Kimmela Salutes Scholar Advocates

Lori Marino on February 21, 2013

Scholar-advocacy is a new professional model for animal advocacy focused on applying scholarship, science and expertise to real-world animal advocacy problems, spanning across academics, science and scholarship at one end, and on-the-ground active animal advocacy efforts at the other.

We already have an excellent group of Kimmela scholar-advocates who are devoting their talents to making this model a reality for us. This international group of students, academics and other professionals has been volunteering their time and skills to our work for the Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP). This includes collecting and compiling hundreds of scientific papers on great apes, elephants and cetaceans, and creating a searchable database of these findings, and collecting information about possible nonhuman plaintiffs as the NhRP gets ready to identify, build and litigate its first cases later this year.

Among this diverse and accomplished group:

Kristin Allen holds an M.S. in Clinical Psychology from Eastern Kentucky University and conducts research on elephant social development.

Daniella Bismanovsky holds an M.S. in Primate Behavior from Central Washington University and is currently a first-year law student at Lewis & Clark.

Elizabeth Caton holds an M.A. in Clinical Social Work and has recently become Programs Director for the Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary.

Shea Cogswell has a college degree and a background in museums and libraries.

Eilidh Dickson studies Marine Biology at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland, and is presently a visiting student scholar at Emory University.

Valerie Ibarra has a B.A. in Political Science from Georgia State University and is a human and nonhuman rights activist.

Samantha Lipman has recently received a Zoology BSc (Hons) degree from Durham University and is founding manager of the Orca Aware campaign.

Dr. Melanie Sartore is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Kinesiology at East Carolina University. Her research addresses issues of diversity and social justice as they relate to sport and organizations.

Beth Snead is the assistant acquisitions editor at the University of Georgia Press. She graduated from UGA in 2007 with a B.A. in English and also volunteers at the Center for the Great Apes in Wauchula, Florida.

Laura Vander Meiden is a University of Miami undergraduate student.

Kim Vardeman is currently the office coordinator for the Farquhar College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Division of Math, Science, and Technology at Nova Southeastern University, where she is completing a M.A. in Cross-Disciplinary Studies.

Amanda Wight is a Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology major at Emory University with a minor in Ethics.

A special thank-you also to Dr. John Schacke, Director of the Georgia Dolphin Ecology Program and Adjunct Professor of Ecology at the University of Georgia. John has generously donated his time and expertise to creating a unique database home for all of the scientific papers collected by the team for NhRP.

Science Empowers Blackfish – New Film About Orca Captivity

Lori Marino on January 25, 2013

At this year’s Sundance Film Festival, the new documentary Blackfish is turning heads with its revealing look at the marine mammal captivity industry – just like The Cove did three years ago.

The film sets the stage with the story of Tilikum, a captive orca at SeaWorld Orlando who killed his trainer, Dawn Brancheau, in 2010, and then expands out into the larger issue of the way marine mammals are treated in the entertainment industry, especially by big corporations like SeaWorld.

Part of the effectiveness of Blackfish is its reliance on well-substantiated scientific data from the Kimmela Center (I had the privilege of being interviewed in the film) about orca intelligence, which explain so much about why orca captures and confinement are so devastating to their psychological and physical health.

Director Gabriela Cowperthwaite wants the audience to understand just how intelligent, sensitive and self-aware these animals are.

Besides their sheer size, orca brains are extraordinarily developed in the neocortex and the limbic cortex, which are involved in complex thinking and emotions in all mammals. And director Gabriela Cowperthwaite wants the audience to understand just how intelligent, sensitive and self-aware these animals are.

“The evidence suggests orcas actually feel more than us,” she said in one interview.

The film shows how orcas like Tilikum, who have been separated from their mother during capture or transfer from one marine park to another, experience extensive emotional trauma, and how these psychological disturbances are related to the abnormal aggressive behaviors they exhibit toward their trainers. Cowperthwaite emphasizes that while there is no record of a wild orca having ever killed or severely injured a human being, there is now a large and growing list of trainers and other people who have been killed and injured by orcas in captivity.

Blackfish comes on the heels of the best-selling book Death At SeaWorld by David Kirby which revealed the dark side of SeaWorld. Taken altogether, the science and the anecdotal evidence are a resounding indictment of the orca theme park industry.

The rights to Blackfish were recently acquired by Magnolia Pictures and CNN Worldwide. Magnolia plans a summer theatrical release, and CNN will premier its domestic broadcast towards the end of 2013. Perhaps, along with the rave reviews from critics at Sundance, and the overwhelming scientific support, Blackfish will bring us closer than ever to ending the nightmare that is orca captivity once and for all.

India’s Animal Welfare Board Advises ‘No’ on Dolphinariums

Lori Marino on January 15, 2013

In an important step toward advocacy for dolphins, the Animal Welfare Board of India has advised state governments and wildlife wardens to oppose any efforts to capture or transport dolphins or to keep dolphins, porpoises or whales in captivity. The Animal Welfare Board of India is a statutory advisory board to the Indian government on matters relevant to animal welfare.

The board ruled that dolphin shows and exhibits would violate the 1960 Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act. The national advisory is in response to commercial efforts to set up five dolphin theme parks across India. These facilities would set a dangerous precedent in a country with a disastrous record of caring for dolphins in captivity. There have been no captive dolphins in India since 1998, when a small pod of dolphins held at Dolphin City amusement park died within six months of capture.

Kimmela has been working with the Federation of Indian Animal Protection Organizations (FIAPO) to provide the scientific evidence that shows dolphins and whales fare very poorly in captivity, suffering from stress-related diseases and behavioral abnormalities, and that counters the claim that dolphin displays are educational (Marino et al. 2010). FIAPO argues that not only is there no educational value to dolphin displays, but there is “reason to believe that captive cetacean attractions actually mis-educate the public about wildlife and the marine environment”.

“There is reason to believe that captive cetacean attractions actually mis-educate the public about wildlife and the marine environment.”

Kimmela is also working with FIAPO and two collaborating organizations, Earth Island Institute and Wildlife Rescue and Rehabilitation Center, to supply the rigorous scientific foundation for public outreach materials on the welfare status of captive cetacean species in dolphinariums worldwide. These materials will provide the Indian public with information critical to understanding why the dolphinariums should be opposed.

The response of the Animal Welfare Board of India is an important milepost and very encouraging sign to dolphin advocates. But there is still much work to be done as the statement is not binding and is being challenged by the pro-dolphinarium contingent. We continue efforts to shore up public opposition to the dolphinariums and provide unassailable evidence that India’s government cannot ignore as the fight over dolphinariums continues.

“We’re taking big strides forward in being the most compassionate nation on Earth,” said Arpan Sharma, chief executive of FIAPO. Kimmela will continue to help FIAPO move this statement closer to reality than ever before.

2013 – The Year of the Nonhuman Person

Lori Marino on January 11, 2013

Happy New Year, readers! Like you, I am hoping for a year of progress for all nonhuman animals. It will be momentous for at least one reason: This year, the Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP) will go to court to establish legal personhood for someone of another species – an elephant, dolphin or whale, chimpanzee or other great ape. And Kimmela continues to work closely with the NhRP to provide the scientific evidence and expertise crucial to their legal arguments that will bring one of these individuals to “legal life,” as NhRP President Steve Wise describes it.

Only after you’re recognized by the courts as being a “legal person” can you have the capacity to possess such fundamental rights as bodily integrity and bodily liberty. So let’s take a look at what it would mean for a nonhuman animal to be recognized as a person, and at what we mean by the right to bodily integrity and bodily liberty.

These fundamental rights are immunities against the most basic forms of harm. They include the freedom to live in one’s natural environment and not be captured and/or confined; the right to not be used, manipulated or experimented upon; and, of course, the right to not be killed. Asusbrechunres .

These very fundamental rights would protect first one and then many elephants, dolphins, and great apes (at least in this country) from being exploited and harmed in zoos and circuses, in military exercises, in laboratories, and, of course, in fisheries and slaughters.

Only after you’re recognized by the courts as being a “legal person” can you have the capacity to possess such fundamental rights as bodily integrity and bodily liberty.The concept of legal personhood for nonhumans is so new to many people that they often get confused and think you’re talking about human rights. But human rights are, by definition, for humans. Other animals need to be recognized as having rights that are specific to their species. Experts in personhood often equate rights with basic needs – what we need at a basic level in order to thrive. An elephant, for example, has the basic need, and therefore the right, to live her life as part of a family group in her natural habitat.

But before anyone, human or otherwise, can be recognized as having rights, they have to be recognized legally as a “person” with the capacity for a legal right. And that’s what the NhRP lawsuits will be setting out to accomplish. It’s all about giving other animals what they should have in the first place: a chance to live their lives unburdened by our exploitation. Such a small thing is such a big thing for them.

It seems so obvious to most of us that all animals have the need, and therefore the right, to live their lives in a natural setting unfettered by human manipulation and abuse. Kimmela’s work with the NhRP focuses on taking the first steps in accomplishing this in relation to those animals for whom the scientific evidence is abundant in terms of their intelligence, emotional sensitivity and social complexity.

This year, 2013, is the beginning of a process that will involve many lawsuits and appeals in courts all across the country. Some we will win and some we will lose. But in every case, the effort will be groundbreaking. And it seems that others agree. According to the magazine Popular Science, the work of the Nonhuman Rights Project will be one of the top science stories of 2013.

Perhaps, in the future, we will look back on this year as having been the year of the nonhuman person. And I wouldn’t be surprised if, sometime down the road, an elephant, dolphin or great ape graces the cover of Time magazine as their Person of the Year!

Compassionate Conservation Needs to Be Based on Rights

Lori Marino on December 7, 2012

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On November 29-30 I joined an international group of conservation biologists and animal welfare experts for a landmark workshop at the Royal Geographical Society in London hosted by the Born Free Foundation. Born Free is an international wildlife charity working to end animal suffering and protect threatened species in the wild. They recently made headlines with their successful rehabilitation and release of two captive bottlenose dolphins, Tom and Misha, into the Eastern Mediterranean

The purpose of the meeting, led by Born Free CEO Will Travers and Senior Scientific Researcher Chris Draper, was to explore how to integrate individual animal welfare concerns into global conservation efforts – a new approach called compassionate conservation. In today’s world, that’s quite a mission.

Compassionate conservation is getting a lot of attention as more and more people are seeing that conventional conservation practices, which focus on population and species-level viability analyses, are missing a critical component: regard for the individual animal. Scientific evidence shows that humans are not the only individuals who are autonomous and socially complex with strong family ties and cultural traditions. So, invasive interventions like culling, translocation, habitat restriction and “sustainable harvesting” almost always create more problems than they solve because these practices destroy cultures, social networks, families, psychological development of individual animals and the very lives of the animals they seek to protect.

Although all the participants were driven by a common goal of protecting the lives of other animals, the discussion quickly grew into a lively debate about one central issue: welfare versus rights. On the one hand, many of the conservationists argued for minimizing harm to other animals in conservation practices but contended that highly invasive methods, such as culling, cannot be excluded. Others of us argued for a much greater shift towards a rights-based conservation paradigm. We pointed out that welfare measures, such as the Animal Welfare Act, which is supposed to cover animals used in research, factory farms, and other exploitive industries do little to protect animals from suffering and abuse. Welfare is a step in the right direction but does not go far enough.

If we are to take seriously the scientific evidence that many other animals are cognitively and emotionally complex, autonomous individuals, we must move toward a conservation paradigm that respects the right of other animals to thrive. This means that practices such as culling and translocation without regard for social networks must be phased out and a new perspective, based upon recognition of their individual lives, societies and cultures must replace them. It means that the basic needs of other animals must be given priority over the nonessential desires of humans, and that when there is a conflict of basic needs, the process must involve negotiation rather than “management”. Human behavioral change becomes an integral part of the process and success is measured not just by numbers but whether there is human and nonhuman thriving.

The shift in perspective for compassionate conservation is not going to be accomplished overnight, but it will be long-lasting and better for everyone involved when it does occur.

Meat-Eating is Not Sustainable at Any Level

Lori Marino on November 19, 2012

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No one, by now, is unaware of the impassioned controversy over two oxen, Bill and Lou, and the broader issue of meat-eating that their situation has brought to the fore. Green Mountain College (GMC), where Lou and Bill tilled the fields for ten years, publicly announced that they would slaughter them and serve them in the dining hall, claiming that this action teaches “sustainable farming”. But, they ran into a problem. Animal advocates and many others responded to this morally questionable decision and no slaughterhouse was willing to brave the glare of the controversy. GMC ended up killing Lou in the middle of the night and burying his body, claiming that the medication they gave him for an injured leg made it impossible to serve his meat. Bill remains subject to an uncertain future while remaining on the farm.

The fact is that GMC has yet to provide a substantive reason why killing and eating Bill and Lou would be a lesson in sustainability. In my view, meat eating is a lesson in unsustainability at both the moral and scientific level.

Meeting the GMC argument on its own terms, the science tells us there is absolutely nothing sustainable about meat-eating. From a crop yield point of view, meat-eating simply does not make sense. Instead of growing crops to feed Bill and Lou and then eating Bill and Lou those same crops can yield a great deal more by directly being eaten by humans. The equation is simple and meat-eating is untenable as a sustainable practice.

Furthermore, GMC has decided to ignore the substantial body of scientific evidence that demonstrates other animals are emotionally and cognitively complex beings capable of great suffering. Lou was betrayed in the worst possible way. And now Bill is clearly showing signs of grieving for his friend Lou. Instead of being educational GMC’s decision has caused tremendous suffering.

Finally, GMC teaches their students that so-called sustainability equates with lack of compassion, betrayal and continuing down old unsuccessful paths. But GMC does not see the dangerous self-perpetuating logic in this objective. The reason the planet and all of its inhabitants are in such a desperate state is because our species has continued to exploit everyone and everything without compassion. Killing other animals reinforces that insensitivity and the very attitudes that have led to global destruction. We are currently facing the sixth mass extinction event, human overpopulation and starvation, and devastating planetary destruction from rampant ecological exploitation and climate change. The same insensitivity that leads to lack of concern for Bill and Lou as individuals has led us to the brink of global devastation. They are intimately related and anyone who claims otherwise is being disingenuous. Every individual currently in factory farms is Bill and Lou and factory farms are not only engines of unspeakable suffering for the luxury wants of our species but are contributing substantially to global warming.

In their many public relations efforts to the public, GMC wanted to convince others that they were being bullied by extremist animal rights groups. I have seen no evidence of this. Two legitimate animal sanctuaries, VINE and Farm Sanctuary, offered to take Bill and Lou and provide them with a decent life – free of charge. And there were other offers too. GMC was unresponsive to all of them. leonaobrienfup44.blogspot.com GMC rejected all reasonable requests to discuss the matter.

GMC has it all wrong. Sustainability is not about using up resources and killing others. It is about having a sustainable ethic of living.