Save Orphan Bears

Here is another Care2.org petition. This one is about saving bears in Russia! Please take a second to read about this important issue, and join me in signing the petition. They are trying to reach 50000 signatures – please sign here: http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/534/084/459

Target: Prime Minister Vladimir Putin

Sponsored by: International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW)

During Russia’s annual bear hunt, hibernating mother bears are lured out of their dens by dogs to be shot and killed, leaving their infant cubs to freeze or starve to death. Each year, den hunting leaves up to 4,000 cubs motherless. Some of these homeless cubs end up as pets to local villagers, while others are taken as cruel props for entertainment or to be eaten in restaurants. Most are abandoned and left to die.

You can give these tiny bundles of fur a second chance at life. Please urge the Russian Prime Minister to ban the cruel practice of den-hunting.

It is one thing to hunt bears in the summer, but it is cruel to wake them and kill them during hibernation. It is just as disgusting as hunting wolves from the air.

Please ban the practice of den-hunting of bears in all of Russia.Den hunting — waking hibernating bears, driving them out of their dens and then shooting the frightened and confused animals — is not only cruel to the bears shot, but also to the orphaned cubs left behind.

Den hunting kills thousands of bears each year and orphans many thousands more. In some areas of Russia, and in Western and Eastern Europe, brown bears are already extinct. The bears being hunted in Russia are from the last healthy population in the world.

Here is the petition, http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/534/084/459

Thank you for your consideration of ending this cruel practice.

-Cara

What to do With 372 Magellanic Penguins

On Oct 4th after months of rehabilitation, International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), along with members from Centro de Recuperação de Animais Marinhos (CRAM), Institute for Aquatic Mammals (IMA) and the environmental authority in Brazil, Instituto Brasileiro do Meio Ambiente e dos Recursos Naturais Renováveis (IBAMA), 372 juvenile Magellanic Penguins, stranded because of inadequate food stocks, were loaded onto a military plane and airlifted to Southern Brazil for their release back to the wild.

According to Dr. Dee Boersma, a penguin researcher, the mass stranding of the penguins left them in extremely poor body condition. She states, there is a flow of warmer water (1° C higher than normal) which has caused the juvenile penguins to keep going north, past their usual range, where they are unable to find adequate food. There is always a high mortality rate for first year birds but this increased northerly range and lack of available food had increased the normal mortality rate for this group of penguins.

There is also the Penguin Network, which is works with The International Bird Rescue Research Center (IBRRC), that put a lot of work into this and other bird rescue projects.

I don’t know what to say, but it seems like we might have broken something…

-Cara