Australian government has investigated us many times looking for anything illegal to prosecute on behalf of Japan, even temporarily confiscating our tapes of Japanese whaling in order to protect Japan’s interests earlier this year. Several times, even in the past two years alone, Australian federal authorities have boarded our ship under pressure from Japan, on behalf of Japan, to investigate everything from piracy to interfering with legal businesses. There has been nothing illegal for them to pursue, and no arrests have ever been made from any of these investigations, regardless/because of how much video evidence there is (from both us and the Japanese) of every engagement.

Third paragraph continued:
“It is the glorification of vigilantism on the high seas.”

Third paragraph continued, corrected:
Vigilantes fight against crime, so we thank the blogger for pointing out that we are indeed trying to stop illegal activities. However, vigilantes also do not operate under any legal authority. We perform our campaigns under the authority of the UN World Charter for Nature. Vigilantes are also illegal, and would be arrested if found. We haven’t only been found; we’ve been searched, investigated, interrogated, and pursued by first-world federal legal authorities. However, no one has been arrested for anything related to Whale Wars.

Fourth paragraph opening:
“While ‘Whale Wars’ presents a simplistic case of us against them, the noble environmentalists against the evil whalers, the reality, of course, is not so black and white. By international agreement with the International Whaling Commission, the Japanese were allowed to kill up to a nine hundred minke whales and fifty fin whales in 2007/2008 in the Antarctic ocean for ‘research purposes.’”

Fourth paragraph opening, corrected:
Japan wouldn’t make any “international agreements” with the International Whaling Commission. They’re already a member country of it, bound to the IWC’s legal commission rulings. And the IWC has announced they officially do NOT recognize Japan’s whaling as research.

Fourth paragraph second half:
“Critics claim that this is thinly disguised commercial whaling.”

Fourth paragraph second half, corrected:
The suggestion here is that there are some critics in the traditional sense of individual commentators. Although you could as an individual cite things like Japan’s open lack of research records, the important critics here are sovereign countries like Panama, that removed their flag from the Japanese whaling ship the Nisshin Maru in the past year because it’s against Panamanian policy to support commercial whaling. And other critics like the sovereign nation of Holland, which refused to give into Japanese political pressure to remove the Dutch flag from our ship, citing it was the Japanese who are engaged in the illegal activity of commercial whaling.

Fifth paragraph:
“Negotiating international agreements may not make for rousing ‘reality TV’ but it has made a significant difference in actually ‘saving the whales.’”

Fifth paragraph corrected:
The laws and international agreements protecting the whales that Japan targets have been in place for years. Indeed, commercial whaling has been illegal since the 1980′s, and several UN bodies cite specific whales that are not to be killed or hunted. Japan has actually signed these agreements and is a member nation of the UN bodies and IWC, which have outlawed commercial whaling and the specific killing of whales that Japan is targeting during its annual hunt.

More recently, there has been additional international legal action done. Australia has been building a legal case against Japan, and Australia’s highest federal court indeed outlawed all Japanese whaling in the Australian Antarctic Territory, which is where Japan whales.

Despite all of these international agreements, Japan continues to illegally whale in protected waters every year.

It’s very easy to say, “Well, the law is in place, our work is done!” Whereas the reality is that rules only mean something if a police force supports them. As it is, a very powerful first world nation has been using its military might to break these international agreements and rulings, not back them.

Sixth paragraph first half:
“The Sea Shepherds on ‘Whale Wars’ are abolitionist animal rights activists. They believe that every whale is sacred and should be preserved. On this basis, they justify aggressively interfering with and attempting to disable whaling ships in international waters, including pelting the ships with bottles containing butyric acid, which recently injured four Japanese crew members.”

Sixth paragraph first half, corrected:
We do not justify our behavior because whales are being killed. We justify our behavior because we are operating legally against an illegal enterprise. Whales are being killed much closer to home, legally, by indigenous cultures. We do not have any campaigns against that because such hunts have been deemed legal by the IWC.

And here, the Huffington blog is taking Japanese claims of injuries as fact. We know, from our engagements and the injuries from grenade blasts inflicted on our crew by the Japanese, that it’s very easy to prove injuries by matching video to medical evidence. And again, Japan shuts up immediately when asked to provide this.

Sixth paragraph second half:
“Their zealotry is strongly reminiscent of anti-abortion extremists. (Both groups share a fondness for butyric acid attacks.) The Sea Shepherds also attempt to maneuver Zodiac boats in between the whalers and their prey. More seriously, they have taken to ramming Japanese whalers with their ship, the Steve Irwin. (They deny this but several videos of the Irwin ramming a whaler are widely available.) Members of the Sea Shepherds have also boarded whalers at sea and in one case the Sea Shepherds interfered with the search and rescue of a Japanese sailor washed overboard. (The Sea Shepherds deny they interfered but that is not the opinion of those conducting the search and rescue.)”

Sixth paragraph second half, corrected:
We haven’t “taken to” anything new recently, actually. Sea Shepherd’s ramming of illegal poaching vessels has been well documented in many documentaries like “Sharkwater” and news pieces for decades, starting with the very public ramming of the pirate whaling vessel the Sierra in Spain. So we have no shame admitting when we ram vessels. However, the Japanese fleet has not been shy about ramming us either, starting in 2006 when we got footage of them ramming our ship the Robert Hunter (which has been renamed the Steve Irwin). Indeed, ramming is serious business, as footage shows a Japanese harpoon ship ramming our ship in the documentary “At the Edge of the World.” If people are concerned about ramming, we can provide video evidence (to any law enforcement agency they think would care) of the Nisshin Maru turning at us in an attempt to ram us during the 2007-2008 whaling season (which would have been lethal to us, on a ship one eighth the size of the Nisshin Maru).

This passage also argues the claim that in one case, SSCS interferes with the search and rescue of a Japanese sailor who fell overboard a Japanese ship. The incident (which was unrelated to any pursuit or confrontation) was tragic, and Sea Shepherd offered to help in search and rescue. The offer was turned down, but more importantly, this period of time was being filmed. And as we mentioned earlier, whenever we come in sight of their ship, they film us too. If there is more than an accusation that we would do anything other than help a human who falls overboard, we invite them to show their evidence against ours.

Seventh paragraph:
“The Sea Shepherds fly the Jolly Roger flag of piracy. I think that they should be more accurately described as eco-terrorists.”

Seventh paragraph corrected:
Again, if anyone has video or any other proof of any illegal acts worthy of a $10 fine on Whale Wars, there’s a good chance we would’ve been told by the sovereign governments launching federal investigations targeting us.

Eighth paragraph, first half:
“‘You don’t beg criminals to stop doing what they’re doing,’ Mr. Watson said in the first episode last season. ‘You intervene, and you physically and aggressively shut them down.’”

Ninth paragraph:
“And where are these self-described pirates or eco-terrorists, call them what you will, based? In Friday Harbor, Washington. Given their arguably illegal and dangerous antics, I am surprised that the group, as well as the producers of the television show and the Animal Planet Network
have not been swamped in lawsuits.”

Ninth paragraph, corrected:
We thank the blogger for taking back his former bold statements, and at least calling our actions “arguably” illegal here. However, the fact that we aren’t in legal trouble should not be a surprise to anyone at all, if you look at the laws against whaling, and at the laws protecting those operating legally under UN charters.

Tenth paragraph, first half:
“But do the Sea Shepherds make a difference? Not in any significant way. The WWF estimates that 90% of non-natural whale deaths are due to collisions with ships, followed by “by-catch,” whales becoming caught in nets, and then lastly, by fishing. Only this week, an oil tanker bound for Valdez apparently collided with a humpback whale and dragged the carcass into the harbor on the bow of the ship.”

Tenth paragraph, first half, corrected:
The argument here is that because whales die in other ways, it’s important to ignore the whale hunt. We actually believe it’s important to tackle the problem from ALL sides, and to tackle both the accidental killings as well as the direct poaching of whales. While we do not have the funds to be a lobby group, we work with sovereign governments in preventing accidental whale deaths, and we contribute the scant amount we have to making sure that incidents mentioned in that passage will be prevented. As an example that directly relates to the incident mentioned above: in the Galapagos, we donated one of our ships (we don’t have many, so this was a sizable donation) to the Galapagos rangers, to protect lanes in which whales are in danger among other things. About six months ago, that ship we donated towed and rescued a blue whale that got caught and stranded in such a lane. We don’t have many resources, but every penny people give to Sea Shepherd goes to making sure whales won’t get killed.

Even if we did not do any of that, does the argument – “because whales die in other ways, it’s important to ignore the whale hunt which we can put a stop to” – actually helping any whales? Let’s consider it in human terms. If a murderer is killing 1,000 people a year, and he publicly advertises where and when he’s about to kill his next 1,000 victims, and only one tiny, under-funded group decided to stop the murderer, the argument of this article would be: “It’s irresponsible and a gross misappropriation of the world’s resources for this one small group to do anything about this murderer, because so many people die from other causes.” We pursue those other causes, yes, but we think it would be rather irresponsible to ignore the murderer sitting right in front of us.

Tenth paragraph, second half:
“Special shipping lanes have been set up off Cape Cod to reduce collisions between ships and the extremely endangered northern right whales, which migrate through the area. It is hoped that these collisions will be reduced by an estimated 74% during the migratory season. Changes in shipping lanes around the world and the development of new technologies are making a real difference in reducing the number of whales who die needlessly, which also does not make for entertaining television.”

Tenth paragraph, second half, corrected:
Indeed, it doesn’t make very entertaining television, which is why a lot of people do not know about these other non-glamorous campaigns we do to prevent accidental whale deaths. But the data and results are there for anyone to see if they look into it or ask or spend a few minutes on our website.

Final paragraph:
“In the end, ‘Whale Wars’ is a highly dangerous sideshow, which may make for diverting ‘reality TV’ for the couch-bound, but has nothing meaningful to do with ‘saving the whales.’”

Final paragraph, corrected:
One of the most common responses to the show is the statement, “I had no idea whaling still happened.” It is perhaps not dangerous, and perhaps a good thing that people understand that this illegal enterprise is still happening, and that it is possible for people to shut down such a poaching machine if they put their minds to it.

Until June 14, HOME, a film that gorgeously illustrates the devastating impact of careless human consumption on Earth’s ecosystems, can be viewed in full for free on YouTube in high definition.

In this stunning (and carbon-offset) bird’s eye view of Earth, breathtaking visuals implicate viewers in the interconnectedness of the planet’s dazzling, seldom-seen landscapes and multitudinously various life. Facilitated by Glenn Close’s urgent narration, HOME highlights patterns and atrocities of human existence: “concentration camp-style cattle farms,” “a forest…turned into meat,” and diversity replaced with standardization. Simply put, “humanity has barely 10 years to reverse the trend, become aware of the full extent of its spoilation of the Earth’s riches and change its patterns of consumption,” says Director Yann Arthus-Bertrand on the movie’s official page.

To deliver that message to the largest possible audience, HOME’s creators released the film with its viewers’ pocketbooks in mind; besides offering the film free on YouTube for a limited time, the creators, with financial backing from PPR—a French holding company that, perhaps conflictingly, owns Gucci and Puma—, are showing it at theaters at discounted rates, on select TV stations, and at free screenings worldwide. The Blu-ray and DVD versions will be in stock at Amazon on June 13 and 14 respectively.

Watch the trailer for just a blink of the eyeful that is HOME:

Tune in at 9pm tonight to see Captain Paul Watson and the Sea Shepherd crew battle Japanese whaling ships. If Season Two is anything like Season One, get ready for a wild ride. Animal Planet has gone all out to promote the show and the current Whale Wars crew has been making the rounds. Last night Captain Watson and crew members Laurens de Groot, Chris Aultman, Shannon Mann even made an appearance on CNN’s Larry King.

Make sure to check out Animal Planet’s site where you can even “Implicate a Friend” and send a personalized video claiming your friend is wanted in connection with anti-whaling activities. And this is via Animal Planet–a national channel with major advertisers… amazing.

Speaking of implicating a friend, SuperVegan’s very own Tod Emko, who appeared on Season One of the show, will not be making an appearance on Season Two as he was in the Galapagos and couldn’t make it on the boat for a second round. Check out the SuperVegan archive for all of Tod’s posts about his experiences protecting animals around the world.

If Sea Shepherd’s crew is indeed “a bunch of pirates” (according to a Greenpeace canvasser on the streets of NYC who was reacting to Tod’s Sea Shepherd-logo hat), then they are some pirates that I can get behind. Argggh matey!

ETA: Check out these videos from the upcoming season: season two sneak peak, meet the crew, and Warning: Graphic Content (must be 18 to view).

The Tiburon Martillo floating Ranger base, seen from the deck of the Sierra Negra Ranger vessel

From September to December 2008, the vegan conservation group Sea Shepherd waged a fight to protect the ecosystem and all the animals of the Galapagos Islands in Ecuador. This blog recounts what happened in that time, serving for the group.

The post below describes one of the biggest projects I was lucky enough to be involved with in the Galapagos.

Anti-Poaching

Alex had been busy these three months. He hired a brilliant Ecuadorian woman from Quito, named Malena. She’s invaluable every single day in keeping Sea Shepherd’s doors open.

Together, Alex and Malena didn’t just keep the office open despite the President’s orders. They somehow managed to form solid relationships with the non-corrupt and very effective Ecuadorian law enforcement offices that O’Hearn formerly worked with as well.

The two also managed to form great relationships with the Rangers. And together with WildAid, the Charles Darwin Foundation, other immensely helpful partners, all parties participated in a monumental Ranger project that would change the anti-poaching effort of the Galapagos in a massive way for the better.

Wolf Island

This project was one of the biggest things to happen in the Galapagos not just during this campaign, but during this decade. Together, all these parties planned to create the first conservation law enforcement base at isolated Wolf Island, the most pristine and unique island of all the Galapagos, the island around which so much of the poaching has happened.

Wolf is one of the only untouched islands of the Galapagos left. It’s forbidden for anyone to walk on Wolf. If you’re a tourist already in the Galapagos, it would cost you $4,000 to visit Wolf by boat, and you still wouldn’t have the right to step onto Wolf. It’s off-limits to humans. It’s one of the last havens for all the animals people associate with the Galapagos.

The historic mission to create a base at Wolf was eight years in the making, involving nearly every ship in the ranger fleet. Godfrey Merlin of WildAid led the ranger mission, and I was fortunate enough to be the communications specialist serving on the Ranger vessel Sierra Negra.

The Ranger vessel Sierra Negra

Wolf Island, and one of its more pensive inhabitants.

The Sierra Negra towed the Tiburon Martillo barge from Santa Cruz to Wolf Island, a two day trip. At Wolf, the Tiburon Martillo would become the permanent floating ranger base at a secluded bay, and the ranger vessel Sea Mar 2 would become its permanent launch. The vessel Guadalupe River would help create the base’s permanent mooring.

We tow the Tiburon Martillo floating Ranger base from Santa Cruz Island.

From left to right, the Sea Mar 2, the Guadalupe River, and the Sierra Negra.

If there’s any island on earth worth protecting, it’s Wolf. And every reason why we were working to protect the Galapagos became clear the closer we got to Wolf.

As we approached the island the morning of the second day of the trip, dolphins surrounded our ship, dolphins who until now had absolutely no protection from the tuna purse-netting poaching ships. Giant unique sea birds like blue-footed boobies, that define the Galapagos, flew next to our ship. When the ranger fleet got to Wolf, we were in the middle of a bay full of giant sea turtles, sea lions, giant tropical fish, and screaming birds.

The Sierra Negra approaches Wolf Island.

One of the large Galapaganean seabirds that appear as we approach Wolf.

Dolphins come to swim alongside us and play around our ship as we approach. Click here for video of dolphins frolicking around our ship.

Intelligent dolphins look up at us and keep up with our ship, enjoying interacting with us.

These dolphins will, for the first time, have permanent protection from poaching vessels like the illegal tuna vessel the Rocio.

We set up base in a secluded, enclosed bay at Wolf Island.

Rangers, CDF divers, and the campaign leader search the nearby area to for suitable places to permanently anchor the Tiburon Martillo Ranger base.

Godfrey Merlin, the mission leader.

Over the next week, we set up the base in the middle of this all. We put in anchor buoys, so that no ship that comes to Wolf would ever have to use its anchor again, destroying the undersea environments of Wolf. We fueled up the Tiburon Martillo and Sea Mar, and I configured their sat comm system.

Divers from the CDF monitor the underwater ecosystem as we put the floating Ranger base in place.

The Rangers set up anchor buoys to moor the Tiburon Martillo, and to ensure no other vessel will have to harm the underwater ecosystem with anchors.

The Tiburon Martillo Ranger base, in its permanent position in the secluded bay of Wolf Island.

But then, before we left, I got the extremely rare opportunity to walk onto Wolf to see the island we were protecting.

Next week’s post will explore the area of Galapagos we were protecting.

Galapaganean locals paint canvas shopping bags at an anti-plastic bag campaign we helped out at

From September to December 2008, the vegan conservation group Sea Shepherd waged a fight to protect the ecosystem and all the animals of the Galapagos Islands in Ecuador. This blog recounts what happened in that time, serving for the group.

The post below describes one of the biggest arguments the locals had against Sea Shepherd’s involvement in Galapagos.

My goal was to make sure no more animals would have to share the fate of my poor Nikki Wolf. We’re currently working with locals to try to find a sensible way to raise funding for the building of a proper permanent clinic/hospital.

There was just one more major obstacle in the way of massive public support for the things we were trying to do.

Argument 4: Other Social Problems

This argument came up every time the issue of trying to promote animal welfare came up to an educated audience with means.

4: “Save the ecosystem?! How dare you try to help animals and the environment before solving all the human issues like education!”

Ironically, the people making this argument actually never seemed to work to help any human social issues themselves. Regardless, the perception was that we shouldn’t attempt to help the animals or creatures of the ecosystem before all the social problems of the humans are solved first. The truth, of course, is that protecting the ecosystem protects the Galapaganeans, because these islands are only worth anything to people and business if the ecosystem stays healthy. If tourists see cats and dogs decimating the ecosystem (which they’re starting to do more and more each day), or if the poachers kill the last of the sharks and dolphins, then there’s no reasons for people or businesses to come here, and the residents would have no income.

But, to take these concerns seriously, Sea Shepherd had to prove itself.

Solution 4: Education

SSCS has been planning a conservation-oriented education package, working with Galapaganean residents and local teachers to formulate it. It’s not something Sea Shepherd would ever be expected to do anywhere else in the world, but the locals must be onboard if conservation is to work here.

Much of the time, children of the Galapagos only have people’s examples to go by, when it comes to conservation. And people for the past decade here have been working on building their fortunes, bringing larger and larger ships and often letting the ecosystem take a backseat to trying to feed their families, which is understandable. The good news is that the new generation of kids growing up now are absolutely open to hearing about how their success is tied to a healthy environment.

Ambiente Independiente

As an example of this, one of the campaigns I volunteered on was by a local group called Ambiente Independiente, a group which does a lot of local environmental work. During one of their anti-plastics campaigns, they had volunteers coming from everywhere including the CDF, SSCS, WildAid, and concerned citizens. Ambiente Independiente gave a presentation on plastics and families and children all came and stayed to watch the whole thing. Teenage boys even started vying for control over paints they wanted to use to paint canvas shopping bags, so that they wouldn’t have to use plastic shopping bags anymore.

Ambiente Independiente produced a presentation and campaign against plastics that are destroying the Galapapagos.

People of all different backgrounds got together and organized among themselves to help teach their fellow Galapaganeans how to protect the islands against human interference.

Children, adolescents, and adults got into the spirit of learning and working to reduce the ecological impact of human industry.

The work of Ambiente Independiente is an example of how local concerned individuals can change a lot of important minds.

Likewise, locals are essential in getting the animal hospital/clinic off the ground. For construction logistics, methodology and policy planning, and all other aspects of getting a clinic off the ground, locals are the ones who are making the project possible.

Next week’s post will cover some of the anti-poaching effort of SSCS in this time.

Fewer countries are starting to tolerate Canada’s annual baby seal slaughter

This past week, soon after Canada started its annual baby seal hunt, Spain joined a growing list of countries that voted to ban all seal products in the European Union.

Spain voted against seal products for the EU on March 25, following close on the heels of Ireland’s March 17 vote to ban all seal products. Several other European countries like the Netherlands, France, and Germany (as well as the EU parliament’s internal market and consumer protection committee) have also voted to ban all seal products. Canada, whose annual seal hunt is the largest slaughter of marine mammals in the world (killing well over a quarter of a million seals per year), is becoming more and more isolated in its stance on the needless practice.

Even Russia announced banning its own baby seal hunt this March, and this year a Canadian Senator proposed to end Canada’s seal hunt. A majority of Canada’s population are opposed to the hunt as well.

Although the 2009 Canadian seal hunt has just begun, the Canadian hunters have already killed over 19,000 seals so far this season. For more information on Canada’s hunt, The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society has this helpful page on facts and information about the hunt.

And for more videos and photos on the annual hunt, here is Sea Shepherd’s media page concerning the fight against Canada’s seal slaughter.

The post below analyzes more of the arguments the locals had against Sea Shepherd operating in the Galapagos, and how the plan adjusted accordingly.

This next argument is also quite interesting. It’s similar to the first, but angers people in a different and important way.

Argument 2: Poverty

2: “You rich gringos come here and antagonize all the poor locals who are just trying to make a living!”

The perception is that Sea Shepherd is trying to shut down poor people from making any living. Of course, this is also fascinatingly far from the truth. When Sean O’Hearn made his busts, the people he targeted were the crime bosses. Chinese businessmen, military commanders, high ranking politicians. The Sea Shepherd organization has zero interest in shutting down poor people (that and I was pretty miserably poor compared to anyone I was trying to oppose). But, the PERCEPTION that we do is very important, because so many people WANT to believe it.

When O’Hearn was initially deported from Ecuador, it was because the President heard that O’Hearn was kicking down the doors of impoverished fishermen and stealing their fish so they couldn’t feed their families. Now, it may seem obvious that such a rumor – that the head of a major international NGO would be spending his time going around stealing from the poor – would require some fact checking. But the idea that this rich American was going around pushing his weight on penniless, helpless Ecuadorians was so attractive that the President didn’t bother to check up on it. When the truth came out that O’Hearn was a humble man married to an Ecuadorian woman and that the couple had a two-year old child together, the President lost face because of his impetuousness, further cooling relations between Sea Shepherd and Ecuador.

The point is, this is an extremely powerful perception. One that wasn’t going to be easily overcome. To address it, I had to spend time being taken on tours of the ghettos of the Galapagos. I didn’t even know what I wanted to accomplish there initially, but I had to at least see the poverty and examine it.

Solution 2: Radical Ideas

However, it wasn’t long before the answer presented itself. There were so many animals who needed help there, and it wasn’t long before friends and I tried to rescue some. The locals from the ghetto started to greet us, and ask if we were there to provide them with vet and other social services. We earnestly said yes, and were so happy to see that even some of the poorest of Ecuadorians there were longing for better care for their animals. They simply didn’t know how to take good care of their pets. There was no vet hospital, no hospital program to teach them how to take care of the ecosystem they depended on for a living, no hospital program to teach them how to take care of their pets.

This approach also taught both me and them that we had the same goals and that there was no reason not to trust each other in pursuing it together. I came across a perhaps radical idea at this point. My idea was to create the first full time veterinary clinic or hospital in all of the Galapagos. The first bona fide vet office that could handle animal health problems and, probably more importantly, teach people how to take care of their animals and environment. Run by individuals who, unlike the government offices, wouldn’t worry about picking up their neighbor’s dogs off the streets until the owners could pick up their dogs again. A place where such owners could be gently taught the best way to keep their dog and neighborhood healthy.

But that’s when I had to deal with the third argument.

Next week’s post will cover the third argument and how the plan to help Galapagos was effected by it.

The post below describes what the first part of the new campaign strategy was like. We had to tackle the first and most prevalent argument against SSCS’s presence in the Galapagos.

Argument 1: Galapagos Pride

The first argument against our interference was one of cultural pride.

1: “You judgmental foreigners come here and try to crush indigenous Ecuadorians saying, ‘Oh, you primitive people, THIS is how you should run your own culture!’”

This was a very interesting argument. The truth is, Ecuadorians actually aren’t indigenous to the Galapagos. Indeed, no humans are. And probably over 90% of the Ecuadorian settlers came here within the past 20 years, more than a decade after the UN declared the Galapagos an UNESCO World Heritage Site, and long after all the conservation laws were put in place for the Galapagos.

Nevertheless, the PERCEPTION is that the Ecuadorians here are an ancient, indigenous tribe, and that no one, not even the government of Ecuador, has the right to interfere with any of the poaching or smuggling or ecological destruction they cause here. And the perception controlled how people acted and implemented policies in the Galapagos. And that doesn’t even touch upon the most ironic aspect of this all.

The most ironic thing is, almost all of the poaching and smuggling problems that happen here are caused by FOREIGN companies. All of the giant poaching ships that come here are either Costa Rican or some other nationality; the giant tuna poaching vessel I saw and talked about in the first post in this series, the Rocio, actually belonged to a US company. When Sean O’Hean made all his busts in Ecuador, he was getting Chinese mob bosses arrested, and every time Sea Shepherd challenged a poaching vessel in the Galapagos, it was a foreign ship. But the perception was that Sea Shepherd was taking down Ecuadorians, even though we were trying to protect the vital ecosystem that so many Ecuadorians made their living off of.

Solution 1: Peaceful Rebels

If the problems of the Galapagos are to be solved, the Galapaganeans have to lead the charge. It wasn’t just the perception of evil foreigners that made this so. It was the fact that the locals had an extreme amount of power. They were the ones all over the islands, they were the ones so powerful that they could effect people’s perceptions all over the world, they were they ones who made everything happen on these islands.

So, I just started walking around and talking to people from every walk of life, telling them how I truly just wanted to help them shed foreign influence. That as a foreigner, I didn’t want to be in control, why would I? It wasn’t my country. All I wanted was to find out what they wanted and help them obtain it with any resource I had. And I found the Galapagos a very different place when I did this.

I found people who were sick of the military corruption that let the foreign poachers do anything they wanted here. Sick of all the poaching and the illegal trafficking on their island that delivered all of their natural resources to China. Sick of the problems that so many NGO’s promised to solve but still existed. I started to encounter all sorts of people willing to help me challenge the status quo. People were very affable and actually offered many ideas on how to help. It was an unbelievable shift from the attitudes I encountered a few weeks before.

In a nutshell, this was the key. People wanted change but didn’t know how to start. So, I actually did very little at this point. All I did was get people together, introducing various people from different islands to each other, and create a small consortium of former smugglers, minor politicians, rich and poor people. And I trained them to be peaceful rebel pirates, SSCS style.

Most of the organizing they did among themselves, and I just gave them some infrastructure, some training on how to rebel legally through information gathering, and I taught them how to gather evidence that would be useful to causing long-term change.

And already, this small band of nonviolent rebels had generated an impressive arsenal of work. They uncovered government corruption, they discovered many of the sources of smuggling, and most importantly, they started to gain evidence of organized crime. The world I tried so hard to penetrate for months, these people managed to find on their own in a matter of days. We now know which families are responsible for a lot of the organized crime on each island of the Galapagos. The amount of documents and other evidence they have would still be easily overcome by a system as connected and corrupt as the poaching and smuggling world I’ve had to deal with, but that soon will change.

Next week’s post will cover the second argument against SSCS’s presence in the Galapagos.

Purebred animals continued to be commercially bred on each island

From September to December 2008, the vegan conservation group Sea Shepherd waged a fight to protect the ecosystem and all the animals of the Galapagos Islands in Ecuador. This blog recounts what happened in that time, serving for the group.

The post below details the days leading up until my departure date from the Galapagos.

First Campaign End

My efforts to get animals adopted started to go sour. Although I was able to help get a few animals get adopted by responsible owners early on, I later found myself faced by unfortunately capricious animal adopters. This was a typical conversation I eventually had every single day:

Adopter: “Oh, this is a beautiful cat, can I adopt him?”

Me: “Yes! But having a cat is a great responsibility, are you sure you’re up for it?”

Adopter: “Oh absolutely! I want this cat, and he’ll be my new family member!”

Me: “Great! This cat had absolutely no place to go so it’s wonderful he has a home!”

The next morning:

Adopter: “So, I’m bringing your cat to you this morning.”

Me: “What?! He’s your cat! I have no place to bring him! He’s not allowed in my apartment even!”

Adopter: “Well I just don’t have time for a cat.”

Me: “But you said you would take care of him! I looked for five days straight and there’s no other place for me to bring him! I’d have to sit on the street with him until I find him a home which would take weeks!”

Adopter: “Well I shouldn’t have taken him. But I’ll do you a huge favor. I’ll keep him for the next two hours while you find him a new home in that time. If you don’t take him after that I’ll just have him euthanized. I’m going to a party tonight so I don’t have time for a cat, it’s better if he just die now.”

It was sobering to discover that so many people in the Galapagos had the same death-before-personal-discomfort attitude as so many owners everywhere elsewhere in the world. And, on a personal note, I was at a loss as to what to do at that point. I ran completely out of resources to try to help these animals with, and I ran out of money in general (not as in, “Oh man, I’m so out of cash,” but as in, I stopped eating because I had no money to buy food with). Somebody had leaked information and blown my investigations, the cat I loved just died, and I was supposed to leave the islands in a few days.

Finally, I decided I at least had to find a place to bury Nikki Wolf. I went to a friend’s property, buried his corpse, and then I visited my mentor (who fed me, which was a plus in visiting).

I had to agenda and nothing to say. But my mentor sensed this, and finally said, “Look, I more than anyone else know how frustrating it is to pursue any of the goals you’ve been trying to accomplish here. But I’ve been watching your progress and can now tell you why you’re having such problems trying to fix these social issues. You’ve been trying to lead government agencies to solve widespread problems. But think about this. When’s the last time you’ve ever heard of a government solving a widespread social problem? It never happens because governments DON’T solve problems! If anything is going to improve in the world, it’s because the individuals will make it happen.”

And there it was, staring me in the face. I was trying to get governments and people with guns, the ones who facilitate corruption and social problems, to try to solve the problems they profited from. My entire task was an exercise in frustration. If I was to cause anything to change for the better, I had to get the people to want to change things for the better. Even though so many people around me were trying to blow my investigations, so many were constantly choosing to victimize animals and supporting poaching and smuggling, even though so many locals hated Sea Shepherd, and so many people were trying to increase their comfort levels at the expense of the ecosystem, I still had to find common ground with all of these populations somehow.

New Plan

I canceled my departing flight from the Galapagos, setting my new departure flight date for a month later, so I’d leave right when my visa expired and I absolutely had to leave the Galapagos. Friends started coming by and giving me food, so I wouldn’t starve. Sea Shepherd handled all my accommodations and utilities. I scrounged and borrowed money to stay afloat. It wasn’t very comfortable living, but I had enough to survive another month.

So then I got started. My goal was to ensure that no creature, indigenous or introduced, would share my poor cat’s fate. My first task, was to go to every single person who told me to leave the Galapagos, talk to every resident Galapaganean who had zero faith in my mission there, and talk to them, and find out exactly why they thought my goal to help the ecosystem was futility. “You stupid vegans come here and try to make all these changes but you make no sense and you should just leave!” Yes yes, but WHY? I had to change my tactics, and I wouldn’t know how to reach the locals until I found out why they hated me.

The answers were very telling. Every person I talked to boiled their arguments down to the following:

1: “You judgmental foreigners come here and try to crush indigenous Ecuadorians saying, ‘Oh, you primitive people, THIS is how you should run your own culture!’”

4: “Save the ecosystem?! How ignorant are you! Don’t you see how much our education and our own health care is lacking? How dare you try to help animals and the environment before people!”

And thus, I had my new plan to tackle problems here.

Next Monday’s post will start to go over each new tactic.

The post below describes the increased actions that followed the initial smuggling investigation.

Increased Actions and Results

The revelations of the previous week were bleak, but my mentor had a good point that could not be ignored. Due to the nature of the problem, I realized that any investigation required overwhelming evidence, and evidence that left the government blameless. I increased the intensity of my investigation, and worked to gather as much evidence to get into the smuggling industry as I could.

On the other side of the problem, I tried to work to help the adopting effort, so that people could be presented with great, homeless animals that they didn’t have to pay for. Nikki Wolf put his paws on the cages of feral cats who were caught in the wild, calming them as they were being socialized. A credit to his race, people would often say, “I DO NOT like cats, but I love Nikki Wolf.” :)

Nikki Wolf making rounds.to make sure everyone’s doing well.

Getting reliable informants wasn’t easy, and many said it would be impossible, but if this fragile and highly consequential ecosystem was to have a chance, I had to find at least one, by painstakingly combing the neighborhoods where I knew smuggling thrived. It took weeks, but I finally found one informant ready to help me.

This informant had access to a small but significant amount of evidence of animal smuggling and commercial breeding. So I hounded this case on an hourly basis trying to get it ready for a bust, so we would have at least one bona fide lead into this organized crime world. And then finally, one day, I had a guarantee that there would be enough evidence to get into the greater organization if we made a bust on this one local commercial breeding operation. So, on I gathered all the evidence I had access to and approached an Ecuadorian law enforcement office. My informant wasn’t afraid to come forward, so I presented the informant’s direct evidence and testimony too.

The law enforcement office said, “This is a horrendous crime! Thank you for this information! We will make the bust today… wait, make that, tomorrow morning.” I thought, that was it, we finally had our way into this business, and we could start a larger investigation starting from this bust. I kept this quiet; I didn’t even tell my informant that I was going to the authorities yet, and I only told the heads of the law enforcement division.

That afternoon, however, I got a rude wake-up call. My informant called me, dismayed. “I don’t know what just happened! This illegal local breeding business has been operating the same way every day for months, but suddenly, this afternoon, they started getting rid of all their evidence! And it’s like they know I’m informing on them! They’re suddenly changing their cover story, to ME! They’re changing their entire operation so that you can’t tell this business ever existed there!”

This was a terrible blow. This was everything I had. I was at a loss. And unfortunately, I was about to encounter a much bigger problem the Galapagsos had.

Animal Welfare

Around that time, Nikki Wolf became sick. The Animal Balance campaign was long over, so those campaign veterinarians had left the Galapagos already. Thus, I gave Nikki Wolf over to government offices concerned animal welfare in the Galapagos, and they said they would treat him, for which I was grateful. But they later gave me back a near-skeleton of a cat, as they were ultimately not trained, staffed, or equipped to treat him. After a few hours of his getting considerably worse, I brought him back, begging them to help, which is when I made a terrible discovery.

There are no full-time vet offices in the Galapagos. None. The government office wasn’t able to even begin an examination, and they couldn’t figure out how to get a saline drip to work so they just didn’t do anything about his skeleton state. They didn’t know how to do anything to help him, so they gave him back to me asking me to feed him chicken soup every ten minutes until he got better.

I scoured the islands looking for vet care. Everywhere I went, and no matter which office or group I asked, the answer was the same as the government’s response to animal crimes: “Well, people shouldn’t have cats or dogs here, so no, we’re not going to support any vet care. The cats and dogs are the problem. They should all just go.” So not only would no human receive justice for torturing and smuggling animals, but the only way for the Galapagos to solve the problem, was to hope all the cats and dogs died of injury or disease (even though typical dog and cat illnesses will easily spell doom for all the endemic animals of the Galapagos too). Nikki Wolf’s health deteriorated by the hour, and there was nothing I could do about it but watch and hold him while he slowly got weaker. The Sea Shepherd office was remarkably supportive and gave me any resources they could offer, and Alex and the other office people were fantastic about helping care for and feed him, but there was ultimately nothing they could do for his health. I was in constant email contact with Animal Balance vets in the US, but they couldn’t take blood of fluid samples from my cat, nor could they physically examine him, so all they could do was guess.

On October 27th, one month after Ecuador passed a historic constitution saying that nature had rights, a few hours before my birthday, my cat Nikki Wolf died. He died in the middle of the Sea Shepherd office, because there was literally no place else on the Galapagos that would take him. He died because he was the only criminal that the government decided was worth punishing.

My return ticket to New York was scheduled for the very next week.

Next Monday’s post will cover the events leading up to my scheduled departure from the Galapagos.

Canada’s seal hunt is the largest annual slaughter of marine mammals in the world

On Tuesday, March 3rd, a Canadian senator made the unorthodox move of proposing an end to the annual Canadian baby seal hunt. The proposal has been getting less than an enthusiastic response in the Canadian government, but it’s the first step towards ending the largest annual slaughter of marine mammals in the world, and you can show your support for this move.

Canadian senator Mac Harb proposed to end the annual commercial seal hunt, which results in the deaths of over 200,000 seals in Canada annually (over a quarter of a million seals in 2008), although no one in the Canadian senate voted to second his proposal.

Despite a lack of local support, Harb’s proposal is indicative of the entire world’s growing disgust of the baby seal pelt industry. For instance, a day before Harb’s proposal, the European Union’s parliament (internal market and consumer protection committee) voted to support the ban of all seal products. Not only that, but even Russia has now banned its own baby seal hunt, as Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin stated that the “bloody industry” should have been banned long ago.

Once again, the Canadian proposal has lacked support in Canada’s government. But you can show your own support for the bill. To send letters of support, the e-mail address for Senator Mac Harb is harbsealbill@sen.parl.gc.ca, and his postal address (free postage since it’s to the House) is:

Senator Mac Harb: House of Commons
Parliament Buildings
Ottawa, Ontario
Canada
K1A 0A6

For more information on the Canadian seal hunt, the marine conservation group Sea Shepherd Conservation Society has a helpful page on hunt facts.

One of the unsterilized goats on Isabela Island, usually kept hidden from view

From September to December 2008, the vegan conservation group Sea Shepherd waged a fight to protect the ecosystem and all the animals of the Galapagos Islands in Ecuador. This blog recounts what happened in that time, serving for the group.

The post below describes the government reaction to the initial live animal smuggling investigation.

Government Reaction

Trying to get the government to take the live animal smuggling problem seriously isn’t easy. The government knows who is smuggling and who is involved in organized crime, but officials are unwilling to hold the actual criminals responsible, and many officials themselves are involved in the illegal breeding business. Thus, it is not in their interest to draw attention to the human culprits.

As the amount of environmental destruction increased and people outside the Galapagos started to take notice, the government had to start addressing the problem. The government thus went on TV to make a statement against all animal smuggling. It was a warning to all who were involved in the business. However, they didn’t make a statement saying they would punish smugglers. They didn’t make a statement saying they would punish illegal buyers. They didn’t make a statement saying they would punish illegal breeders, since so many officials were involved in the business. Unwilling to implicate any humans, the only safe target to exact justice on were the animals. The government made a statement by murdering a purebred dog on public television, warning everyone in the Galapagos that they would kill any purebred dogs they could find, because the dogs were the problem. As we said, this statement was unfortunately the most typical reaction by the government.

Another telling example happened when I investigated the state of chemical and waste dumping in the national park. I photographed the state of the Isabela Island garbage dump to show the Galapagos government the state of that part of the park.

Feral cats at the Isabela Island garbage dump.

Trash covers 80 square kilometers of the national park on Isabela Island, kept out of sight from the usual paths of tourists.

Everything from chemical to battery waste is dumped indiscriminately into the Isabela Island national park garbage heap by the municipality.

When I brought the photos back, the government decided that the problem wasn’t the rampant corruption that lead to the continual dumping of trash into the national park. They decided that the problem wasn’t the indiscriminate dumping of chemical and battery and mechanical waste into the Galapagos forest. They decided that the ultimate problem of the dump was the kittens inhabiting the dump. They decided to shoot all the cats dead, in order to protect the island birds, thus solving the problem of the dump.

Another prominent example of this government reaction is Project Isabela. Project Isabela is the government’s program to eradicate the many goats on Isabela and Santiago Islands. Non-native, invasive goats breed and spread all over Isabela and Santiago Islands each year, destroying the flora of the islands, leading many native tortoises and other endemic creatures of the Galapagos to starve to death (goats are one of the main reasons Lonesome George is now the last living tortoise from Pinta Island). After relocating goats in accessible areas of the islands, the government hired people to fly in helicopters and shoot the remaining goats in inaccessible mountain areas, to protect the ecosystem (a step approved by many conservation groups around the world, to be fair). However, the reason the government keeps having to eradicate the goats every year, is because of people who breed the goats and release more of them into the environment each year (it’s not illegal to own goats, but it is illegal to release them where they’re not allowed). It seems like it should be relatively simple to arrest the few people doing this annual releasing to stop the need for this slaughter. However, as I discovered upon investigating Isabela Island, some of the people breeding goats worked for the government, and there was no way that government workers were going to arrest themselves.

Some people in the government eventually secretly lead me to this hidden, unsterilized goat on Isabela Island, that I photographed with a zoom lens. This goat is owned by people in the Isabela municipality, although they were trying to keep it quiet.

Other people who don’t work for the government (who are much harder to catch) also continue to put goats on each island, to hunt and use for food each year. If no humans are safe to arrest, then the only safe targets to continually exact justice on, are the goats.

These findings were discouraging. I went back to my mentor, who explained the main problem: “The Galapagos is a small community. Not every single person in the government is directly involved with organized crime. But no one is willing to arrest their neighbor’s brother or their cousin’s best friend, over a dog. No one is willing to arrest their co-worker, over a goat. It’s very easy to show results by saying you’re eradicating the animals responsible for destroying the environment, and it leaves people blameless for these crimes.”

At this point, I realized I had to accomplish a lot more if I wanted to keep more animals from getting killed to serve political reasons.

Next Monday’s blog post will cover increased actions and their results.

A husky, a new breed on Galapagos, one that suffers particularly badly from the equatorial heat

From September to December 2008, the vegan conservation group Sea Shepherd waged a fight to protect the ecosystem and all the animals of the Galapagos Islands in Ecuador. This blog recounts what happened in that time, serving for the group.

The post below describes what the start of the campaign was like.

Because of the state of affairs that the office was going through, there was no project waiting for me to tackle when I got here. At first, all I did was rebuild the office IT and data infrastructure, and secure sensitive digital data. But I had no idea how I would spend the rest of my time in the Galapagos, or in fact make any sort of dent in the myriad of conservation problems here. That is, until Animal Balance came to town.

Volunteers of Animal Balance giving vet care to Galapagos dogs.

Animal Balance is a conservation group that goes to exotic ecosystems, and humanely reduces the number of invasive cats and dogs by spaying and neutering them. Alex assigned me to work on the Animal Balance campaign for two reasons. The first reason was that it was a great cause. We went from island to island in the Galapagos, and the campaign ended up spaying and neutering 308 animals, greatly relieving the pressure of invasive animals on the ecosystem. I adopted the cat Nikki Wolf during this campaign, and he actually helped socialize other feral animals who were captured, making them suitable for adoption.

The second, secret reason I was assigned to the Animal Balance campaign, unbeknown to even the staff of Animal Balance, was to use the opportunity to investigate the source of illegally smuggled animals and put a stop to it.

Animal Smuggling

At this moment, one of the leading causes of ecosystem and animal suffering in the Galapagos is the illegal live animal trade. The law of the Galapagos says that it is illegal for anyone to bring any cats or dogs to the islands, or to commercially breed them in the Galapagos. However, despite that law or the efforts of Animal Balance, we discovered that the number of cats and dogs and the variety of pet breeds in the Galapagos has been skyrocketing the past year.

The Galapagos is a World Heritage Site that Ecuador and the UN have decided should be kept as an ecosystem and wildlife preserve. As such, it is illegal to bring in any cats or dogs to this sanctuary for exotic birds and iguanas and other rare life. However, many of the people who live here can’t understand why they are not allowed to have the same things that everyone else in the world is allowed to have: purebred dogs, purebred cats, everything that makes a happy family, just like everyone in first world countries have. So even though it’s illegal, many Galapaganeans decide to illegally buy things that seems harmless: puppies and kittens.

People all over the Galapagos acquire new purebred puppies and kittens despite the law.

As harmless as it seems, this has an immense impact on everything in the Galapagos. Animal smuggling is a huge and organized criminal business, the animals themselves suffer to a nearly incomprehensible degree, and the ecosystem of the Galapagos is the ultimate victim of it all.

The initial investigation yielded the following findings:

Purebred cats and dogs are smuggled to the islands by boat, sedated to be kept quiet and put into tiny containers when they’re taken ashore. It costs $200 to bring each puppy/kitten by ship to land, and another $100+ to deliver them to customers once on shore. Depending on the breed, they can cost wealthy breeder customers on the islands up to $1000 each. I got leads on when to catch certain ships bringing contraband to the islands, and I sneaked onto secluded docks at night to photograph these activities. Unfortunately, all that proved was that people were unloading unmarked cargo after hours illegally. It wasn’t enough evidence by any means to get law enforcement interested. I had to dig deeper.

Isabela Island. It’s illegal to unload cargo at night in the Galapagos, after customs and immigration closes.

Without anyone to examine the contents of each crate that’s unloaded after hours, anything could be shipped to shore in giant crates.

Investigating further revealed that breeder puppies are kept in wretched conditions, made into puppy factories usually without food or water most of the time, and without any space to walk; many go insane from their awful conditions. Sometimes they’re penned up and made to breed with their siblings. I eventually obtained undercover footage of some of these dogs’ situations (confidential footage which I can’t yet share with non-law enforcement groups, to protect the identities of those who helped me obtain this footage), and some of the dogs had obvious debilitating and sometimes life-threatening health problems.

Even rare, highly sought-after breeds are used (in usually deplorable conditions without food or water or the removal of their feces) and discarded, bound to be put down after they serve their business purpose. While they are in service, you can hear them whine constantly out of despair, if they’re not shell shocked to silence.

The people in charge of the illegal commercial breeding business are affluent, with clout, who know how to exploit the impoverished. These wealthy business people or ship smugglers often use poor middlemen to make the sales for them. One of the ways we know that the business is a unified organization is because the breeders/smugglers then train each new puppy owner on what to say; the cover stories are the same for each purebred animal owner, regardless which island they’re on. For instance, a very common cover story is that the purebred pet was obtained as a rescue case from an arrested illegal breeder from a year ago. Of course, since 90% of the breeds on the islands have only appeared in the last year, these stories are false. There is a new breed of dog arriving (most recently pugs, welsh corgis, and dachshunds), never before seen on the islands, about every two weeks. The wealthiest breeders also export purebreds from one island to others. Many purebred animals are discarded and left on the streets after they grow larger, so the owners can get more small and cute puppies.

Exotic breeds like cocker spaniels were not seen in the Galapagos a year ago. Now they’re commonplace.

The result of this is a ridiculously increased rate of ecological destruction and animal suffering. Sea lions, island birds with no natural predators, marine iguanas, and nesting sea turtles have no chance against predatory cats and dogs that are now all over the beaches. It is currently the middle of hatching season for green sea turtles in the Galapagos, and the dwindling number of turtle hatchlings can be seen torn to pieces by purebred cats as the turtles hatch, the half-eaten carcasses of baby turtles littering the beaches during this feast. Dogs eat slow-moving marine iguanas who have no defense against the dogs. Dogs also attack sea lions who are no match for the typical purebreds on the islands. One of the biggest problems is the diseases like Parvo and Distemper that come with new dogs, that people are afraid of since the islands are not prepared for such diseases. Last year, over 20 dogs died of Parvo on the islands.

Many problems stem from new stray cats and other invasive species mingling with the native animals.

It wasn’t easy acquiring a lot of this information. As a gringo, I wasn’t trusted by many islanders in the business. I met a lot of people who turned out to aiding this organized crime, and I had to claw my way day after day in order to get any modicum of reliable information. I also combed through every government office until I found some willing to slip me information under the table.

During this time, I also met someone who became a mentor, someone who used to be one of the top government officials in Ecuador before quitting in the face of all the government corruption. This mentor warned me of the futility of trying to get the government to help solve this ecological problem, but at first I didn’t listen.

Next Monday’s blog post will cover the government reaction and resulting fallout from the investigation up to this point.

One of the illegal tuna boats of the Galapagos

From September to December 2008, the vegan conservation group Sea Shepherd waged a fight to protect the ecosystem and all the animals of the Galapagos Islands in Ecuador. This blog recounts what happened in that time, serving for the group.

The blog post below describes what the state of the Galapagos is, and what has transpired there with Sea Shepherd before my arrival.

The view from the Isabela Island radar base.

First of all, the people responsible for a lot of the progress in this campaign can never be thanked or recognized, because identifying them would put them at great physical risk. That said, the residents of the Galapagos who helped us are absolutely invaluable to our cause, and without their support, our task here would be nearly futile.

And before we start talking about the actual campaign for conservation and animal welfare, it’s important to understand the state of conservation in the Galapagos, and the state of Sea Shepherd here, in order to understand the nature of the fight.

The Galapagos Islands

As the residents of the Galapagos say, “The Galapagos isn’t Ecuador.” It’s its own world, with its own culture, history, and conflicts.

One of the native residents of the Galapagos, asking to see my authorization papers.

The Galapagos is absolutely nothing like any guidebook makes it out to be. It is a beautiful archipelago that needs a lot more help than anyone thinks. The sad truth is that the Galapagos is under such extreme ecological pressure that many of the unique plants and animals that identify these islands are rapidly going extinct, and it may be a few short years before all the amazing species of this archipelago disappear completely.

A blue-footed boobie bird, one of the unique species that people visit the Galapagos to see.

Twenty years ago, there were around 1,000 people total on Santa Cruz island, the most populace island of the Galapagos. This year, there are nearly 20,000 residents of this island, and it sees well over 1,000 new tourists per month, around 160,000 visitors a year, with over 350 truck taxis driving on it 24 hours a day. The impact of that many people absolutely crushes the ecosystem for many reasons.

Most visitors to the Galapagos don’t expect to see actual towns and cities.

In 2000, the Galapagos islands produced around 10 tons of garbage for the whole year. In just the first three quarters of 2008, however, the islands already produced 800 tons of trash. That number doesn’t count the tons of plastic products imported by giant cargo ships multiple times per week. But regardless of where it comes from, almost all of the trash is now sitting in the national park or floating in the waters of the Galapagos, killing countless sea turtles, sea lions, unique birds, tropical fish, etc. And these rare, exotic islands with unique forests are not conducive to holding the giant landfills they are now forced to host. At this point, there are more introduced, invasive species like rats, parasites, and crippling animal diseases on Santa Cruz Island than there are endemic species on this island.

Isabela Island’s National Park Lands.

Trash brings us to one of the biggest problems of the Galapagos: its infrastructure has largely not changed from back when it had a small number of people. Thus, there is still zero sewage treatment, the electricity comes from diesel generators, and in many cases (like the case of Isabela Island, the largest island of the Galapagos), there’s zero recycling. Giant diesel truck trailers need to come every day to keep the Santa Cruz Island power plant running. And all the archipelago’s sewage goes into seep tanks that eventually drain back into the ocean, polluting the water intake for tap water. All this untreated waste causes the Galapagos’ unique sea life to suffer greatly.

Santa Cruz Island is powered by burning huge amounts of diesel every day.

There is no sewage treatment for any of the approximately 30,000 permanent residents of the Galapagos.

Sea lions here now suffer from widespread respiratory problems. Walk to any beach filled with sea lions, and you can hear them all coughing and hacking and wheezing for breath, which isn’t normal for these populations. On top of that, all of the floating garbage/plastics, oil slicks, chemical pools, new speedboats, and ubiquitous powerful outboard engines are each shredding a different part of this tiny and delicate marine ecosystem. Every single person who comes to the Galapagos directly contributes to the destruction of the Galapagos and its animals.

A lot of people think things are improved now, however, thanks to the new constitution of Ecuador, and that is an issue that needs to be addressed as well.

The New Constitution

On September 27th, 2008, Ecuador voted to pass a new constitution with a fascinating chapter on nature. A US group, the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, helped draft the Article, which reads:

“Nature or Pachamama, where life is reproduced and exists, has the right to exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions and its processes in evolution. Every person, people, community or nationality, will be able to demand the recognitions of rights for nature before the public bodies.”

Around the world, people praised Ecuador for this passage on nature in the new constitution. However, being realistic about this constitution paints a very bleak picture. But being realistic about the constitution is absolutely necessary if we want to address the actual issues that will bring about positive change.

The passage is worded very nicely to say nice things about the environment. It sounds good to people who are thousands of miles away. But the truth is, that passage has not caused a single change in the laws, policies, actions, government organizations, or law enforcement practices involved in the ecology or animals. And in fact, it’s worded so vaguely that it can do very little to effect change.

First of all, despite the constitution, there are still ZERO animal welfare laws here. That did not change with the passing of the constitution. We proposed to the government that animal welfare policies be brought to the Galapagos, but many (not all, fortunately) of those government offices resisted, and some even laughed in response.

On each island, you’ll see many roosters tethered on the streets. Tethered roosters are being trained for cockfights.

Let us examine the constitution further:

“Art. 4. The State will apply precaution and restriction measures in all the activities that can lead to the extinction of species, the destruction of the ecosystems or the permanent alteration of the natural cycles. “

Again, this sounds good, but it is worded in a way that demands that zero government offices do or change absolutely any of their policies. To illustrate: When I visited Isabela Island, the largest island in all the Galapagos, I proposed to some people in the municipality at the time, that they increase the fine for breaking conservation laws, in light of this new vote. Their response, literally, was, “No. People won’t want to pay it if we raise it that much.” Despite the new constitution, the ecology laws were still based on what the public wanted at the time.

Many of the people who ran the Galapagos are politicians who wanted to get re-elected, so they worked hard to give the people what they wanted. And at that time, the people wanted more park land to clear and develop for new houses, more fishing rights, more rights to own cats and dogs that destroy the flora and fauna of the national park, more and bigger boats to use for tourism and fishing, more hotels to work at in the middle of prime park land, more supplies imported on giant cargo ships to make more buildings and shops, more airports carved through park lands, more docks carved out of rare mangroves, more gasoline to fuel more cars, more meat products despite the national park regulations, and as many modern conveniences as the rest of the world has.

And the government had been delivering to the people in spades. For weeks now, long after the new constitution was passed, some people in the municipality had been constructing new tourist docks here in Puerto Ayora, destroying the last vestige of the city’s coast that was not developed. They have not even finished building one-quarter of it yet, but they have already walled off the area and dumped countless dumptrucks full of rocks and stone into the walled harbor, filling it up to the walls, and killing all the rare iguanas, endemic crabs, rays, and pufferfish that we used to enjoy watching in that part of the harbor a few weeks ago. The new docks, which will eliminate a huge area of the port that sea lions lived and hunted in, will accommodate well over four times the ships that the current docks can handle. The people making the docks are some of the people who create official policies, and there is nothing in the constitution that actually demands they change these policies.

Puerto Ayora, October 29th, 2008. The spot where we watched iguanas, pufferfish, sea birds, and endemic Galapagos crabs a few days earlier. The municipality is walling off the area and all its marine inhabitants.

Puerto Ayora, October 29th, 2008. The municipality dumps many dumptrucks full of stone and dirt into the harbor. All the iguanas sitting there are now dead.

Puerto Ayora, November 4th, 2008. For many days after they wall in the area of fish and other marine life, the workers toss in many trucks-full of boulders into the water, to fill it up.

Puerto Ayora, November 12th, 2008. The area is completely filled.

Puerto Ayora, November 13th, 2008. The dock begins to expand further into the areas that sea lions live and hunt.

Puerto Ayora, November 17th, 2008. They fill in a lot more of the bay with rocks.

Puerto Ayora, November 27th, 2008. This length of dock, which will fill in a large part of the bay with more rocks, is only one-fourth of the final length of dock they plan to make.

And this is just one example; there are countless examples everywhere you look. Outside of this city’s limits, the municipality had been clear-cutting more and more acres of land to create new buildings, extending the size of the populated area of the Galapagos. Wildlife had been getting pushed back and back.

And, frankly, despite these progressive passages in the new constitution, there’s another much less advertised but equally as powerful statement counteracting those progressive passages.

“Art. 5. The persons, people, communities and nationalities will have the right to benefit from the environment and form natural wealth that will allow wellbeing.”

If the National Park catches a poacher, the poacher (who can be a foreigner or Ecuadorian) can invoke the constitution stating he has the constitutional right to benefit from the environment. And although people argue the constitution could mean this or that, its actual meaning will be a mystery until the Supreme Court makes a ruling on it. But considering how frequently Ecuador passes new constitutions, all this arguing could be a moot point before the issue has a chance to be considered by the courts.

If someone wants to improve farm animal health standards on Galapagos, they have to appeal to many levels of government, despite the positive wording of the constitution.

Now, so far, I’ve only talked about when people actually do abide by the law. Unfortunately, a much bigger problem is how some individuals in the government break already existing conservation laws. That’s a problem the new constitution won’t be able to address.

Local Corruption

Mayors, municipalities, and other powerful political figures had often been caught and occasionally even convicted of horrendous crimes against the environment, but they remained in office. For instance, the mayor of Isabela had been arrested five times for absolutely decimating the Galapagos. He bulldozed an entire beach of nesting marine iguanas and their eggs (eliminating an entire year of unique marine iguanas) because he said the egg mounds made the beach look lumpy; he flattened the beach to throw a party there that night. He used (and is currently using) Galapagos National Park lands to dump all the island’s garbage; batteries, plastics, engines, medical waste, toxic chemicals, everything. To keep maintenance costs for rich millionaires on the island low, he runs their sewage pipes into the national park. To list all his environmental atrocities would take days. Yet, no matter how many times he’s arrested or even convicted, he has not been removed from office or punished.

Garbage men dump trash into the National Park in Isabela. I was warned by the municipality not to let them see me photograph them, since they may get angry and come after me.

Another prominent Galapaganean political figure who is running for mayor of Puerto Ayora (capital of Santa Cruz Island), was caught using her roof to dry illegally poached sea cucumbers (incidentally, her famous career quote was, “There is only ONE endangered species in the Galapagos. The PEOPLE!”). On Santa Cruz Island, some people in the municipality recently illegally sold national park land to the public, further extending the borders of populated areas into protected lands. And just a couple weeks ago, a tuna purse-netting ship came to harbor.

It’s completely illegal for pure-netting tuna ships to be here. It’s illegal for ANY large fishing boat to be in the Galapagos. I hired a local panga driver to take me close to the ship so I could take photos of it. He refused to go too close to it. When I asked why, he said it’s because the target vessel was an illegal poaching vessel that paid off the military to be able to be here, and to start killing dolphins and tuna once it leaves this harbor. And if he took the panga too close to the poaching vessel, the poachers would get angry and possibly violent. Poachers who illegally kill dolphins in the national park had absolutely no fear of operating in broad daylight. The locals who wanted to stay within the bounds of the law were the ones who are afraid to go near the poaching operations.

The Rocio, a tuna purse-netting ship. Its presence here in the Galapagos is illegal.

The crew of the Rocio casually prepare to kill dolphins and tuna illegally in the National Park.

The same owners of that boat brought their tuna boat to this same harbor in 2004, where it was discovered they had 35 dead dolphins and 3 dead tuna on board (so they basically illegally murdered 35 dolphins to catch 3 tuna). Sea Shepherd, which had a ship here in 2004, followed them out of the harbor back then and discovered them poaching in the national park. However, the poaching vessel called the Ecuadorian navy to complain about the Sea Shepherd ship, and the navy of the time called the Sea Shepherd ship on behalf of the poaching vessel. And that time’s navy kicked Sea Shepherd out of the Park for the crime of interfering with an illegal poaching vessel. Many of the locals, like ship tour guides who try to report poaching vessels when they see them, say they also feel the pain of this corruption and inaction.

There had been smaller and more ubiquitous examples of this corruption. For instance, it’s completely illegal to have catch and release fishing programs in the Galapagos. Yet, on the main road of the main city of Santa Cruz Island, you could see one of the major tour shops advertising their catch and release tours. The owner of the shop was the brother of one of the former mayors of the town, so the police at the time made no effort to move against him, even long after the new constitution was passed.

The Ninfa dive shop, on the main road of the Galapagos’ biggest city.

The front door of the Ninfa dive shop, advertising the Release Me catch-and-release dive trips.

That, in a nutshell, was the state of the Galapagos when I first arrived three months ago. Unfortunately, the Sea Shepherd office itself was also in a state of trouble starting that year.

Sea Shepherd Galapagos

Sea Shepherd and Ecuador have a very long and complicated history together. Sea Shepherd’s task is to expose and stop illegal poaching and smuggling. The problem was, the military and governments of the Galapagos back then were the ones trafficking these illegally poached goods. Thus, to put it mildly, Sea Shepherd and the government of Ecuador had often not gotten along.

The Ecuadorian military trafficked goods that were illegally poached from the Galapagos, and delivered them to foreign buyers, who were usually Chinese. For foreign poaching ships (most often Costa Rican), the Ecuadorian military protected these ships from Galapagos Park Rangers or from Sea Shepherd ships trying to stop the poaching.

The man in charge of the Sea Shepherd office here prior to this year was a man named Sean O’Hearn. He was extremely effective in his role, which caused endless headaches to the corrupt people in government at the time. He was deported initially in 2000, and then again last year.

Sean O’Hearn, during one of the raids he lead on a shark fin poaching warehouse.

In 2007, O’Hearn lead raids that ended up confiscating 90,000 illegally poached shark fins, and 20,000 illegally poached sea cucumbers. He exposed so much evidence that the Ecuadorian military of the time was trafficking this contraband, that the commandant of the military had to resign or be arrested. Many people were arrested for O’Hearn’s investigations, including the mayor of Isabela.

Then, Ecuadorian President Correa got false news that O’Hearn was breaking into fishermen’s homes and stealing fish. And even though that was a pretty silly rumor to spread about a vegan organization (and conveniently timed), it was the final straw for many members of government, which then sought to deport O’Hearn again. O’Hearn had to go into hiding.

Captain Alex Cornelissen, left, next to Captain Paul Watson, right.

Last year, after O’Hearn fled the country, Captain Alex Cornelissen was sent to be the new head of Sea Shepherd Galapagos. He came here completely alone, with absolutely no knowledge transfer from the old head of the office, and with every government office (including every licensing and registration office) in Ecuador blacklisting Sea Shepherd by order of the federal government. Alex’s main campaign for most of the year was to try and maneuver through the law so our office could simply keep its doors open. Then, in September, I arrived.

The next blog post next Monday will cover the start of the campaign.

Wait, this is…window dressing?

In the continuing exploitation of animals in the interest of selling crap, “design studio” Partners and Spade, which opened last week, apparently has about 15 live birds in one of its windows.

Reader K.C., who tipped us off, tells us the lights are almost always on, which is wreaking havoc on the birds’ sleep cycles, and as a result, some of them are crashing into the window. And because their food and water dishes are on the floor of the “display,” they’re becoming contaminated with urine and feces.

I found some references to aviary construction and aviaries for sale, but that doesn’t justify the owners in keeping these poor birds in a tiny space and basically driving them insane. (I also found references to “collections”; while the writer might have been talking about the artwork in the store, it reminded me of how zoos use the term, which turns my stomach.)

Anyway, the birds don’t belong there, so let the owners know, will you? You can send an
e-mail to Partners and Spade, or call them at 646-861-2827. The store, which is at 40 Great Jones St. bet. Bowery and Lafayette, is open on weekends (Sat. 11-6; Sun. 11-5) and by appointment only on weekdays.

Update: I’m happy to report that P&S e-mailed K.C. to say that the birds will be removed midweek (see the comments). Thanks to everyone who intervened!

Update 2/13/09: The birds are still in the store window! Please continue to call and e-mail and tell management you will not shop at their store until the birds have been removed to a proper home, as promised.

I’d bite too if this guy were dragging me out of bed.

• Think your organic fruits and veggies are antibiotic-free? Think again. Yet another reason to start that victory garden.
• Wanna donate a kidney? You can choose to give one to another animal advocate, like Hillary Rettig did. Apparently you can also have one taken out through your hooha.
• Now that I’ve whetted your appetite: Luna bars and Uncle Eddies cookies were recalled because of the salmonella outbreak.
• Obama’s not thrilled about the pb&j situation. So while he’s made some questionable choices, maybe the appointment of Cass Sunstein as regulatory czar is cause for hope.
• One of the owners of Stogo isn’t vegan. Do you care? I don’t. As long as he respects us, unlike some other restaurateurs.
• Was anyone else a little bit happy to hear that groundhog Chuck bit the mayor? And not surprised that he’s now going to be “retired”? Maybe he was pissed about the new Pedigree commercials using all those wild animals. Especially the one where the guy throws a Frisbee in the bull’s face.
• Speaking of commercials, by now everyone’s seen the PETA ad that was too racy for the Super Bowl. (Not that I watched; there were better things on TV.) I guess sex and football don’t go together. But in the name of synergy, I’m glad someone finally removed the ad for BACON SALT from this article about how well Ellen DeGeneres is doing since she went vegan.

We blogged it a few weeks ago, but this is worth another mention. If you are anywhere near New York City, and you care at all about animal issues, you are a fool and a loser if you don’t visit Banksy’s “Village Pet Store And Charcoal Grill” at 89 7th Avenue between West 4th and Bleeker Street.

The shop touches on humans’ exploitation of animals for food, chemical and behavioral testing, fur, and entertainment. I’ve never been a big fan of Banksy’s drawing/stencil work, but this show is just great, conceptually technologically, and aesthetically. It’s subversive and clever, sure, but also quite touching and unnerving.

It’s great how it’s just a store-front. I suspect most visitors stumbled upon the place, rather than seeking it out. Even if you don’t think you like or understand fine art, you’ll be OK here. It’s just a mock store, with animatronics, just like at Disneyland.

The show closes on October 31st, Halloween. The price and the hours are friendly–free admission, open 10am-midnight. Go!