It hasn’t been a great month for the international zoo community.
Last week, an Australian conservation group launched legal action against the World Association of Zoos and Aquariums (WAZA), as pressure builds for enforced animal welfare standards in zoos worldwide.
Australia for Dolphins is accusing WAZA of making misleading and deceptive statements when it insists that all its members abide by an official Code of Ethics and Animal Welfare.
Vast evidence is now emerging to the contrary, including allegations of beatings, drugging, exploitation and neglect within several WAZA zoos.
From elephant beatings and a spree of fatal poisonings in India’s Mysore Zoo to the killing and public dissection of a “worthless” giraffe at Copenhagen Zoo, WAZA members are no strangers to controversy.
But, perhaps most shocking of all is the role WAZA itself appears to play in the annual dolphin hunts of Taiji.
For years, the world authority has allowed its member, the Japanese Association of Zoos and Aquariums (JAZA), to purchase animals caught during Taiji’s violent hunts. This runs counter to WAZA’s public condemnation of the slaughters, which kill thousands of dolphins each season. Growing demand in the world aquarium market means that the sale of wild-caught dolphins is now the chief economic incentive behind the hunts. Over half of JAZA’s 65 members are estimated to purchase drive hunt dolphins.
While WAZA insists that is a relatively “minor number,” last week its own name was pulled into the controversy. Allegations have emerged that WAZA was complicit in negotiating private deals between Taiji fishermen and JAZA to ensure its member received priority choice of dolphins.
Chairman of JAZA, Kazutoshi Arai, has partially confirmed these reports, stating that his association enjoys first pick of all bottlenose dolphins captured during September each year.
“We select the dolphins and the rest are released, but only during September,” Arai said.
Australia for Dolphins is now calling on WAZA to end all involvement in the Taiji drive hunts – both directly and by association.
Off the back of its #ShameWAZA petition which has already attracted close to 50,000 signatures, the group is demanding that WAZA’s Code of Ethics become an enforceable edict across all member zoos.
And they are not alone.
In the last decade, a long list of conservationists and animal welfare groups have asked WAZA to strengthen its stance on dolphin hunting.
Australia for Dolphins CEO, Sarah Lucas, believes there’s no more time for fruitless discussion when thousands of dolphins are suffering in Taiji each year.
“I personally made the trip to Geneva and met with WAZA at their headquarters,” said Lucas. “Astonishingly, the WAZA representative dismissed my concerns, and excused the dolphin hunts as ‘cultural.’”
If the legal action is successful, Lucas says WAZA will need to “obtain assurances from its members that they will immediately stop purchasing from the hunts, and expel those members who won’t give assurances.”
As to the many other breaches of animal welfare committed by WAZA member zoos, Lucas is equally admonishing:
“WAZA protects its fee-paying members’ interests at the expense of animals. When WAZA brands itself as an organization whose members uphold ‘the highest standards of animal welfare’, that is misleading. If WAZA actually enforced those standards, it could benefit thousands of animals all around the world.”
Whatever WAZA’s next move, it is clear that the world authority on zoos can no longer hide behind a code of ethics posted on a website.
Image source: Liz Lawley/FlickrThe Reason This Unique and Critically Endangered Porpoise Is Smiling. China’s Yangtze finless porpoise has a new chance at survival thanks to a team of conservationists and a couple of trucks.
Eight years ago, the Chinese river dolphin known as the baiji was declared extinct for practical purposes. Conservationists are now determined to avoid a repeat of that tragedy with a similar species, the Yangtze finless porpoise.
They were once plentiful, but today only about 1,000 of these adorable cetaceans remain, mostly in the heavily polluted and trafficked river for which they are named. That number, meanwhile, is rapidly dropping. Scientists estimate that more than 13 percent of the remaining porpoises die every year—up from 6.4 percent in 2011—and fear that the species faces extinction in less than a decade.
That’s why today is a banner day for the Yangtze finless porpoise. Early on March 27, as the sun rose in China, four of the animals completed a 250-mile drive to a new home that could spell salvation for the species—or at least give it some hope.
(Photo: Kent Truog/WWF)
Eight porpoises were captured earlier this month in Poyang Lake in eastern China, which holds about half of the species’ population. A process called “acoustic drive netting” was used: The animals were slowly guided into smaller and smaller areas between boats and sandbars until they could be carefully caught with nets designed to protect their fins.
“The whole process is supposed to avoid direct contact and minimize the chance of injury,” said Zhang Xinqiao, senior officer for WWF-China’s finless porpoise project, who was part of the working team handling the capture and relocation.
Equal care was taken on the long journey. The porpoises were kept in tanks on hammocks; their bodies were about 60 percent submerged to relieve the pressure their weight would create on their internal organs. The truck drivers made sure to avoid any unnecessary braking to reduce stress on the porpoises.
(Photo: Kent Truog/WWF)
Once they arrived, it was time for a massage and a small meal. “After a long-distance transportation, muscle rigidity might happen to the porpoises and weaken their swimming capacity,” Zhang said.
This morning, the first four porpoises were released into the He-wang-miao/Ji-cheng-yuan oxbow (a U-shaped lake), where it’s hoped they will breed and start a new population. The lake is home to 34 fish species, and commercial fishing has just been banned in a big portion of the lake, so there should be plenty for the new residents to eat.
“Lack of food is one of the biggest threats to finless porpoises,” Zhang said.
The remaining four will be released a few days from now into the nearby Tian-e-zhou oxbow, which already has 45 finless porpoises. These new additions will help to improve the genetic diversity of the population there.
While all of this is going on, WWF and local environmental organizations are working to improve conditions for Yangtze finless porpoises in their other habitats.
This is just the beginning. Tian-e-zhou now has just about all of the porpoises that it can hold, so four animals from the original population will join the new group at He-wang-miao/Ji-cheng-yuan later this year. Another four will make the journey in 2017. The working group, which is led by China’s Ministry of Agriculture, hopes the two sites will eventually hold a combined 100 porpoises.The biggest success so far is at Dongting Lake, which holds about 100 porpoises. New regulations have helped to eliminate the threat of illegal fishing there, and as a result, Zhang said, the number of fish available to the porpoises has increased fivefold since 2012.
That might be enough to keep this critically endangered speciessmiling for generations to come.
How the Toxic Culture of Consuming Whale and Dolphin Meat Impacts People
We have been warning about mercury in whale and dolphin meat for decades, yet the people who eat whales and dolphins continue to ignore the consequences.
There is no necessity to kill and eat pilot whales and dolphins in the Faroes, Norway, Japan or Iceland. Much of the meat from whales killed in Greenland is not eaten by indigenous people, and our investigations have exposed the fact that whale meat from endangered whales killed in Greenland is served to tourists in hotels, restaurants and cruise ships.
A recent shipment of whale meat from Iceland to Japan was recently dumped by the Japanese because of the high levels of mercury. This is an incredible waste of the lives of these whales illegally killed in Iceland.
Commercial whaling has been outlawed by the International Whaling Commission since 1986. Norway, Japan, Iceland and Denmark are all illegally involved in commercial whaling in violation of the international moratorium on commercial whaling.
But for all the chatter about mercury in whales and dolphins, it seems to make very little difference to the people who kill and eat them.
What bothers me most is that very little is said about the effect of mercury and other heavy metals on the many species of whales and dolphins themselves. People make a choice to eat contaminated and toxic whale and dolphin meat. They make a choice to eat fish contaminated with mercury. The whales and dolphins do not have a choice and their health is being seriously compromised by mercury and heavy metal poisoning in the sea.
What is the impact upon the intelligence of marine mammals? What is the effect upon the physiology of marine mammals?
Thousands of sea lions are washing up dead on the beaches of the West Coast of the United States. The bodies of dolphins are washing ashore on beaches around the world.
The Ocean has been the dumping ground of industrialized society for well over a century and the accumulations of chemicals, plastic, sewage, radiation and heavy metals is diminishing biodiversity, from the plankton to the great whales.
The Ocean is dying and when the Ocean dies, we all die. Diminishment of life in the Ocean means the diminishment of civilization. The death of diversity in the Ocean will mean the death of humanity.
Consuming Poisonous Meat in the Name of Tradition
The Inuit in the High Arctic defend the eating of whales and seals by saying it is an important part of their culture, yet in the face of data on dangerous toxicity levels in the meat they consume, it is their lives and the lives of their children that will be sacrificed for their culture. Survival means adaptation and adaptation means changing cultural practices or moving geographically to avoid a toxic environment.
Humanity must address the threats facing the diversity of life in the Ocean because if we fail to stop the continued industrialized poisoning of the sea, we will be the victims of our own ignorance and arrogance.
When we point out that eating whale, dolphin and seal is toxic, we’re accused of being culturally insensitive. However poison is poison, and there is nothing culturally insensitive about stating the facts on mercury levels and their impact on the health of people, and biodiversity in marine ecosystems.
Kuru is a lethal degenerative neurological disease that killed primarily women and children in Papua New Guinea. It was caused by a prion ingested during the eating of human brain tissue. It was a part of tribal culture to eat human brains. The solution was to convince the tribes to stop eating human flesh.
In the same way, the prion that caused mad cow disease was caused by feeding ground-up brains and spinal cords back to the cows. The solution was to stop that practice.
The Maya, the Nazca, and so many other cultures died when the environment around them was compromised and could no longer support the lives of the people. The laws of nature do not discriminate.
A Vicious Cycle
The logic is very simple. If something is poison it should not be eaten, for any reason, by any person, anywhere. If people choose to do so, not much can be done to stop it. The role of science and health authorities, however, is to warn people of the dangers.
To willfully continue to ingest mercury-poisoned whale, dolphin and seal meat is nothing short of suicidal, and when toxic meat is deliberately fed to children it is a form of child abuse, regardless of culture or tradition.
Conditions on this planet are rapidly changing for many reasons but primarily because of overpopulation and industrialization. The Inuit and the Faroese quite rightly say that they are not the major contributors to the problem.
Unfortunately though, human civilization is an all-pervasive web and every part of that web affects every other part of the web. There are simply no safe places for any culture to survive independent of the whole of humanity.
Those who continue to eat whales, dolphins and seals will suffer the consequences just as those who continue to consume factory-farmed animals and produce laced with pesticides.
No amount of lamentation or cultural justification will right the wrongs. Poison does not discriminate. People have the option to refrain from ingesting toxic meat and fish.
Unfortunately, marine wildlife does not have that option.
Image source: Wade Lehmann/Flickr
This is a huge victory in our long-running legal battle to end the Navy's senseless attack on whales -- and we have NRDC Members and activists like you to thank.
