Founder's Blog

WILDLIFE RESEARCH NEEDS BIOETHICAL BOUNDARIES AND VETERINARY SUPERVISION

There are several documented, and many word-of mouth accounts of chemically immobilized and otherwise restrained endangered species like the Asian elephant and African wild dog being severely injured, killed or dying soon after capture and/or release. In some instances there was an association with the animals being injected with un-tested and un-approved modified live virus vaccines. In other instances the injured or killed animal was a pregnant or nursing mother.

 Experienced veterinary supervision is called for especially when research biologists are loose in the field using drugs and vaccines on their animal subjects and applying various methods of capture and restraint which may cause serious injury, capture myopathy and even death. (Dr. Hackett's note: Stress Cardiomyopathy is due to the emotional stress of the capture and causes cardiac muscle to be unable to contract properly and pump blood because it becomes like an octopus' motion under the massive surge in stress hormones. The federal trapper whom I discussed this with did not believe me until I informed him this is a common clinical event seen in captive animals and people too--he had no clue. Thus the need for veterinarian supervision).

Wildlife continue to be harassed, stressed, and subjected to these in-field risks so that tissue and blood samples can be taken (though DNA evidence can be obtained from feces and rubbing/marking areas), radio collars and even cameras fitted,  and microchips implanted. The generation of more scientific data from such field research may help advance careers and engender more funding, and give some substance to wildlife management schemes. But when the animals in question are put at risk, and there are no in-place regulations and effective law enforcement to protect and restore their existing habitats, and to extend same in order to help minimize accelerating loss of genetic biodiversity, then these wildlife researchers should cease and desist.

 Such activities alone have nothing to do with wildlife conservation and at best give the false impression that something is being done, the foreign presence alone being a deterrent to poaching etc etc. Yet in reality from a bioethical perspective, the risks to the animals far exceed the immediate and foreseeable benefits. So I appeal to all appropriate institutions, governmental and non-governmental, for-profit and not-for profit, to encourage alternative, non-invasive wildlife research, and to cease funding and permitting any form of wildlife capture except for urgent veterinary and conservation-translocation reasons.

---Dr. Michael W. Fox

www.twobitdog.com/Drfox/

The current coronavirus pandemic caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus is responsible for over 6 million deaths world-wide and millions of others with chronic health consequences.

Some virologists contend that this virus was genetically engineered in one or more laboratories to have “gain in function”--becoming more contagious---a not uncommon procedure in the steps involving vaccine development and animal testing.

Conspiracy theories have been spun around the U.S. Government and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s involvement in this kind of vaccine development. It is a very safe investment since people suffering from adverse reactions cannot sue the manufacturers but must prove their case, often difficult, directly to the Government to seek compensation.

My main concern is that these and other agencies have not taken any significant steps to prevent future pandemics from zoonotic ( animal-to-human) diseases by seeking international prohibitions on wildlife trade, live “wet” markets in China and other countries as well as the bush meat markets in Africa and a rapid phasing out of CAFOs-confined animal feed operations ( so-called factory farms) especially of pigs and poultry: also, COVID-19-susceptible fur farms, mink in particular, and deer and “trophy” game farms operations, especially of White-tail deer who are very susceptible to this virus transmitted from humans. New variants will evolve along with other zoonotic diseases which will not be prevented by evermore vaccines, none of which offer zero risk.

We must, as a population soon to crest at 8 billion and which many ecologists and others see as a global infestation, change our eating and breeding habits beginning with better family planning and the rapid adoption of nutritious, plant based diets around the world to reduce our depredation and dependence on animals wild and domesticated as a source of food.The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is now also urging adoption of plant-based diets as a significant step to help reduce climate change.

Efforts to protect the wolf in North America have now been thwarted yet again by the U.S. Department of the Interior decision to remove the gray wolf from protection under the Endangered Species Act. Yet there is only a fraction, possibly only less than 10% left of the original population, that once ranged across much of the continent because of human encroachment, trapping, poisoning, snaring, and shooting. Ranchers, recreational “sports” hunters and outfitters, and fur trappers are happy now.

These special interest groups are not representative of the democratic majority that has voted in favor of animal and environmental protective legislation, yet this immoral minority wins once again. I say immoral advisedly, sine there are many ranchers and hunters who respect and chose to protect the wolf, as well as the cougar and other predators. Some who protect their livestock with non-lethal methods of predator deterrence see it as the price they must pay for encroaching on wolf domain when some stock are taken by this increasingly displaced, persecuted, and starving indigenous species.

The immorality of conspicuous consumption and destruction is evident in the recent federal plan to strip protection from Alaska’s Tongass National Forest and open up all 16.7 million acres to logging and other forms of “development” in one of the world’s largest and last temperate rainforests. The legacy of America’s imperialistic invasion, genocide and violation of the rights of indigenous peoples and species lives on as we continue to wolf all down that contributes to the GNP: the gross national product. Efforts to protect the environment and threatened animal and plant species are seen as “Taking away our freedom and rights,” to quote some politicians.

No less is happening in other countries striving to live high off the hog and wolf all down as grasslands, wetlands, and forests are turned over to commodity crop monocultures and livestock and poultry-feed production, displacing and disenfranchising small family farm cooperatives and communities in the process and accelerating climate change and loss of biodiversity. When I was a boy, chicken and steaks were too expensive for my family to consume on a regular basis but are now affordable for most who regard poultry, pork, beef and dairy products as dietary staples rather than luxuries, unaware of the hidden costs, especially animal suffering in factory farms and feedlots, and the environmental and public health consequences.

The chemicals and animal drugs used in this global agribusiness industry are making us sick and harming the environment and what is left of our wildlife. Consumers are told to trust agri-science, the food they eat and the drugs they take, while science-deniers of the Climate and Extinction Crises strive to maintain business as usual especially for the fossil fuel and allied industries. In our unbridled, conspicuous consumption of fossil fuels we are indeed burning the Earth’s past as well as future.

As one who has raised and studied wolves as an ethological scientist, winning their trust and devotion and crossing the boundary of scientific objectivity to have communion with one who sang in harmony with my shakuhachi flute, I am crying now for our loss of humanity and sense of kinship with all life. This, I believe, as a veterinarian, is a sensibility without which we will never be well. No one who knows wolves, as I shared in my book The Soul of the Wolf, would ever seek to kill one as a trophy or wear their fur as some fashionable adornment.

I challenge the bioethics of wolf and all wildlife management “science” that calibrates sustainable “harvesting” quotas and acceptable “recovery” counts. (For more discussion see my review article Wildlife Management and Ecological Dysbiosis posted on www.drfoxonehealth.com). From a bioethical perspective such management is purely anthropocentric. Like sustainable farming, wildlife management must be eco-centric; Natural systems work best when we step outside, and observe rather than intervene, control, exploit and kill, and see how much needs to be healed, healthful biodiversity restored, like encouraging wolf pack expansion in states like Minnesota and Wisconsin to help prevent the spread of Chronic Wasting Disease in deer and other cervids as well as Lyme and other tick borne diseases to humans and other animals..

The efforts of conservation and wildlife and biodiversity protection need support. Restraining order law suits and appeals are costly and take talent. Such disingenuous journalism is archaic and atavistic, if not anarchistic. The eco-tourist value of healthy wolf populations is coupled with the health of ecosystems to which wolves and other predators contribute. Predator “services” have been long documented as contributing to deer and other herbivore herd health and protection of forest habitat from over-grazing/browsing so fewer sapling trees are consumed, enabling forest regeneration, now additionally compromised by climate change.

Beyond anthropocentric religious belief, there is no science-based evidence that Nature was created for man’s exclusive use, becoming dysfunctional when so abused; or that other animals are our inferiors and are natural resources for our own use, best harvested “sustainably” ( called wise stewardship) or to be exterminated as we chose. Indigenous peoples like the Ojibwe have a very different hunting ethic and regard for wolves, and decry this de-listing. For them, and others who share their worldview, the wolf is a totemic species, a sacred presence in the life-community worthy of equal and fair consideration.

Responsible journalism is warning us of a pending global environmental apocalypse caused by our combined numbers of people and animals raised for human consumption and by a fossil-fuel based economy and petrochemical and drug-dependent agribusiness food industry. See now:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/feb/10/plummeting-insect-numbers-threaten-collapse-of-nature

Insects are a foundation class of animals, far more ancient than we, that are the sustainers---from pollinators to recyclers and food for other creatures---of life on Earth.

 As a child growing up in England I became a naturalist exploring local ponds and streams, then a teen-age biologist and at nineteen, just before high school graduation I was elected a Fellow of the Royal Entomological Society. Aquatic caddis flies, the Trichoptera, were my passion, their life cycle and different larval forms captivating my curiosity and awe. They are an indicator species of water quality. Their decline and extinction from agrichemical herbicides, GMOs and insecticides, also applied to livestock that contaminate fresh water, is but one issue on the agenda of civil society awakening to planetary CPR---conservation, protection and restoration which is the foundation for our own health and future viability.