Posted on November 25, 2019 by Serbian Animals Voice (SAV)
Koalas ‘functionally extinct’ after Australia bushfires destroy 80% of their habitat!
Toni Doherty, the woman who rescued a badly burnt and wailing koala from an Australian bushfire was reunited with the koala now known as Lewis on Wednesday (November 20) at the Port Macquarie Koala Hospital.
Doherty told local broadcaster Network Nine that it was ‘just natural instinct‘ for her to rush to Lewis’ aid, wrapping the animal in her shirt and a blanket and pouring water over it.
At the hospital, Clinical director Cheyne Flanagan said he was badly burnt but was on fluids, oxygen, eating and enjoying the five-star service.
The koala populations around Port Macquarie have been a major victim of the flames, with more than 350 of the marsupials feared killed in a major habitat.
As Australia experiences record-breaking drought and bushfires, koala populations have dwindled along with their habitat, leaving them “functionally extinct.”
The chairman of the Australian Koala Foundation, Deborah Tabart, estimates that over 1,000 koalas have been killed from the fires and that 80 percent of their habitat has been destroyed.
“Koala Conservation Australia” President Sue Ashton told the “Sydney Morning Herald” on Monday: “We think most of the animals are burned – it’s a huge cremation, like in a crematorium. They burn sitting in the trees. “
However, some researchers call into question whether koalas are actually functionally extinct, noting how difficult it is to measure total koala populations and populations could be a much larger than estimated by the AKF.
Recent bushfires, along with prolonged drought and deforestation has led to koalas becoming “functionally extinct” according to experts.
In Australia, a heat record of 125 years ago is expected to be broken
Functional extinction is when a population becomes so limited that they no longer play a significant role in their ecosystem and the population becomes no longer viable.
While some individuals could produce, the limited number of koalas makes the long-term viability of the species unlikely and highly susceptible to disease.
Deforestation and bushfires destroy the main nutrient source of koalas, the eucalyptus tree. An adult koala will eat up to 2 pounds of eucalyptus leaves per day as its main staple of nutrients. While eucalyptus plants will grow back after a fire, it will take months, leaving no suitable food source for koalas and starvation a likely scenario for many.
Many are urging the Australian government to enact the Koala Protection Act, written in 2016 but never passed into law and molded after the Bald Eagle Protection Act in the U.S. The Koala Protection Act would work to protect habitats and trees vital to koalas as well as protect koalas from hunting.
Recent viral videos of Australians rescuing koalas has led to increased donation to support hospitalization and help for burned koalas.
To draw attention to these threats, the ” Australian Koala Foundation” calls for the “Save the Koala”month each September.
The aim should be to raise people’s awareness of the issue and to persuade them to do something about the destruction of plant and animal life.
The Port Macquarie Koala Hospital setup a Go Fund Me page seeking donations to help the hospital treat injured koalas. To date, they have raised $1.33 million, well over their $25,000 goal. This comes from over 30,000 donors.
My comment: The fire department had already warned in April.
Twenty-three former fire chiefs and chiefs of action published a letter cautioning the government against “increasingly catastrophic extreme weather events.”
They demanded a meeting that was rejected by the government.
Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack even outrageously went so far as to dismiss climate change completely as a web of “crazy, inner-city leftists.” “We have always had a fire in Australia,” he told media representatives.
Australia is known for its lack of environmental protection. Time and again, the government is being asked to do something about environmental protection, especially since Australia is suffering the most from the effects of climate change.
Australia has over 160 million sheep and 24 million cattle – so it does not take much imagination to understand what these millions of animals can do to the fragile ecosystem of dry soil.
Anyone who has ever traveled through Australia has seen it with their own eyes.
The agricultural lobby is also very strong in Australia, as the first pillar of Australian agriculture is sheep farming, followed by cattle breeding.
Industrial agriculture needs a lot of water, so large dams are built to drain the rivers in Queensland.
They not only pump water from the rivers, they also pollute it with their pesticides and other chemicals.
What if the last water reserves are running out, the rivers are dehydrated or so polluted that any life is impossible ?
Nowhere is it more evident than in Australia.
The earth is burning and we are the culprits.
The terrible, tragic situation that has happened within the last few days regarding the ‘Queen Hind’ and thousands (14,600 as far as we know) of sheep which were being exported live from Romania to the Middle East simply highlights once again the disregard that the human race has for the animal species.
Lets look at this a little more:
Out of over 14,600 animals being carried; we currently understand that only 33 animals have been rescued. The rest are feared drowned. We understand that the ship was leaving Midia in Romania bound firstly for Libya.
The main reason for the trouble at present is that we are being told that the vessel was overloaded; which makes sense as to why it was not stable when it overturned just hundreds of meters after leaving the port.
It has also been stated that low quality crew action or inactions also contributed to the disaster. There was a crew made up entirely of 22 SYRIAN nationals; and the vessel; it was registered in Palau, a remote set of islands in the Western Pacific – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palau and it was constructed way back in 1980 – making it approx. 40 years old.
Details:
Vessel Name
QUEEN HIND
Ship type
Livestock Carrier
Flag
Palau
Homeport
Gross Tonnage
3785
Summer Deadweight (t)
2154
Length Overall (m)
85
Beam (m)
14
Draught (m)
Year of Built
1980
When the Romanians undertook the export of 70,000 live sheep recently from the very same port to the Middle East; a consignment which we tracked and reported on each day, the EU in the form of EU Commissioner (Andriukaitis) – sent a letter allegedly to the Romanian Agriculture Minister (and Minster of Rural Development of Romania) Mr Petre Daea on 10/7/19 asking him (at the time) not to allow the shipment of 70,000 live sheep to the Middle East due to the extreme temperatures – https://worldanimalsvoice.com/2019/08/02/2-8-19-copy-of-the-letter-from-the-eu-do-nothing-commissioner-to-the-animal-welfare-ignorant-romanian-minister/
Basically, Romania, an EU member state; gave the EU Commission the 2 fingers and continued with the export consignment regardless of the fact that the animals were going to suffer in extreme heat and conditions way outside the limits set in Reg 1/2005; or the standard which nations of the EU are supposed to adhere to when transporting live animals !
Romania at the time ignored all the rules and regulations of the EU when it came to transporting live animals; and yet we (as EU citizens) are supposed to vote for MEP’s and expect that the EU Parliament actually carries some ‘clout’ in Brussels with the Commissions. Maybe we should take the EU for what it really is – CRAP.
So what now ? – as all livestock carriers are, antiquated rust buckets converted into carriers when they have passed their ‘best by’ dates; we wait with real interest to see what the EU hierarchy will now do 1) against Romania, and 2) against the entire evil trade of live animals which goes under the banner of ‘live exports’.
This whole incident stinks of cheap and shoddy operation – from a rust bucket carrier vessel, to a cheapo and obviously inexperienced crew from Syria; to the registration of the vessel to some unknown outpost in the middle of the Pacific; to the cheapness of Romania – everything is and has been done on the cheap; and the deaths today of some 14,600 animals by drowning just goes to highlight even more the bent corruptness of this entire trade in live animals around the world.
No doubt we shall read a PR from the EU ‘Eurogroup for Animals’ promising yet more investigations and actions of an EU member state. We say, don’t hold your breath; we have been there so many times before and we all know the weasel words in reality amount to sweet FA. What happened with the ‘Queen Hind’ is an insult to intelligent, decent people; but then we are talking about the EU and the cheap, shoddy export trade which it buries its sick head into.
Shame on them all – a ‘they were going for slaughter anyway’ mentality which we experience from the industry all of the time. A gutless EU and a house full of do nothing MEP’s who ‘represent us’ but don’t have any chance of even holding the EU Commission to account. In a summary word – ‘USELESS’.
Posted on November 25, 2019 by Serbian Animals Voice (SAV)
The cattle truck “Queen Hind” capsized on Sunday shortly after departure from the port of Capu Midia on the Black Sea coast of Romania.The 85 meter long freighter had leaked at 12 o’clock with a load of 14,000 sheep for export to Jeddah in Saudi Arabia.
A large cargo ship carrying more than 14,000 sheep has overturned off the coast of Romania, with rescuers scrambling to save the animals.
The “Queen Hind” capsized on Sunday morning after leaving the port of Midia, near the south-eastern city of Constanța, on the Black Sea coastline.
All crew members – 22 Syrian nationals – were rescued.
An operation involving police, firefighters and the Romanian coast guard was launched to save the sheep.
At least 32 sheep found swimming near the Palau-flagged ship have been rescued, but many are believed to have drowned.
“We have already saved a small number. They were swimming in the sea,” Ana-Maria Stoica, spokeswoman for the emergency services in Constanța, told the BBC. The rescue effort will resume on Monday morning after being paused overnight.
Meanwhile, one crew member was taken to hospital with hypothermia.
“He fell into the sea but was very quickly rescued,” Ms Stoica said, adding that the rest of the crew were “all safe here in the harbour”. It is not yet known what caused the ship to capsize.
An investigation will be carried out when the operation to rescue the sheep and salvage the vessel is finished, authorities said.
The ship, which left Midia at about 12:00 local time (10:00 GMT), was heading to the port city of Jeddah in Saudi Arabia with its cargo. Built in 1980, the vessel measures 85m (278ft) and has a gross tonnage of 3,785, according to the Marine Traffic website.
It had arrived at the port of Midia on 23 November from the Libyan capital, Tripoli, Romanian media reported.
Pictures show the upended vessel on its side a few hundred metres (yards) from the port, about 20km (12 miles) north of Constanța.
The port is primarily used for the supply of crude oil for nearby industrial and petrochemical facilities. But it is also used by cargo ships carrying live animals from Romania, one of the European Union’s biggest exporters of livestock.
Animal rights campaigners and Romania’s main livestock breeder and exporter association, Acebop, called for an urgent investigation into the overturning of “Queen Hind”.
“Our association is shocked by the disaster,” Acebop president Mary Pana told AFP news agency. “If we cannot protect livestock during long-distance transports, we should outright ban them.”
Another shipping incident involving a large cargo ship loaded with livestock happened in the Black Sea off Turkey’s coast in 2017.
In that case, the Togo-flagged vessel collided with a Russian naval spy ship, which sank as a result.
My comment: Christian Romania shakes sheep under the Palau flag to slaughter kosher to Saudi Arabia. This is how the Cargo Mafia works. Never should a crime come from one source. Scatter risk, they say.
Still legal under EU law.
Usually cargo ships are scrapped at 35 years or sold cheaper.
This floating casket was almost 40 years old. Actually, such a ship had to be scrapped or sold slowly at the age of 30 years.
Scrapping costs money.
And not only.
Why scrap, if the cargo is “just animals” and in such “accidents” the insurance intervenes?
Accident? Perpetrators?
This dirty business is about millions of dollars and has his lackeys everywhere.
So it’s not just the cargo mafia’s fault, it’s the criminal politics of those countries that dictate EU transport law.
And last but not least, the fanatical Carnivore consumer is also to blame who reads such news in the media and breathes with relief that fortunately there have been no human sacrifices.
It was just animals, it can happen!
In Australia, a heat record of 125 years ago is expected to be broken
Serbian Animals Voice (SAV) 