Far East Leopard

Usually when you think about where leopards live, you think of Africa but there is a species of leopard that has adapted to be able to live in Amur-Heilong, which covers northern parts of China and the Russian Far East.  The leopards live along the Amur River basin in eastern Russia.  This species of leopard are the Amur leopards a.k.a the Far East Leopards.

The World Wildlife Fund has classified as critically endangered.  Like other leopards they can run at speeds of 37 miles per hour.  They have a 10 foot vertical leap and can jump 19 feet horizontally.  In the wild the amur leopards can have a lifespan of 10-15 years and up to 20 years in captivity.  There are only a few dozen of these beautiful animals left in the wild.

Sadly, the amur leopard is not immune to being subject to the illegal wildlife trade.  Their beautiful spotted fur is the reason behind why these gorgeous animals are poached.  In 2009, Russian police found the skin of an adult amur leopard was found in a car.  This leopard was shot for his skin.

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The World Wildlife Fund is working with TRAFFIC to help governments with the enforcement both domestically and internationally of trade restrictions.  The WWF also monitor the habitat of the amur leopards and try to increase it.  Right now the amur leopards live on less than 2,500 square kilometers of land.

Reflecting on this Semester

Reflecting upon the work we have done for this blog this semester, it is clear that we have met some of our goals and have encountered areas of growth. One requirement of the blog was to disseminate our findings. We did this mainly through Twitter and Facebook. On Twitter, we currently have 19 followers and have received follow-backs from high-profile groups, non-profits, and advocacy organizations. So, while our blog did not reach the amount of views we had hoped, we are interacting with other highly involved organizations. This demonstrates that we are engaging in the larger dialogue around environmentalism and wildlife conservation.

 

Encouraging more dialogue is something that our blog could have grown more in and pursued more. We received a handful of “likes” but did not receive any comments or such. We could have actively commented on other blogs and articles to insert ourselves more into the dialogue. However, the wide scope of our blog topic allowed us to engage with a wide and varied set of advocacy groups and “arms” of this social movement. What I mean is this: each post we did was on a vastly different topic and thus allowed us to gain a deeper, richer understanding of that specific part of the environmentalism or animal rights. So, we learned about circuses, fresh water, deforestation etc. more deeply and connected with organizations that are doing work in these specific areas.

Connecting this to class concepts, our topic/social movement of environmentalism, and wildlife rights and habitat conservation embodies participatory culture, social networking, and democracy.

Participatory culture: This social movement cannot and does not simply exist in digital communities. In order for this movement to make change, it HAS to move beyond the screen into real life, every day, participatory action. People must get involved in protests, planting trees, promoting education, advocating for policy change, and otherwise participating in the work necessary to preserve our planet and animal habitats.

Community: This social movement is defined by community. Community is at the heart of this movement from the animals to the activists. Animals thrive on community, living with one another and using the communities in which they live to survive in the ecosystem. This social movement also embodies community in both digital and physical spaces. While environmentalism is a broad movement with different, specific sects, it is unified in the connected nature. For example, a group focused on preserving fresh water sources is also going to be somewhat concerned about fish, ecosystems, global warming, and deforestation among other topics. Everything in the environment is connected where one loss affects all systems. This means that activists have to be connected in community to make a big change that helps all of the systems. Digital technologies allow for community to take place because it helps educate activists on other topic areas within the social movement.

Digital divides: The major “con” to this social movement is the digital divide embedded in it. Not everyone has access to digital technologies that would allow for them to be more connected and educated. So, while environmentalism affects all people everywhere, not all people know how they play unique roles in it simply because they do not have access to this education or ways of getting involved. People living in severely impoverished or developing countries may not even have a working understanding of how they negatively or positively impact the environment.

The class concepts allowed us to analyze the effectiveness of the social movement at large. They were difficult to incorporate into the blog posts because our posts were focused on the transmission view of communication – educating the wider public on the exigence of the issue at hand. However, the class concepts allowed us to step back and see from a bird’s eye view how the social movement was operating and in what ways they can do better particularly with online communication.

Personally, I gained new insights into the varied nature of this social movement. I have also learned how to critique social movements, and determine best practices for online communication and news dissemination.

We have a better understanding of how to stay involved in social movements. We have also gained knowledge about how to interact with social movements online and how to disseminate information in strategic ways.

Unify and put together rallies that advocate for policy change. Do community events that educate people on the issue. Bring in an actor for the social movement to help educate and connect people. For example, bring in an official from Nepal to discuss how they have been successful in preventing rhino poaching over the past two years. Promote initiatives that unify the different, varied parts of the movement. So, for example, bring together main actors of groups like Vets Without Borders, animal sanctuary activists, and UN environmental spokespeople to discuss ideas and connect the movement to your audience.

Erin will continue to post as a hobby and do research. I am graduating and do not plan to keep it up. To our readers, thank you for following us on this journey as we learned, educated, and explored the issues surrounding wildlife conservation.

Earth Day & Week: Politicizing a Social Movement

“Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air.” -Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson, a famous U.S. American poet, wrote this reflecting on nature and it seeks to capture what this week stands for. This week, April 18-22, is Earth Week, an international campaign to promote environmentalism. It’s a week culminating to Friday, called Earth Day that also raises awareness to how humans are exploiting the planet and its resources.

The provocative video shown below outlines major statistics about the natural resources being depleted by humans. It’s a call to actions. We must do something because lives are being lost, both animals and humans. This week is sponsored and encourage, in large part, by the non-profit Earth Day Network that serves a main digital medium actor for this movement, according to Leonarda Garcia-Jimenez et. al. The article titled “The Construction of Symbolic Power:Comparing Offline and Online Media Representationsof Occupy the Street in Spain” discusses and defines symbolic power as they relate to social movements and allows us to identify who the major actors, actions, and themes are in the environmental social movement. .

The symbolic power of this specific event within the larger environmentalism social movement is that it has moved beyond the digital sphere. Earth Day and Earth Week are not simply existing behind a screen. They are promoting action and activism, organizing rallies, encouraging people to plant trees etc. For many in developed countries, the knowledge about Earth Day/Week begins on the screen but it’s goal is to move beyond the screen and formulate into protests, sit-ins, and actions.

Earth Day 2016 centers around trees—planting 7.8 billion of them to be precise. People can participate in this event by planting a tree themselves, donating, or organizing or attending an event that promotes environmentalism. This advocacy from the screen to organized events and action demonstrates the symbolic power this social movement embodies, and particularly this organization.

This day and week focusing on the earth and environmentalism is an example of how this larger social movement is seeking to move beyond the screen and into both the public realm and into political arenas.

Clay Shirky, in an article published in the UK magazine Prospect, argues that there are advantages to using the Internet in social movement revolutions and activism; that the internet can be a starting place for protests and social gatherings around a particular issue. Earth Day clearly demonstrates this idea in that it allows for people to learn about and opt into activism. The protests are then more influential with the social media dynamic. The YouTube video below demonstrates how social media is asking people to get involved in small ways, utilizing symbolic power to build ethos and credibility.

The digital divide operating in this social movement has to do with access. Who has access to Earth Day events? Who has access and means to organize an Earth Day event? It’s an international campaign, but what groups of people are reading about it and participating? Is it more about those with access, privilege, and money donating or trying to save developing countries and those areas that have little to no access and money?

These questions becomes imperative as we consider how digital spaces have consequences and divides between non-digital spaces and publics.

Circuses: Abuse or Entertainment?

We’ve all gone to the circus at one point or another in our lives.  Watching the trainers do tricks with lions, animals riding bicycles, and jumping through rings of fire.  All of these things are great to watch, but what is the price that these animals pay in order for this to take place?

Animals are not shown kindness when they are being trained to perform these out of characteristic activities.  Elephants will be beaten, stabbed, poked, hit, and jabbed with sharp hooks, and sometimes to the point where the animal is bleeding. This happens to elephants of all ages, even babies who should still be cared for by their mothers.

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Circuses never stay put for very long which means that the animals are constantly being shoved into cages to move from place to place.  They are not allowed out of the cages to have a nature break, are not treated by a veterinarian, and may not even have food and water.  These trips are not short, which means that an animal can be chained and/or caged up for more than a day straight.

With all of this abuse the animals are bound to snap at some point.  An animal could reach their breaking point right in the middle of a performance, endangering the lives of everyone there.  This video is an example of an incident in 1994 involving an elephant who had been abused for years.  WARNING: This video contains violence.

The reason that circus animals are routinely abused is because there is no government oversight.  We only know about the cruelty because of undercover video footage revealing the horrors that these animals are subjected to.  You can get involved to stop the cruelty that circus animals face.  Stop Circus Suffering is an organization dedicated to ending this horrifying practice.

Out of Fresh Water?

Did you know that the Great Lakes hold 20% of the world’s fresh water and 80% of the fresh water in North America? This means that 42 million people rely on the Great Lakes for drinking water.  The Great Lakes provide food and habitat for many different species of wildlife such as the Canada lynx, the gray wolf, and many different fish such as the whitefish.

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Untreated sewage, industrial pollution, and invasive species are big causes of the deterioration of the Great Lakes.  Untreated sewage and industrial pollution are due to our lack of green technology and pharmaceutical companies dumping drugs in the lakes.  In 2006, over 23 billion gallons of raw sewage was dumped into the Great Lakes by the cities along the Great Lakes.  This caused many things included the closure of beaches and the death of many fish. Pollution runoff comes from many different sources such as urban developed areas and rural farms.  Wetlands serve as filters of pollutants from water and with wetlands disappearing pollution runoff is going directly into the water sources.  Without wetlands we cannot have clean lakes and this cause less fresh water and the decline of several species that rely on these lakes.

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The problem of invasive species is the result of cargo ships that cross oceans.  Some of these species are zebra mussels, the Asian carp, and the sea lamprey.  Zebra mussels are very efficient when it comes to filtering food from the water, which leaves very little food for small fish to eat.  With very little to eat the small fish start to disappear as do the larger sport fish that eat them.  Lake trout has disappeared from all of the Great Lakes except for Lake Superior due to sea lamprey and chemical contamination.

*Majority of information is from “A Citizen’s Guide to Protecting the Great Lakes” published by Sierra Club.

 

King of the Ocean

Sharks are in rapid decline as demand for their fins increases and over-fishing messes with marine ecosystems. Sharks are extremely important to marine ecosystems. They sit at the top of the food chain and help control species growth for the ecosystem. They contribute to the balance of underwater life.

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One might not recall sharks as a threat for extinction, but all recorded shark species are facing this threat with the exception of Mako sharks. The biggest threat to sharks is commercial and overfishing as well as shark finning. Sharks lost due to overfishing is typically because they get caught in fishing gear in targeted areas. So even though people are not targeting this species, they get caught and killed. This process is also called by catching.

By-catching is also another threat to shark species across the globe. This is the accidental capture of an animal. Targeted fisheries seeking billfish and tuna are particularly high in by-catching sharks.

Shark-finning is another main reason why sharks are on the decline. According to seethewild.org, “Commercial shark-finning is a practice where sharks are caught and their fins are cut off, then the body of the shark is discarded.”

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This process kills more than 100 million sharks every year. Shark-finning is a common practice in Asian cultures because the meat, fins, and cartilage are desired for various purposes including consumption, medicine, and status. The shark fins and meat will be made into fin soup which is a delicacy, and they are often used for medicinal purposes. Shark finning is unregulated and unsustainable. The trade runs rampant as laws and enforcement lags behind.

Another reason the endangerment of shark’s matters is because sharks are not easily replenished. Known as the top predator of the ocean, they mature slowly, live long, and produce few young. While this does not excuse or cause their decline, it does help explain why, in the face of finning and overfishing, this animal is currently vulnerable.

Learn more about what is being done and how you can help! You can even adopt a shark!

Gorilla Warfare

Elephants are not the only animals being poached and in danger of losing their habitat. Gorillas and other great ape populations are decreasing at an  unsustainable rate. The mountain gorilla is the only gorilla species that has been increasing in population.

We cannot ignore the reality of their natural habitat being eroded as humans increase expansion. As their natural habitat slowly decreases, gorillas do not have safe places to go and poaching increases.

So why are gorillas being killed?

To put it succinctly: bushmeat and trade.

According to World Wildlife Fund, “apes are being killed due primarily to supply high-end demand for meat in urban centers, where the consumption of ape meat is considered to be prestigious amongst the wealthy elite.” The size of the gorilla and amount of meat the animal produces makes it a marketable, sellable, and profitable trade. People can get a big bang for their buck, and the meat is in high demand because there is so much of it. This threat of being killed serves as the biggest threat to the decline of gorilla populations.

It is difficult for gorillas to bounce back from this because the species reproduces at a much lower rate. In short, it could take multiple generations for the population to recover from mass amounts of illegal hunting and poaching.

Other reasons to consider about why gorillas are being killed is in regards to historicism and tradition. Gorillas have traditionally been used for magical charms and medicine, and the illegal trade of gorillas goes unnoticed.

The black market for the baby gorillas is going, according to NBC News, and is continuing to grow in rebel-controlled areas in Africa. The sale of these babies goes to high-paying individuals and zoos who want to collect exotic animals in other countries.

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Moving forward, it seems that simply raising awareness about this issue could do a lot. When people think of poaching they tend to think of elephants and lions, but it extends beyond to other animal species. If we know more about the black trade and the rapidly declining numbers, as well as the cultural and social reasons that contribute to a culture of poaching, we might be able to do something about it and shift our worldview from passivity to activity and advocacy.

To learn more and educate yourself visit the World Wildlife Fund.  To learn more about how you can get involved to help save gorillas visit here.

Actively Protecting Marine Wildlife

As the video shows there are mass amounts of pollution that affects all aspects of marine wildlife.  With all marine life being intertwined it is crucial that we not only protect every part of the ocean and the animals that live in the ocean and enforce the laws that are put in place. Our plant is 71% water and yet only 3.4% of that is protected, whereas 16% of land is protected.  Saying that the ocean is protected is not completely accurate because even though there are laws in place, they are not enforced.

Passing a law to protect a small piece of the ocean is a step in the right direction but it isn’t enough because no single part of the ocean is isolated from another part. Throwing garbage into the ocean has resulted in the injury and sometimes even the death of some animals that call the ocean home.  Plastic garbage can be mistaken for food by marine animals, which in high concentrations results in the animals’ stomachs and breathing to be blocked.  It doesn’t have to get into their bodies to cause harm though, the plastic six-pack rings that are used for drinks can choke and animal or get stuck around their bodies and cause their bodies to take abnormal shapes (i.e. a turtles shell will grow to look like to shells morphed together instead of one circular shell).

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The ocean has always been a convenient dumping ground for waste. This practice was banned by the London Dumping Convention in 1972.  Chemicals that find their way into the ocean do not become diluted as many believe, instead they become more concentrated especially once they find their way into the food chain.  Once a small animal like plankton absorb the chemicals it works its way into the larger animals that eat plankton and so on.  Plankton are so small that their bodies cannot break down the chemicals and it accumulates in their bodies therefore becoming more concentrated.

Now that we have established and outlined how ocean pollution is pervasive and killing off species of our planet, we want to know what people are doing about it. What is going on in online mediums to collaborate and address this issue? An easy google search will reveal that organizations, initiatives, and collective’s people are organizing to raise awareness and stop the harm that is being done. People are doing things and participating—this area and social movement are encouraging people to not only passively learn but to also actively participate both within and beyond digital spheres. Save Our Shores is one (of the many) organizations that advocates for both digital and social media activism as well as participation beyond the screen. Their home page features participation avenues and actions that people can including participating in a shore clean up, supporting bans on plastic water bottles, and preventing oil spills.

Within digital spheres, people enacted participatory culture around this issue after the BP oil spill of 2010. Twitter exploded with dialogue as people weighed in about gushing oil into the Gulf of Mexico. The hashtag #bp and #oilspill were trending and it seemed everyone with internet access and a Twitter account had something negative to say about BP. It resulted in the company’s image taking a nose dive with public relations. Their stock went down as negative associations with their name rose. A parody Twitter account (@BPGlobalPR) mocking the public relations and tarnished image of BP was created and now has more followers than BP’s official account (@BP_America). The Twitter account gaining widespread attention and notoriety demonstrates how people are using social media to raise awareness and participate in, even passively, in social movements.

The Ugly Side of Zoos

We all love going to the zoo and seeing all of the exotic animals from all over the world. Zoos only advertise the good things that they do, such as taking care of an orphaned animal to prevent he/she from being killed by other animals or poachers, nursing an injured animal back to health before releasing them back into the wild. What they don’t show us and try to deny is what goes on behind the scenes.

In the wild animals are free to roam hundreds of miles as they please, but in zoos they are confined to the tiniest fraction of that size in zoos. According to The New York Times, polar bears have up to 31,00 square miles available to them in the wild, but are confined to one-millionth of that space in a zoo.

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Some animals might live longer than they would have in the wild, i.e. orphaned animals. But the vast majority of animals in zoos die long before when they would’ve been able to live in the wild.

When a lion is in a zoo they spend 48% of their time pacing back and forth, which is a sign of behavioral issues.

Animals do not let humans jump off of them in the wild, but we see this in zoos all the time because that is how they are trained. This gives people a false view of how animals behave. This can lead to animal attacks because humans are not aware that these animals are not always the cuddly, loving, and passive animals that they are portrayed to be. Animals in the zoo are pampered and therefore they have no training on how to survive. When and if they are released their chances of survival are very slim because they don’t know how to hunt or defend themselves.

Not all animals are in zoos as a result of being orphaned or injured, some are perfectly healthy and in a good living situation, but are taken so that zoos can be filled with more animals.