DawnWatch: NY Times piece on dog adoption and one questioning aquariums 4/8/07
April 9th, 2007 5:32 pm by Kelly Garbato———- Forwarded message ———-
From: DawnWatch – news [at] dawnwatch.com
Date: Apr 8, 2007 2:54 PM
Subject: DawnWatch: NY Times piece on dog adoption and one questioning aquariums 4/8/07
The Sunday, April 8, New York Times has a couple of noteworthy pieces for animal advocates. The Magazine section has a long article, by Charles Siebert on dog adoption. Siebert is well-known among animal advocates for superb articles he has done for the magazine on the plight of elephants in the wild and of chimps used by the US entertainment business. Today’s article, headed, “New Tricks” includes both a joyful adoption story, and also the harsh realities for dogs who fail the temperament tests being described. Siebert quotes a program director who says that animals pick up on what is happening and “A lot of them start to vomit or soil themselves the minute they enter the euthanasia room.”
While some people may have mixed feelings about some of the details of the article, the Magazine’s focus on adoption can only help the animals. You can read the piece on line here.
Please keep the discussion alive in the magazine with letters to the editor. The Magazine takes letters at magazine [at] nytimes.com.
The Week in Review Section includes an article, by Shaila Dewan, headed, “Can Man Improve on Nature’s Fishbowl?”
It opens:
“Aquariums, like zoos, are weird places. We are uncertain they should exist at all, yet if they are there, we want to see them — a fact well known to cities that hope to attract tourists and revitalize commercial districts, and that have built some two dozen aquariums in the last
quarter century.”
It offers arguments for and against aquariums. I wish some of the arguments in favor had been better refuted. For example, we read that when Georgia Aquarium acquired four whale sharks, “Biologists warned that they could not yet explain the dappled creature’s penchant for sinking to depths of 3,000 feet or more, a feat that not even a $300 million aquarium could accommodate. But aquarium officials countered that the whale sharks — there were four — were saved from the dinner table, bought from Taiwanese fishermen who have an annual catch limit.”
We know, however, that with regard to the dolphin industry, live dolphins sell for approximately 30 times the price of dead dolphins, and therefore keep the dolphin capture and slaughter industry alive. Similarly we might expect that the big bucks paid for live sharks might have an impact on our attempts to pass desperately needed shark protection laws.
But the article does share some shocking information, which would have been otherwise known by few readers. After the death Ralph, an adolescent whale shark, an aquarium representative said the aquarium’s sharks live in the lap of luxury. But Dewan writes:
“The details of Ralph’s death, disclosed a little over a week ago, provided a glimpse of a not-so-luxurious life. Ralph, who stopped eating after the tanks were chemically treated for parasites, had been force-fed for months — apparently a common practice at aquariums, even for tiny creatures like sea horses.
“‘Sometimes in science we learn as much through death as through life,’ Mr. Swanagan wrote. In Ralph’s case, one thing we learned was that he died of a perforated stomach, most likely caused by the feeding tube.
We read, “Ralph’s death provided the first opportunity for a whale shark dissection” but “some scientists argue that the knowledge that can be gleaned from animals in captivity primarily improves their care in captivity.
Many readers will also be concerned about the following information:
“If aquariums are hard on fish, they provide a nurturing home for the rosy notion that humans can not only control nature, but improve on it. At the Audubon Aquarium of the Americas, in New Orleans, the Gulf of Mexico exhibit presents the underwater part of an oil rig (at one-quarter scale) as a thriving environment for marine life rather than a product of an industry that environmentalists say contributed to the rapid erosion of Louisiana’s wetlands, making the state more vulnerable to hurricanes. The sponsors include Shell, Amoco and Chevron.”
The article questions, rather than slams, aquariums, and provides a great opportunity for letters. We can write in favor of learning about other species in their natural environment rather than in tanks. You’ll find the whole article on line here and can send a letter to letters [at] nytimes.com.
Always include your full name, address, and daytime phone number when sending a letter to the editor. Remember that shorter letters are more likely to be published. And please be sure not to use any comments or phrases from me or from any other alerts in your letters. Editors are looking for original responses from their readers.
Yours and the animals’,
Karen Dawn
(DawnWatch is an animal advocacy media watch that looks at animal issues in the media and facilitates one-click responses to the relevant media outlets. You can learn more about it, and sign up for alerts at www.DawnWatch.com. You may forward or reprint DawnWatch alerts if you do so unedited — leave DawnWatch in the title and include this parenthesized tag line. If somebody forwards DawnWatch alerts to you, which you enjoy, please help the list grow by signing up. It is free.)
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Tagged: animals animal rights animal welfare action alerts dawnwatch NY Times dog canine cat feline pet companion animal adoption animal adoption animal shelter pound temperament tests euthanasia aquariums zoos whale sharks Georgia Aquarium wildlife conservation fish
