A video * goes these days around the world: It shows an orangutan in Indonesia, on an almost cleared tree trunk in front of woodcutters and desperately trying to get past the shovel of an excavator, which stands in his way.
Animal rights activists have put the film sequence on the Internet to draw attention to the destruction of the habitats of the orangutans. Palm oil plantations are increasingly eating their way into the rainforest areas in Southeast Asia.
The local orangutans are killed or displaced during deforestation work. Surviving animals often wander helplessly around the clearings and starve to death.
If the destruction of the rainforest is not stopped immediately, many other animals, such as forest elephants, Sumatrans and Javan Rhino, are threatened with extinction in the wild next to orangutans.
A total of 7.7 million tons of palm oil was imported by EU countries in 2017, the highest amount ever. The cultivated areas for EU biofuel correspondwith 8.8 million hectares ofthe size of Austria!!!.
Two thirds of them are outside the EU.
In Southeast Asia, palm oil plantations for EU biodiesel are expanding to 2.1 million hectares!
There, orangutans, tigers and rhinos lose their habitat. Elephants looking for food on the plantations even die of poisoning. In Borneo, the orangutan population has fallen by 100,000 animals within 16 years.
Since yesterday, hundreds of farmers in France are blocking installations belonging to the oil company Total. They are protesting against planned imports of palm oil, which they see as competing with domestic vegetable oils. At Marseille, Total is building a huge biofuel refinery, where the raw material is mainly tropical vegetable oil.
It is not too late yet: the EU is currently negotiating the future bioenergy policy.
In 2017, the European Parliament decided with an overwhelming majority to end the import of palm oil and the production of biofuel from rainbow clearing vegetable oils.
The European Commission was asked to ban the use of palm oil for biofuel by 2020 at the latest.
Already in January 2018, the European Parliament decided by a large majority that palm oil should be phased out as raw material for the production of biofuel and fuel in power plants in 2020.
But!…. Some EU countries – especially France, Italy and Spain – want to prevent this. Together with Indonesia, Malaysia and the palm oil Mafia-industry, they engage in intensive lobbying in Brussels.
This week the EU negotiations are entering the presumed final and decisive round.
We now have the opportunity to end the fatal biofuel admixture. The Commission, the Parliament and the Council of Ministers are actually negotiating bioenergy policy until 2030.
Please sign the petition: To: EU Commission, EU Parliament, EU Council of Ministers and the governments of the 28 member countries.
Posted on June 15, 2018 by Serbian Animals Voice (SAV)
From the 10th of June, Icelandic fishermen will again hunt for fin whales.
Two years they had paused.
Fin whales are a endangered species, 161 whales may kill the fishermen, this quota has allowed the Icelandic government.
Only: Worldwide, fewer and fewer people want to eat the meat. Icelanders hardly. The Finn whale hunting is a minus business for the fishermen.
How many whales are hunted on average?
– In the 20th century, a total of 2.6 million whales were killed worldwide (Marine Fisheries Review)
– Norway killed 1480 whales in 2016 (Whale and Dolphin Conservation)
– Japan killed 300 animals (IFAW) in 2017
– The animals are hunted with harpoons. Modern models explode on impact or in the animal.Often, however, the whales do not die immediately, but drown in a span of up to 30 minutes before being pulled on board and gutted.
Why are they doing that ?!
The fish export is beside the tourism the largest economy branch of the Icelanders.
The largest whale company in Iceland and the only one that hunts the endangered fin whale is Hvalur. Its biggest sales market is Japan.
Because Japan demanded high quality standards and Icelandic whale meat was contaminated with environmental toxins, Hvalur had to cease whaling for two years.
Meanwhile, Japan has loosened its import regulations again. Hvalur, it seems, is taking the opportunity to boost whaling after two years of slacking back into export, and thus Iceland’s economy.
In collaboration with the University of Iceland, Hvalur also wants to develop medicines for iron deficiency – from fin whale bladders and bones.
A bloody job
Why this nonsense is:
Iceland’s largest market, Japan, hunts whales themselves.
The whale meat is offered annually at auctions. A 2012 ICSN Dolphin and Whale Action Network survey shows that three-quarters of the meat has not been sold. Even the Japanese fishermen are thus sitting on their flesh. A study by the Nippon Research Center in 2008 shows the reason: The Japanese do not want whale meat: 95 percent of Japanese rarely or never eat this meat.
The situation is similar in Iceland. The minke whale is processed here at most, but almost only in Reykjavik and for tourists, who think they have a supposedly “traditional” specialty in front of them. Only 3 percent of the locals eat whale meat themselves, according to the International Fund for Animal Welfare.
Who is behind the company Hvalur?
Mastermind Kristjan Loftsson
Kristjan Loftsson is managing director of the whaling company Hvalur and probably one of the richest and most influential Icelanders. He is involved in other fishing companies, also earned with redfish, cod and Co.
He does not need the whaling financially. And yet he leads in.
Marine biologist Thilo Maack from Greenpeace says: “Hvalur’s whaling is a total minus business and the question of ‘why’, can only be answered politically.”
The company Hvalur founded Loftsson’s father in 1947 – when the greasy whale meat was a grateful food shortly after the Second World War. Even before that, the Icelanders had eaten whale, but only stranded.
With the Loftsons, Icelandic whaling became industrial.
Iceland is thus in violation of the International Whaling Commission’s Biodiversity Convention, although it is a member. With the export of the meat it violates the Washington Convention (CITES). But…There are no legal consequences for Hvalur or Iceland.
Thilo Maack of Greenpeace says: “Loftsson does not want to be told by the world community, what he has to do and what he must not do”!!
Who is the fin whale?
– He is the second largest mammal in the world. Adult finbacks grow up to 27 meters long.
– He is up to almost 50 km / h fast, dives up to 230 meters deep and can communicate with his conspecifics over a distance of up to 850 kilometers.
– However, the hunting has thinned out the populations so much that the fin whale appears on the IUCN Red List as “endangered”.
– Around 40,000 fin whales live in North Atlantic waters.
That’s the opposite movement
Katrín Jakobsdóttir, the new left-green Prime Minister of Iceland, had already called for a review of the need for whaling in 2014. It could now argue that the government will not issue any more quotas after this year’s hunting season.
And: For decades, Greenpeace has been trying to prevent the hunt itself by taking action on the high seas, as well as stopping reefers loaded with whale meat on their way to Japan. In the past, some airlines refused to transport the meat.
It could soon be a criminal offence to attack a police dog or horse after Michael Gove gave the government’s support to a bill implementing “Finn’s Law”.
Named after brave police German shepherd Finn, who was stabbed in the head and chest while chasing a robbery suspect, a Service Animals Offences Bill will be read in parliament on Friday and is likely to have more of a chance of becoming law now that there is backing from government.
Criminal damage is currently the only available charge for someone who attacks a police or service animal – even though dogs are often bitten, kicked and strangled while in the line of duty.
Finn’s Law would make it a specific criminal offence to attack a police animal.
Announcing his backing, the environment secretary said: “This Bill will offer stronger protection for the many brave service animals that help to protect us.
“This Government is continuing to raise the bar on animal welfare, whether it be for our beloved pets, brave service animals or on farms.”
Finn saved his handler PC Dave Wardle’s life while they chased a robbery suspect in 2016.
The suspect injured PC Wardell’s hand and stabbed Finn in the head and chest as he tried to stop him from getting away.
While the suspect was charged with actual bodily harm for his injuries to PC Dave Wardell, he was only charged with criminal damage for almost killing Finn, as dogs are considered property in the eyes of the law.
The Bill would amend a 2006 Animal Welfare Act to address concerns about defendants’ ability to claim they were justified in using physical force to protect themselves from a service animal.
Sir Oliver Heald, who tabled the bill, said he was “delighted” at receiving government support and was now looking forward to the legislation passing through parliament.
“This is a good day for all of our brave service animals,” said the North-East Hertfordshire MP.
But we welcome yet another decision that an operation which has many outlets in the UK has decided to ditch plastic straws and instead convert to paper straws.
Serbian Animals Voice (SAV) 