Emu

90 million years of evolution to roam over vast tracks of land, with long powerful legs & camel like feet, emus are adapted for speed, not slabs of meat and merchandise.

EMUS belong to the oldest living family of birds on earth, the Ratites, or Flightless Fowl- Emus are good parents that do not deserve to be degraded to Meat and Merchandise.

They are gentle, friendly nomads, designed by 90 million years of evolution to roam over vast tracks of land. With their long powerful legs and camel-like feet adapted for speed, they can run up to 40 miles an hour, covering 9 feet in a single stride.

Emus can grow to be 5 to 6 feet tall, weigh up to 140 pounds and live for 25-30 years. They range widely into Australia’s interior, thriving on shoots, seeds, fruit, and insects. When food is abundant they store a thick layer of fat beneath the skin for a reserve for hard times.

If they appear awkward in captivity, it is because these flightless birds are meant for open spaces, where their grace and intelligence can be exercised.

Both parents help the chicks to hatch by pecking at the shell after 6 weeks of incubation. The family stays together for 10 months or more as young birds learn to fend for themselves. The normally peaceful emu will kick ferociously with their legs and bite with their beaks to protect eggs and young from enemies.

Degrading These Magnificent Birds to Meat and Merchandise

• Transport Subjecting emus with their long thin necks and legs, and large fragile eyes, to transport is cruel and inhumane.
• Feather removal  Pulling feathers from the body of a living bird is cruel and painful. A Feather is firmly held in a follicle, the wall of which is richly supplied with sensory fibres, and nerves. Even clipping the feathers above the nerve endings pulls on the sensitive skin and muscle tissue to which the feathers are attached. Removing a feather from a bird requires a hard, steady pull. Feather removal is a barbaric act. It takes about five minutes for a blindfolded bird to be plucked. The bird is them released into a holding pen, joining a growing number of others, all plucked, covered in bumps where the feathers were ripped out, streaming blood,, and waiting …
• Slaughter  Slaughter – bound birds and mammals are typically starved for hours and even days before they are killed. Hauled in all kinds of weather they are forced to endure truck vibrations, heat, stress, cold, damp, thirst and terror. They are then shot with a captive bolt, like cattle, or, like poultry, they are electrically shocked (not stunned), and then hung upside down to have their throats cut, being kept alive when the blood drains. They are slaughtered at 12-15 months of age.

Trapped Birds To Be Poisoned
13.10.02 by Nick Taylor
email: letters@sundaytimes.newsltd.com.au

“Huge flocks of emus, driven south as drought grips the wheatbelt, are threatening to wipe out valuable crops. The invasion by thousands of the big birds is a double blow to farmers already struggling to grow crops in parched soil.”

” The birds, most in poor condition, are destroying crops and breaking fences in a desperate search for food. Rotting carcasses litter the track alongside the emu barrier, built originally as the rabbit proof fence.”

” Farmers along the fence that stretches from the Zuytdorp cliffs north of Kalbarri to Ravensthorpe in the south, have shot thousands of the birds. A further 2000 have been caught in a trap near Ravensthorpe and will be poisoned this week as thousands more move towards the fence. The cull will exceed last year’s figure when 7000 birds were killed by 62 farmers granted shooting licenses by the Department of Conservation and Land Management (CALM). Emus are a protected species and can be culled only on private property and under license.”
Please Write to
Dr Judy Edwards
Minister for Environment,
29th Floor Allendale Sq.
St Georges Terrace
Perth 6000
West Australia
There are many good, dedicated people working in CALM and they do some excellent work, but it appears the Department is slack when it comes to protecting kangaroos and emus, which are considered pests and vermin in WA. Farmers trying to eke out a living on marginal, uneconomic land should not be there in the first place. They are trying to make fragile land produce
updated 21/11/02Save Ningaloo Reef – Stop The Resort

 

AN EYEWITNESS ACCOUNT AT AN EMU FARM AT MT. GIBSON, W.A., FOUR YEARS AGO.
(This person has asked to remain anonymous)
” totally appalled at the conditions the emus had to endure…they were in yards without food or water, the ground was bare and a woman who was supposed to be running the place was trying to make it look as if she knew what she was doing…there was nothing on the ground but rocks and stones…the emus were in pens and there were a few hundred…the woman said they would be OK as they were eating the grasshoppers…there was NO vegetation to sustain anything and not a grasshopper in sight…we found some vegetable scraps and threw them over the fence to the emus, but felt so bad when the poor birds rushed to the food as we didn’t have enough for all, they were starving hungry.”
“… the birds (emus) were in such poor condition with stunted growth…this I assume is a government endorsed operation and I doubt that even if the RSPCA had been informed it would have made any difference…wanted to take it further at the time but was hesitant about making trouble … …but I wish I had done something…I didn’t know then what the situation was with emu farming but that still doesn’t excuse my negligence in not taking it further.

Mt Gibson Station is now in the hands of the Australian Wildlife Conservancy who are using the land to establish new populations where threatened species have become locally extinct. Enquiries have confirmed that the emu farm has now been closed down.
The following accounts of animal cruelty are from people who wish to remain anonymous because of repercussions from some members of the aboriginal community. aboriginal children playing with joeys like a football, after their mothers have been killed some wildlife carers have received joeys from northern missions where they have been abused and starved and female joeys have had cigarette burns to the inside of their pouches wildlife carers have received joeys with injuries around the neck where they have been repeatedly chased by children and dogs into snare traps over and over again, until they are totally traumatised.

Some of these animals never recover psychologically and have had to be put down. Officers working within CALM have very little power in dealing with these issues and as no one dares to speak about such things they are not dealt with.

NO ONE in Australia should get away with cruelly treating any animal, let alone one of our native species. The way that some aboriginal communities treat joeys is wrong and must be addressed!

Our wildlife is in CRISIS and they NEED OUR HELP!
We maim and injure them, we harm and poison them , we turn a blind eye to abuses and cruelties to them and to their young. We run them down on our roads and we fail to provide for them. We FAIL to respect and treasure them. We all have a moral and ethical duty to act and
EACH OF YOU CAN INSIST THAT CALM PROTECTS KANGAROOS AND EMUS, ALL OUR NATIVE ANIMALS, IN WESTERN AUSTRALIA

A letter from Pat O’Brien National Kangaroo Protection Coalition Coordinator, and President of the Australian Wildlife Protection Society has been sent to Francis Logan MLA, ‘warning’ about the disastrous consequences for emus on emu farms and the failure of CALM in protecting our emus and kangaroos and crocodiles from abuses on so-called ‘farms’.. Pat said that allowing any further farms for emus, crocodiles and kangaroos or allowing the proposed kangaroo ‘farm’ at Chittering to go ahead, legal action will follow.