RSPCA – Australian Wildlife Protection Council

Let companion birds fly – Petition

17/01/2016 AWPC 7 comments

BAN BIRD SALES AUSTRALIA- THOUSANDS OF BIRDS NEED TO BE ADOPTED!

Birds are born to fly and forage freely!!

But birds can’t fly in Australia.

Australian companion birds continue to be subjected to a miserable life!

You don’t need to look far to see bird abuse and neglect and horrible bird exploitation.

There are thousands and thousands of birds bred to be sold….as a hobby!! Birds are highly intelligent but instead sold for fun and extra cash!

Bird breeders and sellers are having a ball selling and trading birds anywhere because they can!

Because no one is stopping them! And there are NO BIRD LAWS IN AUSTRALIA!

(image: **The photo above is a lonely stressed cockatiel parrot for sale in Melbourne, living in a small filthy cage on the ground, advertised in a gumtree ad. The water container is full of faeces.)

Codes of Practice are NOT mandatory so bird keepers do whatever they want.

“The bird breeders and bird sellers have taken advantage of the fact that no authority is monitoring or enforcing laws to protect how birds are handled and cared for”.

I have seen for myself at private bird breeder properties, pet shops, bird cage makers displaying birds and markets around Australia- TRAGEDY.

The constant breeding and captivity results in huge psychological and physiological trauma to birds. Most people, including breeders, have no idea how to care for and accommodate companion birds.

They don’t care that their birds are expected to breed, breed and breed. They don’t even consider the emotional and physiological implications on the bird when the bird is expected to separate from the bird family or bird partner- just to be sold….as a hobby.

“I could easily rescue thousands of birds every day”.
There is an oversupply and most of these poor birds are sold or traded to inexperienced bird carers who perceive them as a ‘pretty object.’ Most other birds are stolen as eggs from their mothers and incubated in bedrooms throughout Australia.

It is unimaginable that Australian birds can exist in such a condition and bird breeders and sellers are proud of showing photos of the neglected birds for all the world to see!

I am calling for all Australian state governments and RSPCA to:

• Ban the sale of companion birds at markets, expos and sales, pet shops, online and backyard selling.
• Introduce companion bird welfare laws as the current codes of practice are totally ignored and not mandatory.
• Ban bird breeding and promote bird adoption to save thousands of neglected and rejected homeless birds.

About Paris Yves
Paris Yves has cared for birds all her life. She is a professional Bird Behaviourist and Bird Counsellor and regularly liaises with world-renowned animal behaviourists to ensure she is on top of bird behaviour research and findings. An experienced media commentator, Yves has become the voice of welfare and legal rights for companion birds in Australia.

Media Contact:
Paris Yves
Mobile: 0413 530 419
Email: paris@letcompanionbirdsfly.com.au
Images of abused/neglected birds can be viewed at http://www.letcompanionbirdsfly.com.au/campaign/

SIGN THE PETITION

We demand that the genocide of wildlife in Queensland, by land clearing, ends

15/09/2017 AWPC Leave a comment

TO:
The Honourable Annastacia Palaszczuk MP Premier of Queensland

Hon Dr Steven Miles, Minister for Environment and Heritage Protection and Minister for National Parks and the Great Barrier Reef

The Australian Wildlife Protection Council (AWPC) is a non-profit charity founded in 1969 by Arthur Queripel and incorporated in 1981. Registered Charity A0012224D/ ABN 85240279616

The committee and members are appalled at the wanton vandalism and carnage that’s happening in Queensland, the State under your custodianship, at this present time.

The statistics from 2014-15 — the most recent figures we have — show that 2960 square kilometres of forest was cleared in Queensland alone. This has led to a “massive escalation in the rate of deforestation”, which has resulted in the deaths of “countless native animals” and has impacted the Great Barrier Reef significantly; much of the current land-clearing is occurring in Great Barrier Reef catchment areas.

Nationally, the Australian Koala Foundation believes the koala population — which is concentrated across Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria, is less than 80,000. In addition to koalas, tree-clearing victims include mammals like the feathertail glider, a range of native birds and countless reptiles and frogs.

A new report by RSPCA and WWF-Australia, released Sept 7, significantly on Threatened Species day, highlights the worsening impact of tree-clearing across the east coast of the country — and koalas are on the frontline of clinging onto their existence! “The enormous extent of suffering and death caused makes tree-clearing the single greatest animal welfare crisis,” the report found.

The report exposes that tree-clearing rates due to urban sprawl, (engineered high population growth!) logging and “development” have more than tripled in recent years and Australia’s east coast now is one of 11 global deforestation hot spots.

We call this “development” as synonymous to government-sanctioned environmental vandalism!

Tens of millions of wild animals suffer injuries, displacement and death every year due to the bulldozing of their forest and woodland habitats, the report revealed. So our precious and unique native birds and animals are just collateral damage, in the name of economic progress, “economic growth”?

In Queensland alone, WWF-Australia estimates tree-clearing kills about 34 million native mammals, birds and reptiles annually.

This is genocide, and is shaming us as a supposed first world, developed nation.

Queensland has been rated as a “contemporary hot spot” for land clearing and is on par with places like Brazil, a new study has found. “Land clearing in Queensland is the highest that it has been in the last 10 years,” Dr Reside said.
“We have 95 threatened species of animal, 12 threatened species of plant that are impacted by land clearing.”

Why bother with the facade of having an Environment Department, Minister, if there’s a carte blanche for industries and property developers have an open book to do what they want, and destroy vegetation with impunity? Why have the pretence of any laws, policies or regulations to protect wildlife, our endemic species, or the environment?

According to the above WWF, (above) bulldozing of forests in Queensland has killed tens of millions of the wild Australian animals living there in recent years.

Scientists estimate tree-clearing in Queensland now kills 34 million animals each year: 900,000 mammals like koalas, possums and gliders, 2.6 million birds like cockatoos and 30.6 million reptiles including goannas, dragons, skinks and geckos. Just how are native animals meant to survive the onslaught of chain saws, bulldozers and the sure-killer of habitat being stolen?

Habitat destruction is a major driver of extinction of wildlife. Over 120 Australian vertebrate species have ended up on the
national threatened species list due in large part to bulldozing of their bushland habitats. (Tree Clearing: The hidden crisis of animal welfare in Queensland. Joint RSPCA and WWF report as below).

But this underestimates true numbers of animals affected. In particular, the legacy impacts of clearing due to fragmentation and degradation of the remaining habitat are likely to be even more severe because they are ongoing and affect subsequent generations. This is exemplified by koalas, of which more than 10,000 were admitted to the four wildlife hospitals in southeast Queensland from 2009 to 2014, mainly due to dog attacks and vehicle collisions, more than 10 times the numbers directly affected by clearing.

We would like to know where the leadership is, and how industrialists and property developers have grabbed so much power and influence? What happened to our ethics, wildlife conservation policies, standards of stewardship, and responsibilities to future generations?

This neo-Colonialism can’t be defended by 19th century ignorance, as in the past. So the policy of Terra Nullius is alive and well today, with no State, national or international safeguards against rampant destruction, the further of threatening and killing processes and the sterilization of Queensland to vast, de-nuded landscapes void of native vegetation and indigenous species? What about your responsibilities to our climate change mitigation policies?

Our members are outraged, as is the AWPC committee members. We need some answers, and we demand that NO MORE land be cleared in Queensland, that the Queensland population is stabilised, and there is funding for landscape restoration and re-vegetation of damaged ecosystems – along with protected zones, extra national parks, and breeding programs and release strategies for endangered/threatened species.

Thank you, We wait for a detailed response.

Sincerely, the Committee

Featured image: FEARS ABOUT CONTINUED LARGE-SCALE LAND CLEARING IN QUEENSLAND, AUSTRALIA

Assoc. Professor Martine Maron at the University of Queensland and Professor Carla Catterall at Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia, are very concerned about large-scale land clearing Down Under.