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 >

I don’t wear fur, but I do wear leather

Most peo­ple with an ounce of com­pas­sion think it’s bar­bar­ic to kill an­i­mals for their fur, but we of­ten don’t give a se­cond thought to those an­i­mals who are killed and skinned for their ‘leather’.

I was at a bar the other night and a wo­m­an walked in wear­ing a fur coat. My group of friends were dis­gust­ed and spent the next ten min­utes won­der­ing (loud­ly!) how any­one could be so cru­el and tacky. But then I re­alised that most of my friends were wear­ing leather and I thought, what’s the dif­fer­ence?

The an­sw­er is not much. Both the fur and leather in­dus-                                                    

-­try in­volve the death of mil­lions of in­no­cent an­i­mals ev­ery year. Whether they come from a Chi­nese fur farm or                                                    

our lo­cal slaugh­ter house, an­i­mals suf­fer im­mense­ly for our fur jack­ets and trims as well as our leather jack­ets, belts, shoes and bags. At fur farms, an­i­mals are suf­fo­cat­ed, elec­tro­cut­ed, gassed, poi­soned, blud­geoned and some­times skinned alive. Cows raised for their leather un­der­go una­naes­the­tized cas­tra­tion, brand­ing, tail-dock­ing and de­horn­ing, and at the slaugh­ter­house have their throats sliced open and skin ripped off, of­ten                                                    

while ful­ly con­s­cious.

We are shelling out hun­dreds of dol­lars for the lat­est fashions, not even think­ing about the cost in in­no­cent lives, not even think­ing that ev­ery piece of fur and leather is bought with the un­ne­ces­sary suf­fer­ing of an an­i­mal.

There sim­p­ly is no good rea­son for the use of fur and leather cloth­ing in to­day’s so­ci­e­ty with the many trendy, hip and fashion­able syn­thet­ic al­ter­na­tives for men and wo­m­en. Be­fore you purchase your next fur or leather cloth­ing item, imagine hav­ing your skin ripped from your flesh whilst still be­ing con­s­cious and think again!

Make an ac­tive choice to cut an­i­mal prod­ucts from your cloth­ing by al­ways check­ing the la­bels. You can look                                                    

great and wear eco friend­ly cloth­ing with­out harm­ing an­i­mals in the pro­cess.

Not Your Typical Treehugger

Wel­come to the Not Your Typ­i­cal Tree­hug­ger cam­paign. Ve­g­ans come from all stages of life and from a mul­ti­tude of dif­fer­ent pro­fes­sions and so­cial groups

We are doc­tors, fire­fight­ers, pro­fes­sors, pow­er­lifters, nurs­es, en­gi­neers, par­ents, mar­tial artists, teach­ers, bank­ers, body­builders, lawy­ers, ve­t­eri­narians, so­cial work­ers, com­put­er sci­en­tists, min­ers and more.

Yet we have no­ticed over the years that many peo­ple car­ry around a tired old set of an­ti ve­g­an prej­u­dices, just wait­ing to un­load them on the first un­sus­pect­ing ve­g­an they come across. You’ll of­ten hear th­ese peo­ple mind­less­ly char­ac­terise ve­g­ans as pale, weak, wast­ing away, tree hug­ging let­tuce munch­ing hip­pies, most­ly with­out ev­er hav­ing met an ac­tu­al ve­g­an!

Some faces from the Not your typ­i­cal tree­hug­ger cam­paign

The aim of the Not Your Typ­i­cal Tree­hug­ger cam­paign is to in­tro­duce you to re­al ve­g­ans in the com­mu­ni­ty, from all walks of life, and in the pro­cess take a sledge­ham­mer to un­in­formed and in­cor­rect prej­u­dices about what it is to be ve­g­an.

In June 2010 we launched the cam­paign with this pro­file of ve­g­an body­builder Joel Kirk­ilis. Ev­ery week for the next year we will post a new pro­file to the Not Your Typ­i­cal Tree­hug­ger web­site. The pro­files will fea­ture in­for­ma-                                                    

-­tion about how and why peo­ple have gone ve­g­an, favou­rite foods and recipes, re­ac­tions of fam­i­ly and friends, and sto­ries about how go­ing ve­g­an has changed lives for the bet­ter. The cam­paign is glob­al and if you know any­one who would like to be fea­tured as part of this new and exc­it­ing cam­paign, or would like to be pro­filed your­self, please let us know.