Monday, August 22, 2011

Save the Dolphins concert on 28 Aug 2011

Blogger Alex Au, best known for his political blogging, has also highlighted the work of the animal welfare group Acres on his blog Yawning Bread.

He describes their success in alerting the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority (AVA), Singapore's regulatory authority for the wildlife products trade, to the sale of tiger parts and products in over 50 shops around the island.

Acres is now working to gather more support in its campaign, The World's Saddest Dolphins, to release the dolphins that have been captured for Resorts World Sentosa. 27 bottlenose dolphins were captured from the wild around the Solomon Islands, of which two have since died, which I previously blogged about here. Acres states that:
"Their world has already shrunk to a square sea pen, devoid of variety, bereft of sea life. They can’t hunt anymore. They beg and jump for handouts of dead fish, which arrive in buckets. There’s nowhere for them to roam, except back and forth. And nothing to do except turn round and round and go slowly mad."
These sentiments echo that of the Nobel-prize-winning student of animal behavior, Konrad Lorenz, who wrote in his book King Solomon's Ring:
"Now which are the animals really to be pitied in captivity? ... In the first place, those clever and highly developed beings whose lively mentality and urge for activity can find no outlet behind the bars of the cage. 
... 
"[O]f all the animals that suffer under the inefficient methods of many zoological gardens, by far the most unfortunate are those mentally alert creatures of whom we have spoken above. These, however, rarely awaken the pity of the zoo visitor, least of all when such an originally highly intelligent animal has deteriorated, under the influence of close confinement, into a crazy idiot, a very caricature of its former self."
Acres in collaboration with Young NTUC is hosting a free concert at Hong Lim Park in support of its Saddest Dolphins campaign, from 4:30 to 7:30 pm on the 28th of August (Sunday). Find out more on its Facebook event page

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