Bald eagle is NOT the national bird of America YET

It may surprise some people and it certainly surprised me that the bald eagle is not the national bird of America although it is strongly associated with, and representative of, America's culture; a country where freedom is vital to all Americans which comes about through independence, strength and the support of a family. The bald eagle does all these things and therefore should be the national bird of America.

Image: MikeB

They are a majestic bird and the bald eagle has appeared on the great Seal of the United States since 1782. This is when the founding fathers desired a powerful image at the beginnings of their country.

For mammals, the bison is the national animal of America and the National tree of America is the oak but no such designation has been made for birds.

But this bird has a powerful advocate in Preston Cook, a volunteer at the National Eagle Centre, a non-profit group based in Minnesota. This non-profit is lobbying Congress to remedy this omission.

Preston Cook believes that it's time they did it. He believed that, "It's a small correction in history for something that has been left undone. It [the majesty of the bald eagle's freedom] is ingrained in us."

He added that "It's a symbol of freedom, of independence, of power and family."

The bald eagle, Preston Cook says, mates for life and they look after their young diligently. They should represent America.

The rectification can be achieved through an act of Congress or by a presidential proclamation and Preston Cook, 77, prefers the former.

Preston Cook is the author of "American Eagle: a Visual History of our National Emblem".

And he has written a bill which has the backing of a Minnesotan congressman, Brad Finstad, in addition to 2 others Amy Klobuchar and Cynthia Lummis. He hopes the bill will be made official by the end of 2024.

Sadly, this beautiful bird has been relentlessly hunted throughout the US for centuries. By the end of the 19th century sightings of bald eagles were rare in many areas. In response, in 1940, Congress enacted legislation to protect them.

America now has an estimated 316 700 bald eagles flying across their wide, open skies.

17 facts about the small wild cats of the Americas

Threats to the bald eagle

The bald eagle faces several threats in America, which can be spelled out as follows:

• Habitat Destruction: Loss of shoreline and old-growth forests reduces nesting sites and hunting grounds.
• Lead Poisoning: Scavenging on carcasses left by hunters using lead ammunition leads to poisoning.
• Human Disturbance: Disruption during nesting season by recreational activities can cause nesting failures.
• Power Line Electrocution: Collisions with power lines can cause injury or death.
• Wind Turbine Collisions: Wind farms located in eagle migration paths pose a risk of collisions.
• Entanglement in Monofilament Fishing Line: Discarded fishing line can trap and injure eagles.
• Illegal Shooting: Though uncommon, eagles are still sometimes shot illegally.
• Contaminants: Pesticides and other pollutants can harm eagle health and reproduction.

Conservation of the bald eagle

The successful conservation of the bald eagle in America is a heartwarming story and can be spelled out like this:

• Protection Laws: The Bald Eagle Protection Act (1940) and Migratory Bird Treaty Act (1918) prohibit harming eagles, their nests, and eggs.
• DDT Ban: The ban on the pesticide DDT in the 1970s allowed eagle eggshells to thicken again, improving chick survival.
• Habitat Protection: Establishment of wildlife refuges and conservation easements safeguards nesting and hunting grounds.
• Captive Breeding and Reintroduction: Programs helped rebuild populations in depleted areas.
• Public Education: Raising awareness about the importance of eagles and the threats they face fosters public support for conservation efforts.
• Law Enforcement: Vigilance against illegal shooting and habitat destruction ensures the eagle's continued recovery.
• Monitoring and Research: Ongoing studies track eagle populations and identify new threats, allowing for informed conservation strategies.

Conservation of the puma a.k.a. mountain lion – full discussion 2022

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P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins.

Parents should instill in their children confidence and humility to be sensitive to animal welfare

 This is a short note on a subject which might be obvious to many people but despite that I think that it needs to be stated clearly. I've seen many pictures of sport hunters smiling to the camera with their rifle in front of them together with the iconic, large animal that they have shot dead. They seem proud of themselves, oblivious to the pain and distress they've caused for their entertainment.

Parents should instill in their children confidence and humility to be sensitive to animal welfare. Image: MikeB

They are obscene pictures. This sport hunter is often a man but not always. Whether they are a man or a woman they are invariably confident individuals, certain in what they are doing.

When their confidence leaks into arrogance and you combine arrogance with ignorance you have a very human-centric person who is able to shoot an animal dead and in doing so cause a lot of pain and distress. Arrogance in the human leads to insensitivity towards animal welfare.

Human-centric attitudes are also described as anthropocentric attitudes. The dictionary definition of anthropocentric is: "regarding humankind as the central or most important element of existence, especially as opposed to God or animals."

Armed with that attitude people can look down on animals. When you look down on animals as secondary creatures in terms of value you engage in an extreme form of speciesism which allows you to abuse animals and believe that they are non-sentient.

In believing that they are non-sentient or being careless or reckless as to whether they are or are not, you are able to cause them pain.

But this attitude stems from confidence without humility. Confident people need to understand the meaning of humility and its advantages. They should be modest about themselves. In being modest they can temper that confidence and understand that animals have rights, sometimes equal rights or they should do.

The dictionary definition of 'humility': the quality of having a modest or low view of one's importance.

Confidence with humility is a barrier to an anthropocentric attitude towards the planet. This is so important for animal welfare. Every sport hunters need a heavy dose of humility. If they had suffered early in their lives and been brought down; made vulnerable by a circumstance or an event it would have knocked that arrogance out of them. They would then understand better the position of animals on this planet.

The world can do without anthropocentric, arrogant people who are ignorant about animal welfare without realising it.

P.S. Kids need confidence in order to made headway in the world when adults. Life is much harder for a young person if they lack confidence. 

Trophy hunters threaten to sue people who use photographs of them with their shot animals

In a rather nasty development, trophy hunters are threatening to sue a British Member of Parliament, Sir Roger Gale, because he used photographs of trophy hunters with their kills in an All-Party Parliamentary Group on Banning Trophy Hunting report dated June 2022. This looks like the trophy hunters are using their intellectual property rights to try and delay the passage of the bill to ban the importation of trophies into the UK and to send out a general signal to others.

I plead fair use in using the photo of the sport hunter and his bloody lion kill. I don't think the photographer of Lineker will mind me using the photo. There is an educational requirement here that needs to be fulfilled.

The report contains 78 photographs. The trophy hunters are demanding £1200 per photograph. They are therefore demanding a grand total of £93,600. And if they don't pay up, they are going to sue him they say.

I have used photographs of trophy hunters with their kills on my websites and criticised them heavily for obvious reasons. It concerns me that they may try and sue me as well. But if they sue me, they'll have to sue thousands of others and newspapers. It is not going to happen which is why they've targeted on special document.

I have always stated that these photographs have ended up in the public domain through general usage. And in addition, I would plead fair use because it is highly important that people are educated about trophy hunting and its cruelty. It has to stop. In the interests of the planet generally and wildlife particularly, trophy hunters must be stopped.

And this is also in the interest of humankind's attempts to interact with animals in a humane manner. I'd be disappointed if a judge found in favour of the hunters. They might as technically this might be seen as a breach of copyright.

The argument that trophy hunting improves conservation of wild species is highly erroneous. You can't kill animals to protect animals. Logic dictates that. But the trophy hunters constantly wheel out these poor arguments to defend their obnoxious habits.

As I said, this is a worrying development. The report comes from PA Media. A group of sport hunters say that the photographs which show them posing with their dead animals, often lions, have been used without their permission and they are therefore entitled to payment.

But who owns the photographs? That's the big question. I guess they were taken by the sport hunters or friends of the sport hunters. But they've found their way into the news media. I would bet my bottom dollar that the news media have not paid for these photographs.

The photographs are all over the Internet by the way. The photographers have done nothing about that. They can do nothing about it as it is too widespread. But this, to me, has resulted in the photographs being in the public domain. By implication, the photographers have accepted their presence. That's my argument. It might not be a completely solid one but nonetheless that's what I would state.

The important aspect of this is that you would plead fair use for educational purposes. Sport hunting is so immoral in my view that it justifies using someone else's photograph without their permission in order to bring about a ban on this practice.

And the British government would agree that because they are in the process instigating a ban on the importation of trophies by sport hunters into the UK.

Arguments against animal rights - a discussion

Arguments against animal rights are likely to come from people who feel that their interests are negatively affected as a result of granting animals rights. These sorts of people are likely to be business men making a profit out of animals (or businesses ancillary to that kind of business), or people involved in the wholly unacceptable business of sport or trophy hunting, or indeed politicians connected with these businesses. In short opponents will be people who feel that their human "rights" will be eroded by an extension of animal rights.

A hunter who would be against animal rights. She is Renee Sullivan with the 3 kittens she killed for the hell of it. Montage: MikeB

My thoughts on the montage above:

This is an Australian female hunter, aged 20, who likes to kill cats of any age which includes kittens with a compound bow and arrow. She believes that she is carrying out a service on behalf of the nation and her community. Her behaviour enrages cat lovers and animal rights advocates. She can't understand the criticism. There is a chasm between cat lovers and hunters who like to kill cats. That chasm is the comprehension that when you shoot an animal such as a kitten with a bow and arrow you are going to cause a lot of pain. It is an inhumane way to kill an animal no matter what justification you wish to put upon the action. Cat lovers find this deplorable and criticise them on social media very heavily. The hunter can't understand.

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There is a natural competition between animals on the planet and that includes the human-animal competing with non-human animals (apologies to the people who think we are special and created by God - the creationists). 

"When humans give rights to animals, they give away some of their rights" - Michael (and if it is true, it is acceptable and a good thing).

Granting rights to humans gets in the way of unscrupulous business people who wish to abuse human rights to turn a better profit. Think about people trafficking, for example, or wages that are too low, or child labour. At a more fundamental level human rights abuses will be instigated by politicians against people who threaten their power. 

In other words, unscrupulous people will tend to abuse people or animals that get in the way of things that serve their interests.

Arguments against animal rights will therefore be founded on a shaky premise. But turning a profit is not in itself bad, it is what makes the world tick. It is just that people have got to be managed to prevent excesses. Often, it seems, we get lobbying from, for example, people of the sport hunting fraternity (these people are probably connected to the gun lobby people). 

These people want their voices to be heard in government and the former president, Bush, was one of those presidents who tended to listen. What his government did was more likely to be against both the environment and animal rights (the two go together and can stand in the way of business profits).

Animals don't have a voice. We give them a voice through animal rights. People like to use animals to their advantage. One day we will see this as unacceptable. Animal rights exist in the West but not in the Eastern countries of the world to the same extent (Japan excepted). 

This shows that this is a developing area, still. For cats it is a long time coming as they were domesticated some nine thousand years ago. They still do not have true animal rights and some people (the chief exec. of Peta, Ingrid Newkirk, being one) think that there should be no companion animals as the only way to ensure true animal rights.

There are no arguments against animal rights that truly stand up. We share the planet with our fellow animals. They enhance our lives in many ways and provide us with food. Even on a commercial basis we need to protect them in the long term. Businesses tend to think short term and ruin things in the process (think over-fishing, for example). 

The only question is about how many rights we allow, their nature and extent and whether we can find a balance. In a perfect world, animal rights should be granted at a most fundamental level. Where there is a break down in animal rights there will usually be a corresponding loss of human rights, the two are linked.

The counter argument: If you were one of those "masters of the universe" alpha male types, you might argue that humans are the top predator, that we rule the world and that animals are on the planet to do with as we please. You might argue that humans are the direct creation of God and we have the right to use animals for our benefit. That 'man' has dominion over animals as per the bible. Here is a direct quote from the bible. Christianity is to blame for a huge amount of animal abuse and it has worked against animal rights for centuries.

Genesis 1:26 - Then God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth."

Such people would say that if we gave animals to many rights, it would run counter to these biblical arguments. We would be stopped from using animals, which is our God given right. That is the only argument against animals rights and it doesn't stack up on so many levels.

Religion: I believe that all animals are equal and that includes people (the human-animal). I do, though, understand the high numbers of religious people in the USA. I think the bible is bad doctrine in respect of animal rights. Did you know that the cat is never mentioned in the bible? And unspeakable cruelty has been perpetrated in the name of religion against animals.

Arguments Against Animal Rights to Cats and the Law