Suffering at the hands of humans

We humans have a lot to answer for, youcantryreachingme. Today a lot has been made of the cancer curing properties of the fruit of the Blushwood Tree Hylandia dockrillii which grows in the Atherton Tablelands rainforest. Who knows how many valuable plant & animal properties have disappeared into the maws of extinction because of rainforest clearance by humans too unthinking & ignorant to understand what they are doing.

I do some native animal rescues and find the four most common causes of injury to native animals are cars, fishing line/tackle, barbed wire, and fruit tree netting.

A study in France showed that birds became used to the usual speed of cars on a road and could easily judge time, distance, and be able to get out of the way and this was regardless of the speed, so long as all cars travelled at the same speed or slower, when cars travelled faster than the usual speed the highest number of vehicle impacts occurred.

Dawn and dusk are the times of day when most animals are on the move, travelling to and from watering points, to night camps, grazing areas or out to the hunting grounds.

Barbed wire fences in urban areas are usually used for security around premises and is more than six feet from the ground and it often has trees planted around the perimeter, when birds and animals move to or from the trees they become entangled in the barb wire, in semi rural to rural areas the barbed wire is used to contain stock and is closer to the ground, ground bound birds and animals become entangled or injured by the barbed wire as they try to get through the fence.

Fruit tree netting comes in two kinds, animal friendly and not animal friendly. The animal friendly netting has small gaps that you can not poke a finger through and is suspended over a solid frame with the netting pulled tight and pegged to the ground. All other kinds are not animal friendly at all.

Fishing line, hooks, lures are all deadly to wildlife. lots of birds and flying foxes scoop water up in flight and become entangled in fishing lines with hooks or lures.

So the messages here are:

slow down when driving, do not drive at dawn or dusk unless you really have to and then be even more careful.

if a six foot fence is not going to keep the bad guys out whacking some barbed wire across the top wont either unlike our birds and native animals plenty of crooks carry wire cutters. Ditch the barbed wire.

If you really do need all of the fruit on your tree then net it properly otherwise just accept that the animals appreciate your gardening skills. Birds, flying foxes, possums are all commonly injured and some need to be euthanased because of fruit tree netting. A simple thing to do is to keep your fruit tree pruned to a manageable size and using four steel posts driven in to the ground one on each side and then some lengths of poly pipe over the end of the steel posts and bent over to slide over the oposing post so the two lengths of poly pipe form a cross over the tree then buy the good small mesh fruit tree netting and a handful of tent pegs. Pull the netting very tightly over the frame of poly pipe and peg it firmly into the ground.

In a year of rescuing flying foxes all bar two, a baby that fell from Mum as she was flying, and an adult male that became trapped in a pub outdoors area, of the flying foxes I have rescued were either hit by a vehicle (1), caught on barbed wire, (4) strung up by a hook on fishing line and hanging 9 metres above ground (1) or caught in fruit tree netting (5). I am only one of many dozens of flying fox rescuers in the Greater Sydney region. 

My first rescue was of a mum and bub caught on barbed wire, Mum died before I got there and I had the pleasure of raising the baby, a girl I named Phoebe, with all the love and devotion I could muster I did all I could for Phoebe and she was released back into the wild, however she would have fared much better with her own mother, rather than a human foster carer.

So yes humans do cause a lot of problems for our wildlife such as:

The bower bird that had a blue plastic ring from a milk bottle stuck over its head and through its beak. Please cut these before disposing of them.

The swamp hen that had a half of a coke can stuck on its head.

The currawong tangled in netting.

and these are just a few of the rescues I had some involvement in so please do be careful about what you discard and how you discard it.

Oh, the suffering humans inflict on animals.Just look at what we do to horses in the name of entertainment?

I think snakes are victimised and made to suffer for no other reason than ignorance and mostly unfounded fear. The number of snakes that are killed by using a shovel in peopel's backyards, we will never know. They die a terrible slow death. Why?? They are not waiting for victims, they don't jump out from behind trees to bite you. They would simply go away if you'd let them. When was the last time anybody died of a snake bite?

I just wish people would use their brain to think before they act.

And the general public need to be packaging wise. Why buy disposable anything when it is actually cheaper to reuse.

If you took a family on a picnic and took a dozen cans of lemonade that is a lot of packaging, you could instead take enough cups for everyone, and a couple of bottles of lemonade and then make good use fo the bottles after they are empty, ideas for reuse are, keeping water in the car for emergencies, wshing hands etc; making tree guards out of the bottles, or making mini terrariums.

I buy my coffee in reusable jars that make really neat canisters for the pantry or you can decorate them and fill with treats as a present.

People really do need to take a giant step backwards and take a good old look at what they use and waste.