'Animals doing well' are cheering sights

Yes, “It’s a mad, mad, mad, mad world” – and a bad and sad one too (seeming sometime to worsen every day).  Current events routinely amount to one horrific piece of news after another, with no hint of sanity, compassion or care for the future.

How to cope, feel optimistic and move forward?

One cheer-up for me was this recent sighting: in a little clearing at the edge of a park stood two sweet spotted fawns, tails flicking while they nosed around.  Utterly charmed, I drove slowly by, praying they wouldn’t venture into the street.

I took the same route home, hoping to see them again.  I did.  One had stayed in place, while the other was now barely visible behind high brush nearby, with a taller figure whose brown coat glowed through the foliage: mom.  Had she been watching her kids from the same spot when I first went by?

The second and always pick-me-up: Billy Summers, a loving tuxedo cat whose bright eyes tell me he’s alert and ready to play (or eat?) . . . and happy for our togetherness: a thrill every time.  

Obviously, non-human animals doing well are dependable uppers for me, even if it doesn’t happen widely or often enough. 

In New Jersey, though, one statewide organization has for nearly 40 years worked (yes, even during the dog days of summer!) for our state’s animals, from bears, deer, geese and farm animals to cats, dogs and others -- some pets and some lost, homeless or abused, but all needing attention and care.

The Animal Protection League of New Jersey (APLNJ) is making its commitment and influence felt in numerous summer activities that include such efforts as . . .

• Participating on a Forest Task Force and proposing to stop all current deer-killing practices that necessitated the group’s creation
• Re-fighting the poaching bill that keeps coming up by meeting with legislature leadership; seeking co-sponsorship of the bill to ban bear feeding at that series of meetings
• Preparing to meet with Gov. Murphy’s staff about the Division of Fish & Wildlife’s unsatisfactory non-lethal bear program 
• Maintaining the Canada geese program; tabling (distributing printed info and answering questions) at numerous locales; making presentations to interested groups on deer; taking part in collaborative coalitions on behalf of deer, bears & gestation crates. 

'People power' for animals

Another example of people working for the good of animals is Britain’s new animal-welfare law, the Animal Sentience Act.  By requiring all government officials to consider animal welfare when laws and policies are enacted, it provides legal protection for animals. 

Before leaving the European Union (EU) in 2020, Britain had supported a declaration of animal sentience (“ability to perceive or feel things”) that became a legal article in the 2009 Lisbon Treaty. That legislation provided “legal recognition that all vertebrate animals, decapod crustaceans (such as lobsters) and cephalopods (such as octopuses) have the capacity for feelings and emotions, both positive and negative.”  

That (comparatively enlightened) statement of belief came centuries after the common earlier practice of equating animals with inanimate owned objects – both seen as property, unable to feel pain or suffer. Instead, it acknowledged that non-human animals, like humans, also have feelings that deserve care and respect.

Once out of the EU, however, Britain was no longer bound by the Lisbon Treaty article and lacked any such guideline.  Then “people power” changed all that.  Activists’ massive drive for sentience-recognition legislation led in April to passage of the new Animal Sentience Act, now regarded as only the foundation for what may follow.

If the newly created Animal Sentience Committee and public opinion continue to influence government actions, UK campaigns to ban cruel animal products and promote “fur-free Britain” may become realities.    https://tinyurl.com/2s3tafhh

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