10 Day You Challenge – Day 4!

Today’s challenge is 7 wants.  This should be a hard one, but only in the sense of limiting it to 7 haha!

1. Love.  The first want is always love.
2. Continued friendship.  I have friends in my life that I want to have until the day I die. 
3. A designer handbag.  Just one.  Yes, a frivolous want, but just once in my life I want to have something from a major designer. 
4. I want to travel much more extensively than I have.  There are so many places in the world that I want to see.  I’m not the backpacker type before you ask.  Girl needs her straightening irons and a hotel room.
5. A big want here.  I want more people to realise that animals have just as much a right to live on this earth as the rest of us.  A rat is not vermin, a mink is not a coat and a lion is not there to be caged and then hunted down and killed by rich idiots.
6. To write more.  In addition to writing my blog I would love to write elsewhere too and not just for free.  Who knows if that will happen.
7. To carry on believing that anything is possible.

Number 8 would have been a tall dark handsome stranger but damn, I ran out of numbers!

 

The Balance

I believe in animal rights.  I have done many blogs on the subject, the latest in relation to horse racing. 

I am pretty clear on what lines I will cross, what I believe is acceptable and what isn't.  For example, I won’t wear, and greatly oppose the fur trade.  Anyone wearing fur in my opinion is despicable.   Skinning an animal, in a lot of cases still alive, just for it’s coat and to then just throw away the carcass is something I will never understand.

There is a video on the PETA website, linked here which shows what happens.  I offer caution before you watch the video however, it broke my heart and I could not stop crying.

I an anti blood sports, including trophy hunting (see Trophy Hunting) and I don’t believe that animals belong in circuses or should be used for the entertainment of a crowd.

Because I have these beliefs, some people assume, and indeed think I should be, a vegetarian.  I’m not.  Whilst I am in no way the biggest carnivore in the world, this is purely from a taste point of view and not because I think that it is wrong.

All nature is a balance.  The lion eats the zebra.  The cat eats the mouse.  The spider eats the fly. Humans eat animals.  I don’t believe that there is anything wrong with that.  We aren’t built to live on plants.

I do believe however that we have a responsibility however to ensure that the animals we do eat should have the best life possible before the end.  So no battery chickens, championing local produce and most importantly, finding out where your food comes from and how it was treated. 

The lion may eat the zebra without a thought about it, but it doesn’t gather together it’s prey, ram them all together in a too small enclosure and sell off for a bigger profit.  It eats when it needs too.

Imagine a predator did this, but not to chickens, to us....

Reintroduction–From the Outside

Reintroduction of an animal species is a subject that most people haven’t ever thought about.  Also, with so many people living in towns and cities, reintroduction of an animal species is something that won’t impact their lives.

Reintroduction isn’t something that would impact on me in any way, so with that said I can only put my point of view forward from the outside, neither being part of a reintroduction process nor someone who may be affected by it.

I’ve been aware of this subject for a few years.  The first instance I personally heard about was the reintroduction of wolves into Yellowstone Park.  This was brought about in 1995 and since then, the wolves are doing well.  The over population of elk is reduced but not overhunted, flora and fauna have flourished and the beaver population has increased.

The ecological balance has been redressed and the Park has benefited from it.  In addition, the grey wolf is now off the endangered list.

In relation to a non predatory species, beavers have been reintroduced into Scotland and last year the first wild beavers were born.  Salmon populations have not gone down as the opposition said it would, but then again, beavers don’t eat fish, they eat vegetation. 

Some reintroduction ideas will never work.  The idea of returning wolves to Scotland for example will never work.  For one, much of Great Britain is privately owned and so the land isn’t available and also, the country is too populated to consider reintroducing a predatory species.  But wild boar?  Why not.

I honestly believe that reintroducing animals species that have previously lived in the area is important, where feasible.   This can help in so many ways, from bringing animals from off the endangered list to bringing the ecological balance back into play.

After all, these creatures were here for a reason, and the only reason they disappeared was from hunting and eradication.  From us.  It is our responsibility to bring these animals back to where they should be again.