Duck Rescue 2011

Vic­to­ria’s an­nu­al duck shoot­ing sea­son yet again opened with hor­rif­ic in­juries and suf­fer­ing for count­less birds.

This is the 25th year that an­i­mal ac­tivists have been busy on the wet­lands do­ing all they can to res­cue the in­jured and dis­tract the shoot­ers from their dead­ly ‘re­cre­a­tion’. UP­ROAR and ALV or­ganised res­cue teams to help cov­er the Kerang area, a high­ly pop­u­lar shoot­ing spot while the Coali­tion Against Duck Shoot­ing (CADS) or­ganised the main res­cue with 150 ac­tivists at Lake Bu­loke where they were pitt­ed against 2,000 shoot­ers. One of the brave res­cue team mem­bers, Julie Sy­mons was shot in the face by a 14 year old shoot­er who was il­le­gal­ly shoot­ing birds on the wa­ter. She suf­fered fa­cial in­juries, lost teeth and pel­lets embedd­ed in her skin.

The beau­ty and tran­quil­i­ty just be­fore the killing starts

10 Up­roar and ALV res­cuers gathered at Mac­do­n­alds                                                    

Swamp and were pitt­ed against sev­er­al hun­dred shoot­ers. The guns start­ed blaz­ing short­ly af­ter 7am and it was young birds who dropped out of the sky. The ma­jor­i­ty of dead and in­jured birds col­lect­ed by the res­cue team were young ju­ve­niles, some on­ly a cou­ple months old.

The heavy rains and flood­ing in the Kerang area made for a longer breed­ing sea­son and th­ese young birds were lit­er­al­ly caught in the hail of pel­lets. It is un­for­giv­able that the Lib­er­al Gov­ern­ment not on­ly al­lowed a duck sea­son this year but they ex­tend­ed the shoot­ing time to three months. Not on­ly did th­ese young birds have no chance, but many who did sur­vive are now or­phans and un­able to fend for them­selves and will die a slow death from star­va­tion and/or pre­da­tion un­pro­tect­ed by their mothers.

A duck res­cuer looks for signs of life in this bird who was just blast­ed out of the sky.

The Po­lice and DSE kept a close guard on the alv/up­roar                                                    

Sad­ly this bird didn't sur­vive

base­camp and at the end of the morn­ing con­fis­cat­ed all                                                    

Hun­ters laugh­ing as the bird (be­low) pad­dles in a daze af­ter tak­ing a pel­let shot to the head

the dead birds we had col­lect­ed. Three bad­ly in­jured                                                    

She pad­dled in­to thick reeds where we were un­able to re­trieve her and get her to ve­t­eri­nary care.

birds were brought in by our kayak teams and two of th-                                                    

A hun­ter car­ry­ing a pile of dead corps­es that he has shot so far this morn­ing. Un­der the law shoot­ers can on­ly kill ten na­tive game birds per day, but the re­al­i­ty is that more are shot with many birds aban­doned float­ing dead on the wa­ter

-­ese died short­ly af­ter. One young bird was found dazed                                                    

We found corps­es on the wa­ter all morn­ing, birds that had been shot and aban­doned by hun­ters.

sitt­ing on a log amidst all the may­hem and loud shoot-                                                    

A res­cuer bring­ing in a wound­ed bird re­trieved by our kayak team

-­ing. She was brought in and put in a warm dry hos­pi­tal ‘pen’ and then tak­en to a vet. Sad­ly, though she ap­peared alert and sitt­ing ful­ly con­s­cious an ex­am­i­na­tion showed she suf­fered ex­ten­sive in­juries.

Update on Rescued Piglets Coco and Chloe

The pi­glets res­cued by Up­roar and ALV are do­ing much bet­ter than hoped. Co­co has had surgery to have her leg lanced and drained un­der anaes­thet­ic. We thought we had lost Chloe a few times but she’s an amaz­ing lit­tle pig­gie and keeps bounc­ing back. She has no suck­ing re­flex so her in­fant fo­ru­mu­la has to be sy­ringed in­to her mouth to keep her alive. Chloe need­ed mi­nor surgery as well. She is now re­al­ly start­ing to pick up and even tried to chase some of the dogs liv­ing at her sanc­tuary!

A huge thank you to the amaz­ing staff at John the Vet who have re­fused to take any mon­ey for look­ing af­ter Co­co and Chloe.

Pig Rescue!

Up­roar and An­i­mal Lib­er­a­tion Vic­to­ria have teamed up to                                                    

save pigs from slaugh­ter this Christ­mas.

To read about the res­cue, see pho­tos and video of the con­di­tions in­side the pig­gery and the res­cue team in ac­tion, and get some great ideas on how you can en­joy a cru­el­ty free Christ­mas, vis­it our Pig Res­cue page >

Uproar Rescue Team

The Up­roar Res­cue Team car­ries out res­cues and in­vesti­ga­tions on fac­to­ry farms, at slaugh­ter­hous­es and in hunt­ing ar­eas, sav­ing the lives of sick and in­jured an­i­mals who are in ur­gent need of ve­t­eri­nary care, and re­hom­ing an­i­mals who are other­wise doomed to spend their lives cramped in cages with bare­ly enough room to turn around.

Our res­cue team al­so doc­u­ments con­di­tions in­side fac­to­ry farms to ed­u­cate the gen­er­al public about the hid­den cru­el­ty be­hind the an­i­mal farm­ing in­dus­try. We will be pub­lish­ing sev­er­al spe­cial re­ports about con­di­tions in­side fac­to­ry farms this year. Please sign up to our news list to get the lat­est in­for­ma­tion.