Peanut the Squirrel and Fred the Raccoon were two beloved rescue animals who were euthanized after a raid on their owners’ home by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (NYSDEC).

Who is responsible for their deaths? The party directly responsible is the NYSDEC who carried out the raid and the Chemung Health Department (CCHD) Environmental Health Services who ordered the animals euthanized to test for rabies. More generally however, there’s a need to reckon with our collective responsibility for the way human regulations can affect animals’ lives.

Peanut, (otherwise known as P’nut), was a baby squirrel rescued by Mark Longo after his mother was hit and killed by a car. Longo bottle fed and cared for the baby squirrel. Longo says he tried to release Peanut back into the wild but Peanut had become attached to his human carers and returned to their house with a damaged tail. After that, Peanut became a family member. Mark Longo later started an animal rescue shelter and adopted Fred the Raccoon, who was also a victim of the raid.

The raid was a response to complaints about Longo’s animal rescue center and his illegal ownership of P’nut and Fred. It is illegal in New York to keep wild animals as pets.  Only licensed wildlife rehabilitators can rescue animals, and only wild animals registered as educational animals can be kept as pets. Mark Longo said he was in the process of filing the paperwork to apply for a wildlife rehabilitation license and to register Peanut and Fred as educational animals. He indicated that the process was slow and he needed more guidance from the DEC.

The paperwork involved in registering for these official designations is burdensome, and many wildlife lovers may not be informed about how to care for animals that they rescue from the wild.

Peanut and Fred were euthanized on the authority of the CCHD because of rabies concerns. Even though squirrels aren’t known for carrying rabies, Peanut’s proximity to Fred the raccoon (racoons are known to carry rabies) prompted the euthanization of both animals after Peanut bit through the gloves of someone carrying out the raid. Both animals were found to be free of rabies.

Animal and human interactions happen frequently. All animals are known to interact with each other in nature. Yet animals are in danger of being euthanized every time they take a perfectly logical step of seeking food from human property, or of allowing a human to take care of them when they are in need.

What started with the death of Peanut’s mother due to human causes (the car that hit her) ended with the death of Peanut because of human laws that are indifferent to animal needs and behaviors. In both cases, human standards and technology are imposed on animals and encroach in animal environments. Animals who get in the way become the victims.

There are many examples of animals taking care of other animals in the wild, particularly baby animals. When humans do the same there is little understanding for this process. There should be a protocol to help humans care for animals that are wounded or sick, or to raise babies who can no longer survive in the wild. Right now, the protocols have no room for understanding that animal-human interaction does happen naturally, and that animals should not suffer as a result.

Animals are frequently euthanized due to the threat of rabies. Their heads are cut off to examine their brains. Rabies is a deadly disease and animals are euthanized out of an excess of caution, but so often these tragic and violent deaths are a result of inadequate protocols and clumsy investigations surrounding animals that get close to humans. There is currently no ante mortem test for rabies for animals.

Like so many stories about animal deaths, the death of Peanut the squirrel and Fred the Raccoon is a story about human indifference to animals, and indifference to the roles they play in our lives. It is natural for humans to interact with animals. We are animals too, after all.

Animal control laws involve brutality and a lack of nuance. Just like with human first responders, animal first responders often react with violence. Instead of social workers humans get the police who arrive with guns. Instead of care and due process, animals are sent to their death just because they get close to humans.

Violence is a direct result of a lack of care for the individuals involved in the situation and the specifics of each person and each life, whether human or animal. The first response to animals who choose to live with humans should not be violence. There needs to be a slower more responsive process that cares for everyone involved.

It’s not just humans who use medicines or are drawn to wild plants to cure ailments. Animals are
known to self-medicate when they are ill, wounded or for stress and sadness. This
phenomenon, known as Zoopharmacognosy, has been observed in many species of animals. It
reveals how animals interact with their environment in a way people have written off as
exclusive to human science and medicine.

One common example is when dogs and cats eat grass to induce vomiting. There are many
other examples of animals using medicine in sophisticated ways. For example, apes have been
observed isolating the medicinal parts of plants by tearing off leaves and stems and taking them
internally or applying the pant to their wounds. Research in lambs has shown that animals can
learn to use medicine by observing the effects of certain plant foods. Animals eat plants to expel
parasites, get nutrients missing from their diets, and induce labor, among other things.

An Indonesian male orangutan named Rakus was observed applying plant sap and crushed
leaves to a wound on the “flange” surrounding his face, as a poultice. The plant, known locally
as akar kuning (Fibraurea tinctoria), is an Asian plant known for its antibacterial, antifungal, anti-
inflammatory and pain relief properties. Rakus was applying plant medication externally for
healing in the same manner that humans used this traditional medicine.

Andrea DiGiorgio, a biological anthropologist at Princeton University, noted that animals don’t
need to understand everything about the medicinal properties of a plant to be able to utilize the
resources in their environment in an intelligent way. DiGiorgio said: “I think this really speaks to
the intelligence that all animals have to utilize what works for them.”

Humans assume that the taxonomy of human knowledge accumulated through language and
writing gives us superior intelligence and understanding of our environment, but this speaks to
the advantages of human technological development rather than intelligence itself. This is
called Speciesism; and carries with the idea that humans are at the top of the hierarchy and
have the greater moral value.

Animal intelligence is rich and in tune with its environment. Often humans are looking in the
wrong places when they search for animal intelligence and knowledge, basing it on concepts of
intelligence that have been imposed by human and Western perspectives. If we observe
animals in their environment, we can see what we have missed. Animals often lead humans to
medicinal plants, water and shelter. Their remarkable senses and intelligence are not
meaningless tools that assist human technology, they should be respected in their own right.

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

Mountain lions in California are isolated, dejected, without chance of finding a mate and vulnerable to poisoning, death on highways and deliberate targeting by humans. That is the picture painted by this LA Times Article, ahead of a major decision by the Fish and Game Commission that went in favor of Mountain Lions. The Fish and Game Commission have decided to review the Mountain Lions’ Endangered status over 6 years and afford them certain protections in line with this. The article delves into the ways Mountain Lions should be protected. While these considerations apply to Mountain Lions, it would be even better if some of the protections could be universally applied to protect wild animals in shrinking habitats encircled by human development.

One suggestion the article makes is that highways should not restrict Mountain Lions’ Movements. It seems a no-brainer to require green overpasses for all animals in highway development plans. The needs of wild animals to roam freely and seek food and better conditions are fundamental. Animals may not be imprisoned in Wildlife Parks but encircled by “highways of death” they may as well be.

Then there are poisons. Poisoning animals that are considered pests doesn’t just kill them in an inhumane and horrible way, it also risks the life of any other animal happening upon this poison, whether by predation or by other exposure. Poisoning “pests” is the equivalent of planting landmines in wild animals’ natural habitats. Raptors like owls, for example, are much more likely to die from anticoagulant rodenticides. These poisons induce fatal bleeding in animals. It is an unthinkably cruel way to die.

The only reason people are starting to wake up to this inhumanity is that their own pets are sometimes killed by poisons. The sad and difficult lives of Mountain Lives tell a much bigger story about life for wild animals who are forced into exile on the borders of human habitats.

Read More:

https://www.sanluisobispo.com/news/local/environment/article243374736.html
https://www.sacbee.com/news/california/article237937419.html

https://messengermountainnews.com/mountain-lions-win-major-victory-at-fish-and-game-commission-meeting/

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020-04-15/mountain-lions-protection-freeways-rat-poison-property-owners

Until Wildlife Services agreed to “cut back” on killings of wild animals in Montana, it might not have been visible to most Montanans that thousands of animals were being killed in Montana every year. In 2018, the most recent year for which data is available, Wildlife Services killed 7,965 coyotes, 46 wolves, one grizzly bear and other species in Montana. Until the settlement with WildEarth Guardians required Wildlife Services to stop exploding sodium cyanide bombs on certain tracts of public and private land, Wildlife Services’s explosion of bombs to destroy animal habitats wasn’t a subject of discussion.

The massacre taking place under our fingertips is still taking place, only at reduced levels. Wildlife Services is an anachronistic name for a violent agency that mostly appears to protect the interests of big farmers and ranchers. Public understanding of these agencies is that they restore balance in livestock predator conflicts and to human/animal interactions. Yet the activity that most undermines balance is protected by Wildlife Services: the livestock industry that endangers the planet through climate change and pollution. The whole system is one in which countless numbers of animals (including cattle) die to feed a machine that requires more killing to perpetuate its existence. By definition any system running on this level of destruction is not sustainable.

WildEarth Guardians have won a battle that requires the Wildlife Services to turn to science to justify their killings; they are now required to review the killings based on updated reports rather than carry them out wantonly. Unfortunately, it has not won the war. Winning the war is only possible when human groups participate in protecting an environment shared with non-human creatures equally.

Read more:
https://montanafreepress.org/2020/05/14/wildlife-services-to-cut-back-killings-pending-environmental-review/

by Dr. Kevin Boileau – Psychoanalyst and Lawyer-Mediator

There are at least three non-violent solutions that would better than the MCIRVIN RANCH returning again and again to kill members of the Profanity Wolf Pack in the northeastern part of the state. Yet, Washington State officials continue to side with the violent destruction of an endangered species while weak-minded Wolf Advisory members look on, watch, and agree. We find the actions of the state and the Wolf Advisory Committee to be both morally unjustified and intellectually specious.

The gray wolves are protected by the Endangered Species Act. The Profanity Pack lives in one of the most remote regions of the United States. These wolves don’t bother any humans except for one family. This is the MCIRVIN ranching family in Eastern Washington who rents OUR PUBLIC LAND for cattle grazing in order to increase its profits. Because the wolf pack has apparently attacked the cattle, and because the Wolf Advisory Committee has foolishly created a murder protocol, men from U.S. Wildlife Services obtain a license to exterminate this wolf pack instead of seeking rational and non-violent solutions.

There is much debate about how to prevent wolves from killing livestock. PhD-level researchers with non-violent solutions were hushed up by state officials. Others have suggested moving cattle from the public lands. Yet, because wolves do not enjoy ontological parity with humans, if humans’ interests are a factor, federal protections don’t defend the wolves from being killed. When the interests of humans and animals differ, humans will always win in the end — even though wolves are protected under the Endangered Species Act. Because every aspect of the planet is commodified under capitalism, the wolves are assigned a value less than that of a ranching family’s interests in money. Because the ranch has rented out PUBLIC LANDS, their interest is valued more than the wolves’ interest in remaining alive.

Conservation groups on the Wolf Advisory Board are so grateful to be allowed a voice at the table with the state authority and with ranching money that they are afraid to take a truly protective stance for wolves. There are many public Internet entries proclaiming how “tragic” this is and how sad the individuals are on behalf of the wolves, but there is but no real advocacy and solidarity. It is disappointing that such a weak group of people is in charge of making these important decisions. In contrast, the rancher is simply providing slaughtered meat to citizens with an addiction for it, even though climate science strongly warns against this polluting, immoral enterprise.

Anyone who was involved in drafting this kill protocol, anyone who continues to order the wolf genocide, or carry these orders out, should be deeply ashamed of themselves. They demonstrate neither intelligence nor moral consciousness. Either directly or by complicit passivity they represent the violence in humanity, and the lack of regard for other sentient beings. It shows a lack creative problem-solving skills or worse yet, allowing ourselves to become inebriated by “bureau-speak.”

The three non-violent options are to collar the cows, move the cows and pay the rancher money, or rescue and transport these wolves. In addition, there are at least three truths of the matter. First, there is no other place for the wolves to go than where they are. Second, the pups are just as innocent as the puppy you brought home for your children. Third, it is still an option to re-locate the remaining wolves. We are betting that the Wolf Advisory Board remains passive and that the scurrilous demagogues in Olympia maintain their murderous, violent, vile campaign. Why? The public wants to know.