There’s a reason why people say a pet is not for Christmas but for life. Animal Shelters often become crowded during the New Year, when people give up the pets they got during the holidays.  Since the Pandemic, animal shelters have seen an even higher uptick in the increase of animals that need adopting. Many people who adopted pets during the pandemic decide they don’t want pet companions when things get busy again.

What You Can Do for Shelter Animals in the New Year

• Shelters all around the US are reaching capacity. If you can’t adopt an animal you may be able to help shelters by fostering a cat or a dog. This will help them manage capacity until the animals in their care can find a new home. 
• Some animal shelters unfortunately euthanize animals in their care when they reach capacity. These shelters are known as “kill shelters.” If you can identify shelters where animals might lose their lives you can reach out to them to see if you can help to foster animals or negotiate to save the lives of animals.
• Educate friends who want a pet on the benefits of adopting a pet from a shelter rather than buying from breeders.
• Support animal shelters in your area by donating money or volunteering on the weekend. Working with animals can be its own reward but any volunteer programs also help the shelters to save money on staff costs and expand their capacity so that more animals can be housed.
• Get to know animals in the shelter and share social media posts to help find homes for them.

Shelter animals are often abandoned by people who can’t afford to house and feed them, or people who simply don’t want the responsibility of caring for an animal. Some of them have suffered abuse or been rescued from breeding programs. Some animals may have specific needs that the owner can’t facilitate. A good way to find out how to help is to follow the social media pages of the local animal shelters in your area so you can learn more about the needs of the animals and find out how to support the shelters.

Vietnam’s illegal wildlife trade is notorious for the sale of dog meat and the cruel treatment of animals caged and sold at so-called “wet-markets.” The country has committed to ending some of these cruel practices, but a probe has found that the cruel animal trade still persists.

The scenes of suffering that play out for animals are diverse and tragic.

Consider the following:

A water-bird is tethered to the top of a small cage with 6 others of its species. This agonizing prison is where these birds will spend their last moments, in noisy markets known as “wet markets.” At these markets animals are slaughtered in front of each other. Many of the animals brought to the markets are rare birds and endangered animals like turtles.

Or imagine what it’s like for a dog who is kidnapped from their owner or off the street, and bundled into a tight cage with other dogs who are frightened, confused, hungry and/or sick. As a captured dog, you witness other dogs being slaughtered in front of you until it’s your turn to be killed. These are the scenes that still play out in Vietnam’s dog meat trade. 88% of people want to end the dog meat trade, but there are no nationwide laws in Vietnam to prevent it.

Wet markets have become notorious since the COVID outbreak due to the health consequences of animal to human disease transmission. At wet markets, animals are kept in miserable conditions and routinely killed without even being stunned.

Vietnam’s prime minister has issued a directive that calls on regional authorities to crack down on wet markets and enforce existing laws to curb the trade of endangered animals. The government has made efforts to curb the dog meat trade in big cities but these efforts are still piecemeal. The investigation by We Animals Asia and the Asia Animals Coalition showed that post-COVID, people have gone back to business as usual, abducting dogs and animals from the wild and enthusiastically slaughtering and selling them at bustling wet markets and restaurants that serve dog meat.

To help animals who are killed and treated cruelly in Asia the public must continue to send the message that these practices are heinous and unacceptable. Work must be done to assist any initiatives that support enforcement and the rescue of animals. To learn more about how to support these efforts, please visit Animals Asia and the Asia Animals Coalition.

Elon Musk is not exactly the world’s most liked figure. One more reason for negative publicity is the revelation that Neuralink, a startup Musk founded in 2016, has killed 1,500 animals since 2018. Allegedly many of the animals suffered horribly from botched experiments.

The animals in question are rhesus macaques who were undergoing experiments by the company to develop a brain chip implant that Neuralink claims could one day help paralyzed people to walk and blind people to see. Beyond the dazzling scientific pitch for this device, there are horrific reports of animals who had their skulls breached to implant the experimental device, and in one case (according to public records) gaps in an animal’s skull were filled with an unapproved adhesive which caused the animal to hemorrhage. In another case a monkey had nausea so severe she had open sores on her esophagus before she was killed. Animals suffered from chronic staph and other infections after having the brain chip implanted.

Other evidence for this horrific treatment is an impassioned internal letter written by an employee concerned about the need to slow down the pace to avoid “hack jobs” on the animals during the experimental surgery. The “break things and move fast” speed has been blamed for the company’s cruel and cavalier treatment of animals. Elon Musk apparently told employees at Neuralink to work “as if they had a bomb strapped to their head.”

The USDA Inspector General has opened a probe into potential Animal Welfare Act violations at Neuralink. This is not a common occurrence, as research standards are often left to institutional Animal Care and Research bodies at universities. The Animal Welfare Act doesn’t adequately protect many animals in the first place. Companion animals and other animals held in captivity have more protection than animals used in agriculture, mice and rats. Overall protections for animals used in research are inadequate.

The USDA probe suggests something has gone horribly wrong with the treatment of animals at Neuralink. Animals have become a casualty not only of a culture that disregards animals, but also of a capitalist, disposable culture of speed and greed.

Animal rights will never be a concern so long as we live in a culture where meeting production schedules are more valuable than life. In this culture, everyone is the product – whether it’s humans or defenseless research animals. Because animals can’t speak for themselves, we allow the abuse of research animals to continue. Paying attention to stories like this can help us stay alert to the violent realities of animal research and hold everyone involved accountable.

The Sumatran tiger is the smallest sub-species of tiger – physically and in dwindling number. Fewer than 400 Sumatran tigers remain in their natural habitat of Sumatra. The tigers are under threat from poachers, palm oil farms and logging. A small number of tigers have recently been born through conservation programs in zoos, but the tiger is still declining every year in Sumatra.

Sumatra is the only place where some of the most endangered animals: rhinos, tigers, orangutans and elephants coexist. All are under threat from farming, logging and development. What’s more, if any of these species become extinct, it will affect the natural balance in the ecosystem.

One of the biggest threats to the tigers is Palm Oil plantations. Forest-clearing for logging and development and poaching are also a threat to the tigers. Three tigers were recently found dead, caught in traps that farmers leave for bears. Poachers have been encouraged by a loss of income during the Pandemic to illegally kill tigers for their teeth and other parts of the animal used in Chinese medicine.

How can this beautiful and rare animal be protected?

Making everyday choices as a consumer can help to protect wildlife and endangered animals and ecosystems. If you want to avoid being part of the demise of the Sumatran tiger you should avoid products containing palm oil, and/or look for products that are verified sustainable by the Forestry Stewardship Council.

To take a more active part in protecting the Sumatran tiger you can donate to organizations that are working to protect their numbers such as the Wildlife Conservation Society India, and the International Tiger Project.

The Sumatran Tiger is in danger. Please consider donating to help this beautiful animal make it into the next century and by sharing any links to donation pages on your social media page.

https://internationaltigerproject.org/

https://indonesia.wcs.org/Wildlife/Sumatran-Tiger.aspx

Among the saddest and most cruel forms of torture animals humans have inflicted on animals is Bear Bile Farming. Bear Bile is used in traditional Chinese medicine. The process of extraction involves starving and dehydrating bears and extracting the bile through catheters and needles inserted into the gallbladder. Worse still, the bears are captured and confined to produce bear bile for the duration of their lives. This could mean up to 30 years of torture.

In the past, bears were killed and their gallbladders removed. Since the 1980s, the practice of bear bile farming took off. There are many synthetic and plant based alternatives that could replace this cruelly sourced extract, however bears are still kept in tiny cages for their whole lives to allow the extractions to take place. Bear bile farming is still legal in many countries. Korea, for example, still allows bear bile farming, though it has pledged to put a stop to it by 2025.

Vietnam is one of the countries that has banned bear bile farming but bear bile farms still exist there under the radar. It was on one of these farms that Paddington Bear, a moon bear, was kept for 17 years in a tiny cage where she was dehydrated and starved and her bile extracted. She was rescued by Animals Asia, but unfortunately she died less than a month after her rescue. Paddington Bear was dehydrated when she was rescued and suffered from multiple health problems typical of bears who are farmed for bile. These bears are often captured when they are bear cubs. They witness their mothers killed by poachers and are kept on bear bile farms for their whole lives where they are isolated and confined to the point that their bodies grow stunted to fit their tiny cages. Throughout their lives, they are tortured routinely with cruel bile extraction. The extraction of the bile leaves bears in poor health and causes many diseases and malignant tumors.

Paddington Bear was so close to living a better life, freed from the farm where she spent 17 years. Unfortunately, her health problems were overwhelming. She didn’t get to enjoy a healthy, peaceful retirement at her new home, but with renewed efforts to end the practice of bear bile farming, other bears may never have to go through what she did.

To learn how to end bear bile farming and help to rescue bears kept on bear bile farms, please visit Animals Asia’s website:

https://www.animalsasia.org/us/media/news/news-archive/five-things-you-need-to-know-about-bear-bile-farming.html