The activist left lands a big fish;
At 5 a.m. Thursday, SeaWorld announced that it would end its killer-whale breeding program, and would work with one of its most prolific critics, the Humane Society of the United States, a shocking change in direction.
SeaWorld has been crucified in the unjust court of public opinion. In the age of skepticism fueled by the immediacy of social media, nuance is lost.[…]
Many will quickly identify the tragic death of Dawn Brancheau as the beginning trajectory of recent announcements. Others will mark the debut of “Blackfish” as the turning point. Both play a role, but neither event, together or separately, was responsible for SeaWorld’s latest change. The single greatest contributing factor and mistake, in my opinion, was making SeaWorld a publicly traded company (stock symbol SEAS).
Allowing HSUS into your animal management tent is like inviting the Sierra Club onto your oil lease: they aren’t there to “work” with you.
those tanks/pools/cesspools at sea world in Orlando, to an orca, would be like a human living in a god**mn closet, let out to wander around the living room half an hour a day. maybe. you think not? brilliantly intelligent animals that came from a living space the size of an OCEAN??? and the arrogant humahns shove them into what amounts to a oversized TOILET.
there was an incident once when a large male had such scant maneuvering room doing a ‘trick’ it misjudged and slammed into the side of the pool/cesspool and broke its jaw. all for cutesy ‘entertainment’. echoes of the Roman Colosseum.
the LAST time we went to Marineland and Game ‘Farm’ in Niagara Falls, mid 80s, I was shocked and disgusted at the FACT the deer had NO shade whatsoever. anywhere. fenced in, a patch of DIRT, devoid of any greenery, and not a lick of shade. the local paper did an article showing a huge tumour on the neck of one of them.
even the reviled leftists get it right once in a while. like this.
“Allowing HSUS into your animal management tent is like inviting the Sierra Club onto your oil lease: they aren’t there to “work” with you.”
Kate’s last sentence at the top nails it exactly. If the various inhumane activists have their way there will be no zoos or similar facilities, nor livestock and poultry farms left anywhere.
I visited Seaworld in San Diego and I was also disgusted with the entire place. The killer whales had very little room and the “shows” put on by the whales, dolphins and seals were demeaning for these intelligent creatures. These are wild animals evolved to be in the wild. They do not have the benefit of several thousand years of breeding for domestication to be content in a domestic environment. Just because they live just as long as their wild kin has no bearing on their overall condition. Its like saying inmates in mental hospitals live just as long as the outside population.
Furthermore, killer whales are by no means endangered. There is no need for a captive breeding program. Get rid of it and focus on those species that truly need some help.
I cannot say the San Diego zoo was much better. The San Diego Zoo Wildlife Park north of San Diego is extremely good. The animals have abundant space and can live a somewhat normal existence. If you have not gone there it is well worth seeing.
Killer whales should never be kept in tanks, they should be free to travel the coast in their usual family groups and live out their normal life. Where I live we look forward to seeing them go by a couple times a year and sometimes hang out around the wharf. They are powerful intelligent animals. No wonder Keiko went nuts and killed a couple of trainers. the wonder is that more don’t go completely mad swimming in endless circles.
Enough money grubbing so called “entertainment”
Another American corporation bullied by a bunch of vegans. Groups like PETA and the HSUS are vegan cults that want to stop the use of animals in society. To do this they pretend that animals have the same or similar emotions as humans. Yet if you follow this thinking to its logical end, we will have to start asking chickens if they want to be fried or steers if they want to be steak.
In the case of Sea World, they use pseudo science, without any actual scientific evidence to make people believe that the Orcas are sad. I have horses that are every bit as talented as these mammals. They dance, they bow, they can do cala and cola. They do this because they are trained to do the tricks. Now does that mean my horses should be set free, because I keep them in stables at night and tied out during the day. Do you think they are abused. Please read this:
http://awesomeocean.com/2015/10/21/killing-kasatka-animal-activism-comes-animal-welfare/
So Sea World needs to think about what it is doing. That is because you can’t deal with these crazies. Next it will be dolphins then turtles. These fanatics will not be happy until they shut Sea World down.
“even the reviled leftists get it right once in a while. like this.”
Be careful 60something, you could get burned at the stake for making a point like that around here.
I agree with the point completely though, and your post in general. You don’t have to be an Animal Justice Warrior to see that keeping a gigantic ocean-dwelling, very social, intelligent creature imprisoned in a friggin’ pond for it’s entertainment value is simply wrong.
Well said.
In this war of attrition, the enemy is well funded and persistent. It takes equal persistence and effort just to hold your ground. Tough to win.
No elephants for you.
Toronto City Council ships all the elephants to PAWS in California
http://www.torontozoo.com/pdfs/elephant-press-release-20131018.pdf
PAWS kills Iringa a year and half later
http://www.pawsweb.org/meet_elephants.html
Wow … now Kate has HELD two of my posts on this topic for censor. What is it about divergent opinions on animal “rights” that gets certain people so exercised ? Congrats for getting YOUR post thru, which is quite similar to what I … tried … to post. Geeze, I am starting to feel like this is a leftist Canadian broadcast Co. or something …
HSUS – Lawyers in cages…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=XTrhQd9GHlE#t=130
OMG ! What a brilliant (onionesque) video ! Now … all we need is an anti-PETA video with LOTS of really HOT, naked, conservative women ! THAT would go VIRAL … or something … I don’t know about all this internets thing
Beautiful!
And on tonights CTV news, a Victoria ‘Horse Rights’ group is demanding that the traditional horse drawn carriages that have been used for more than 100 years be banned.
Lest we forget, these are draw horsed – Clydesdales and such – for whom pulling a carriage and perhaps four people and a driver would be like one of us pushing a baby carriage. They claim the animals are ‘abused’, that the pavement hurts their little hooves. Never mind that the carriage companies recognize these animals as not only their bread and butter, but as ‘family’.
The animals are checked twice yearly by the SPCA, but that has no bearing on the righteous indignation these do-gooders feel on behalf of animals that they contribute nothing to – other than getting their 15 minutes of TV fame.