Editor’s note: A pandemic in our backyards – The squirrel walked a bit wobbly, it wasn’t as agile and funny as these small creatures often move. It had its eyes rather closed which gave it a tired look. I was concerned and called a squirrel rescue station, luckily there was one closer to me. The poor squirrel got worse meanwhile and couldn’t jump anymore. Lastly, it just sat in the corner of the roof with its head down.
When I brought the tiny animal to the rescue station, its leader Mrs. Heimann told me that the symptoms she saw were those of an unknown virus. She said it was terrible for her to watch two cute squirrels per week die in her care because of that virus. In the last years the health of squirrels got a lot worse, she explained to me – broken bones, malnourishment, paralysis, or DNA damage. Sick animals are more prone to get infected than healthy ones. As I can see the pandemic isn’t over for birds and mammals, it’s right in our backyard and should concern us all.
I am a conservation biologist who studies emerging infectious diseases. When people ask me what I think the next pandemic will be I often say that we are in the midst of one – it’s just afflicting a great many species more than ours.
I am referring to the highly pathogenic strain of avian influenza H5N1 (HPAI H5N1), otherwise known as bird flu, which has killed millions of birds and unknown numbers of mammals, particularly during the past three years.
This is the strain that emerged in domestic geese in China in 1997 and quickly jumped to humans in south-east Asia with a mortality rate of around 40-50%. My research group encountered the virus when it killed a mammal, an endangered Owston’s palm civet, in a captive breeding programme in Cuc Phuong National Park Vietnam in 2005.
How these animals caught bird flu was never confirmed. Their diet is mainly earthworms, so they had not been infected by eating diseased poultry like many captive tigers in the region.
This discovery prompted us to collate all confirmed reports of fatal infection with bird flu to assess just how broad a threat to wildlife this virus might pose.
This is how a newly discovered virus in Chinese poultry came to threaten so much of the world’s biodiversity.
First signs of a pandemic
Until December 2005, most confirmed infections had been found in a few zoos and rescue centres in Thailand and Cambodia. Our analysis in 2006 showed that nearly half (48%) of all the different groups of birds (known to taxonomists as “orders”) contained a species in which a fatal infection of bird flu had been reported. These 13 orders comprised 84% of all bird species.
We reasoned 20 years ago that the strains of H5N1 circulating were probably highly pathogenic to all bird orders. We also showed that the list of confirmed infected species included those that were globally threatened and that important habitats, such as Vietnam’s Mekong delta, lay close to reported poultry outbreaks.
Mammals known to be susceptible to bird flu during the early 2000s included primates, rodents, pigs and rabbits. Large carnivores such as Bengal tigers and clouded leopards were reported to have been killed, as well as domestic cats.
Our 2006 paper showed the ease with which this virus crossed species barriers and suggested it might one day produce a pandemic-scale threat to global biodiversity.
In the past couple of years, bird flu has spread rapidly across Europe and infiltrated North and South America, killing millions of poultry and a variety of bird and mammal species. A recent paper found that 26 countries have reported at least 48 mammal species that have died from the virus since 2020, when the latest increase in reported infections started.
Not even the ocean is safe. Since 2020, 13 species of aquatic mammal have succumbed, including American sea lions, porpoises and dolphins, often dying in their thousands in South America. A wide range of scavenging and predatory mammals that live on land are now also confirmed to be susceptible, including mountain lions, lynx, brown, black and polar bears.
The UK alone has lost over 75% of its great skuas and seen a 25% decline in northern gannets. Recent declines in sandwich terns (35%) and common terns (42%) were also largely driven by the virus.
Scientists haven’t managed to completely sequence the virus in all affected species. Research and continuous surveillance could tell us how adaptable it ultimately becomes, and whether it can jump to even more species. We know it can already infect humans – one or more genetic mutations may make it more infectious.
Poultry production must change
Between January 1 2003 and December 21 2023, 882 cases of human infection with the H5N1 virus were reported from 23 countries, of which 461 (52%) were fatal.
Of these fatal cases, more than half were in Vietnam, China, Cambodia and Laos. Poultry-to-human infections were first recorded in Cambodia in December 2003. Intermittent cases were reported until 2014, followed by a gap until 2023, yielding 41 deaths from 64 cases. The subtype of H5N1 virus responsible has been detected in poultry in Cambodia since 2014. In the early 2000s, the H5N1 virus circulating had a high human mortality rate, so it is worrying that we are now starting to see people dying after contact with poultry again.
It’s not just H5 subtypes of bird flu that concern humans. The H10N1 virus was originally isolated from wild birds in South Korea, but has also been reported in samples from China and Mongolia.
Recent research found that these particular virus subtypes may be able to jump to humans after they were found to be pathogenic in laboratory mice and ferrets. The first person who was confirmed to be infected with H10N5 died in China on January 27 2024, but this patient was also suffering from seasonal flu (H3N2). They had been exposed to live poultry which also tested positive for H10N5.
Species already threatened with extinction are among those which have died due to bird flu in the past three years. The first deaths from the virus in mainland Antarctica have just been confirmed in skuas, highlighting a looming threat to penguin colonies whose eggs and chicks skuas prey on. Humboldt penguins have already been killed by the virus in Chile.
How can we stem this tsunami of H5N1 and other avian influenzas? Completely overhaul poultry production on a global scale. Make farms self-sufficient in rearing eggs and chicks instead of exporting them internationally. The trend towards megafarms containing over a million birds must be stopped in its tracks.
To prevent the worst outcomes for this virus, we must revisit its primary source: the incubator of intensive poultry farms.
Diana Bell is a Professor of Conservation Biology, University of East Anglia
Editor’s Note: The following is a press release by Roam Free Nation. It describes how the population of wild bison is being targeted and reduced in favor for the livestock industry. Once again, the needs of the natural world is being held secondary to the profit motive of businesses.
GARDINER, MT: On Friday, Yellowstone National Park submitted a report to IBMP.info (the website of the Interagency Bison Management Plan) revealing shocking numbers of Yellowstone’s bison – the country’s last wild migratory buffalo — who have been killed during the so-called hunt, slaughter, and removal for quarantine (domestication). At the time the report was issued, the number of buffalo eliminated from Yellowstone’s population stood at 1,024. That number increases daily, and it’s only early February. This is already the most deadly year for wild buffalo since 2017, and if the killing and capturing continues at this rate, these mis-management actions could remove a third to half of the population.
“This is a global travesty,” said Stephany Seay, co-founder of Roam Free Nation, a Montana-based wildlife and wild lands advocacy group. “This is the last wild, migratory population of American bison left in this country, beloved the world over, who once numbered nearly 70 million strong, and at the beginning of this winter there were barely 6,000. There are nearly 50,000 African elephants left in the world, and they are considered endangered and fiercely protected. Why is our country’s National Mammal not given the same concerns and protections?”
Yellowstone’s report to the Interagency Bison Management Plan (IBMP) can be reviewed here.
At the November Interagency Bison Management Plan meeting, Yellowstone National Park Superintendent Cam Sholly and lead bison biologist Chris Geremia spoke strongly for the small but growing bison population, stating that the park alone could sustain upwards of 10,000. They stood up to the Montana Department of Livestock that wants to drive the population down to 3,000 for the sake of convenience.
“So much for Yellowstone’s good words,” said Cindy Rosin, Board Secretary for Roam Free Nation. “They have shown that it’s just business as usual in Yellowstone, which means doing the dirty work for Montana’s livestock industry.”
“It is so disheartening to see a failed policy continue to be pursued, a policy that was abandoned decades ago for one species, but revived for other species today,” said Lee Fulton, Treasurer for Roam Free Nation. “Bison, elk, and wolves have all been subjected to a firing line mentality once they dare to cross Yellowstone Park’s boundary as they pursue their natural migration.”
Excessive hunting, which is essentially an extension of government slaughter, has claimed the lives of more than 500 wild buffalo in less than two months, with more dying every day. The infamous killing fields of Beattie Gulch in Montana’s Gardiner Basin have seen the worst of the killing spree, when large family groups migrate across Yellowstone’s northern boundary and are gunned down by state and tribal hunters. In the frenzy, many buffalo have been severely wounded and run for the shelter of the park, only to be euthanized by park rangers.
“I don’t know how anyone partnered with the IBMP could say they want more buffalo,” said Jaedin Medicine Elk, a Northern Cheyenne tribal member and co-founder of Roam Free Nation. “That sounds great at the IBMP meetings but looks way different in the field where actions are speaking louder than words. Beattie Gulch hunting field? More like Beattie Guts slaughter field. It’s different when you actually see buffalo you have a relationship with getting killed off. Family groups getting wiped out, pregnant moms young and old getting killed with their babies in gut piles.”
“The hunters are blind to the fact that they are being used as tools by the Montana Department of Livestock to do the bidding of the cattle industry, that opposes wild bison restoring themselves in their native Montana lands,” Seay said. “Anyone who has witnessed even a single day at Beattie Gulch understands this to be a slaughter, a massacre, and not a hunt at all. Just because you have a right, does not make it right.”
As the so-called hunt blasts on, Yellowstone National Park began capturing wild buffalo at their Stephens Creek capture facility, barely a mile from Beattie Gulch. To date, Yellowstone has captured and consigned to slaughter 88 buffalo, with another nearly 400 captured for possible quarantine (domestication).
“People are fooled by the government into thinking that quarantine will eliminate slaughter, which it doesn’t,” said Seay. “Quarantine is a domestication program based on a livestock paradigm, removing wild bison from their wild homelands, tearing apart their families, and ensuring they will never roam free again. It’s another false-positive the government is selling to the public and to tribes.”
At least 340 of the wild buffalo eliminated are adult females, most of them pregnant. Every conservationist knows that if you want to drive a population down, you kill the females. Much like elephants, buffalo are a matriarchal society, so the adult females are the teachers, the wisdom-keepers, the ones who teach even the bulls how to be a successful buffalo. Every hunter or government worker who takes an adult female puts the herds in deeper jeopardy.
The Yellowstone buffalo (bison) populations are the last continuously wild, migratory buffalo who have existed on the landscape since prehistoric times.
Roam Free Nation is a Montana-based, Native led wild buffalo, wildlife, and wild lands advocacy group who speaks from and represents the perspective of wild nature. Their representatives have over 50 years of combined experience in the field monitoring wild bison migration, documenting actions against them, and advocating on their behalf. Contact:
Stephany Seay, Co-founder, Roam Free Nation roamfreenation@gmail.com
Editor’s Note: Even when local governing units make decisions for the welfare of the environment, state laws are designed to crush them. The following story covers how a small town is getting sued for passing a local ordinance to prevent pollution from factory farms. The basis of the lawsuit is that the ordinance is against the state law of Wisconsin. This story was originally published by Grist. You can subscribe to its weekly newsletter here.
This lawsuit is far from one of its kind. Similar lawsuits have been filed against a local government for trying to protect the environment against corporate interests. DGR News Service covered a series regarding the fight of Lake Eerie Bill of Rights in the state of Ohio. Read more about it here.
The small community of Laketown, Wisconsin, home to just over 1,000 people and 18 lakes, is again at the center of a battle over how communities can regulate large, industrial farming operations in their backyards.
The town, which is half an hour from the Minnesota border, is the target of a lawsuit supported by the state’s largest business lobbying group, which claims the town board overstepped its role when it passed a local ordinance to prevent pollution from concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFOs*.
Filed in Polk County Circuit Court in October, the lawsuit pits local farmers against the municipality, where decisions are made by a single town chair and two supervisors. Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, or WMC, a lobbying group that defines itself as the state’s “largest and most influential business association” is representing the residents suing the town through its litigation center.
Early this year, WMC sent a letter to the town board that they would see legal action if the ordinance was not repealed. The notice of claim, sent in April, argues the town passed an ordinance with various illegal provisions under state law. The Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce Litigation Center, who have previously filed lawsuits to rollback state protections against water pollution, did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
“They see this ordinance, if not challenged, as something that may become more the norm around the state,” Adam Voskuil, staff attorney for the nonprofit law office Midwest Environmental Advocates, told Grist. This law office has issued its support for Laketown’s ordinance in the past but is not representing the municipality in this ongoing litigation.
As the agricultural industry increasingly forces farmers to “get big or get out,” CAFOs have become plentiful across Wisconsin and the country at large, with more and more animals living on CAFO operations in recent years. The size of these farms varies within a state but generally are seen as operations with 2,000 or more pigs, 700 or more dairy cattle, or over 1,000 beef cattle.
The growth of these operations has been linked to public health problems like various cancers as well as infant death and miscarriages, caused by water contaminated with waste runoff from farms. On the other side of Wisconsin, residents in Kewaunee County have seen manure coming out of their faucets from one the largest CAFOs in the state, who sued the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resource last year when they were denied a request to nearly double their size.
As more confined animal feeding operations, like the hog farm pictured, pop up across the country, towns and counties have attempted to regulate their growth. chayakorn lotongkum / Getty Images Grist
When communities try to respond with local-level enforcement, both industry interests and a lack of power at the local level cause townships to get creative with their responses.
Every state has some form of a “right-to-farm” law, which stops farms from being targeted for nuisances related to the daily operations of the industry, such as odor, noise, and effects on the environment. From there, each state has some form of a regulatory process that outlines how large farms are allowed to operate.
In Iowa, which leads the country in CAFOs, the state government sets all regulatory requirements and local towns and counties are out of luck when it comes to enforcement, according to John Robbins, Planning and Zoning Administrator for Cerro Gordo County, Iowa. He said the county once had a restrictive ordinance for CAFO zoning on the books, but after a state law took control, counties now have “very limited authority.”
Last year, when a Missouri hog farm spilled 300,000 gallons of waste into nearby waterways, two counties attempted to regulate CAFOs differently than the state government. Those counties had to sue to challenge state-level laws and are now awaiting trials in the state Supreme Court.
Further West, Gooding County, Idaho has seen the whole gambit of what Wisconsin towns could be facing. In 2007, the central Idaho county named after a famed state sheep rancher passed an ordinance regulating CAFOs in the county limits. A month later, industry groups Idaho Dairymen’s Association and Idaho Cattle Association started a court battle with the county that ended two years later, with the state supreme court ruling in the county’s favor. Gooding County’s legal representatives did not respond to a request for comment.
Wisconsin’s Livestock Facility Siting Law generally restricts how local municipalities can stop or slow new CAFOs or expansions to current facilities. This law is at the crux of arguments in opposition to Laketown and other surrounding communities’ proposed or passed ordinances.
Other Wisconsin communities have enacted local level ordinances to regulate these large farms. In 2016, northern Bayfield County enacted a CAFO ordinance that imposed a one-time fee and required operators to have increased manure storage options. After a large hog farm estimated to produce over 9 million gallons of manure a year was proposed in Polk County a few years ago, the county attempted a moratorium on CAFOs, but the measure did not pass.
Since then, at least five neighboring towns of Laketown have passed similar ordinances.
“This is one of the first times I’ve seen a town refuse to back down to some of these letters.” Adam Voskuil, Midwest Environmental Advocates staff attorney
The Laketown ordinance that sparked the lawsuit is an operations ordinance, unlike Bayfield’s ordinance which focused on zoning. Laketown CAFO operators are asked to file a one-time fee equal to a dollar for every animal unit as well as give detailed plans of how they will prevent ground and air pollution stemming from their facilities. Passed in 2021, the ordinance states it is based upon Laketown’s obligation to “protect the health, safety and general welfare of the public.”
All along the way, industry groups Venture Dairy Cooperative and the Wisconsin Dairy Alliance, its website features the slogan “Fighting for CAFOs Every Day,” have sent threatening letters to towns that passed ordinances or moratoriums, with the help of WMC.
“This is standard operating procedure for the Big Ag boys,” said Lisa Doerr, a Laketown resident of over 20 years who raises horses and commercially farms hay and alfalfa with her husband.
Doerr has been involved at the local level in opposition to CAFO since Polk County learned of a proposed 26,000-hog farm. Doerr, who worked with the Large Livestock Town Partnership, a multi-town committee that examines the environmental impact of CAFOs, said she worried that the landscape of the town and county would change if local action wasn’t taken.
“The name of our town is Laketown because we’ve got lakes everywhere,” she said. “We still have a middle class farming community. We haven’t had corporate ag take over everything.”
In its recently filed response letter, Laketown’s attorney said WMC’s argument falls flat as it is based solely on the state-level zoning law, while the town’s ordinance regulates the operations and conduct of a facility. They also noted that since the ordinance passed, no facilities have applied for a permit, which means the town has not yet enforced any actions WMC says are unlawful. Laketown board chair Daniel King declined to comment, citing the ongoing lawsuit.
Midwest Environmental Advocates attorney Voskuil said he was heartened to see that Laketown has been holding its ground. “This is one of the first times I’ve seen a town refuse to back down to some of these letters,” he said.
Farther south in Wisconsin, another county is reeling from letters threatening legal action. Crawford County, which borders Iowa, enacted a CAFO moratorium in 2019 but did not renew the moratorium after studying the issue for a year. Forest Jahnke, a coordinator with the Crawford Stewardship Project, said the decision to not renew the moratorium was highly influenced by the deluge of similar threats of litigation and backlash, which had a “chilling effect” on efforts to move forward.
“The fear of litigation is a very strong and deep one in our local municipalities and county governments,” Jahnke, who was a member of the committee studying the CAFO moratorium in Crawford County, said.
Since the moratorium rolled back, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources greenlit a Crawford County hog farm, home to 8,000 pigs and expected to generate 9.4 million gallons of manure each year
Editor’s note: Animal abuse is a foundational pillar of the modern industrial food system. We stand against factory farming, vivisection, and other forms of animal testing and abuse. As an organization, however, we do not advocate veganism—and in fact, DGR co-founder Lierre Keith wrote a book called The Vegetarian Mytharguing that vegetarianism and veganism are not a political or ecological solution. However, there are vegans and vegetarians involved in Deep Green Resistance, and we overlap on many goals. This article is the story of the Animal Liberation Front, a movement well worth learning from.
It’s about time. Someone has finally written a biography on the real father of the animal liberation movement – Ronnie Lee. Lee’s lifelong work for animals spans five decades and counting. During this time, he has been involved in just about every form of animal advocacy imaginable – direct action, grassroots vegan outreach, political campaigning, public interest campaigns, and animal fostering, to name a few. Perhaps best known for founding the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) and being jailed numerous times for illegal direct actions, Ronnie Lee now focuses exclusively on above-ground animal advocacy, having retired from his earlier, extensive underground career.
Author Jon Hochshartner’s access to Lee (and some of his friends and family) provides us an intimate window into Lee’s life as a freedom fighter for animals. Lee’s childhood and early adult years are shockingly unremarkable in the sense that there is little to indicate he would go on to become a pioneer in the animal liberation movement. Although it is clear Lee grew up with a fondness for animals, an aversion to authority, and a keen sense of justice, the same can be said of many people who neither become vegan nor pursue animal liberation. What specifically led Lee to become The Animals’ Freedom Fighter, one can never know. But this unremarkable childhood makes Lee’s segue into full-fledged warrior all the more startling and exhilarating.
Lee’s come to Jesusmoment seems to have instead been a confluence of events – no single one having been definitive. One early turning point appears to have been Lee’s innocuous story of how he became vegan. As a teen, Lee, by then a vegetarian, was introduced to veganism by his older sister’s boyfriend – a healthy, robust, vegan athlete. As with many vegetarians, Lee came to understand the hypocrisy of abstaining from eating animal flesh while at the same time continuing to consume other animal byproducts. It only took a single vegan role model for Lee to connect the dots and realize veganism is not only just, but healthy too.
Lee’s subsequent entry into the world of direct action gives us an exciting new window into the early 70s-era radical animal advocacy scene in the United Kingdom. Lee’s involvement with the Hunt Saboteurs Association (HSA) began to blossom into more pointed forms of direct action as time went on. In an effort to refine the efficacy of his hunt sabbing efforts, Lee became more and more motivated to declare full scale war on all animal exploiters. While still “hunting the hunters” with the HSA, Lee felt it more impactful to engage in covert, preemptive forms of hunt sabotage, such as disabling the hunters’ automobiles and ransacking hunt lodges. Lee and some of his more daring saboteur partners eventually leveraged their hunt sab experiences, directing similar attacks against other institutional exploiters like butchers, factory farmers, and vivisectors, whose labs Lee would burn to the ground under the cover of darkness.
Lee’s shift to more aggressive tactics are praiseworthy. If the war against animal exploiters is truly that – a war – no options can be taken off the table no matter what the law has to say about them. In the war for animal liberation, there is a role for everyone to play, from the underground saboteur to the aboveground political actor. Some of these tactics may seem at odds, and activists wedded to one or another tactic may accuse the other of setting the movement back. At various times in history, certain forms of activism may prove more beneficial and strategically sound than others. But in the grand scheme of things, any action for animals is an important brick in the wall, and they will all add up to achieve total liberation for animals in the long run. Lee’s life exemplifies the value of this veritable smorgasbord of tactics.
Lee’s willingness to serve hard time for his involvement in illegal direct actions has given way to his more systemic approach. Lee now prefers to focus his efforts on vegan tabling and leafletting, and taking part in Green Party politics. Having spent a considerable amount of his life behind bars, one cannot blame Lee for the shift. Nevertheless, it is hard not to look at Lee’s hard-edged ALF years with great admiration. Hochschartner paints a picture of a tireless Robinhood-for-animals who threw caution to the wind, never missing an opportunity to put a brick through an animal exploiter’s window, rescue an animal from captivity, or burn down a torture chamber. On more than one occasion, Lee tells Hochshartner that he knew his sprees would end in jail time, but that each time he simply sought to extend them for as long as he could. One has to wonder whether animal exploitation could survive if all vegans became this courageous overnight.
Alas, Lee’s direct action did inspire many to become that courageous. As with many social movements, the actions of one or two brave souls can serve as a greenprint for others to follow. The ALF continues to thrive to this day as an anonymous, leaderless movement, as the baton gets passed from one liberationist to the next through a series of direct actions and communiques describing them. Lee’s ALF actions in the UK quickly encouraged others, uncoordinated and unbeknownst to Lee, in all corners of the globe. These actions continue to flourish today even despite a conservative political climate which punishes them increasingly harshly.
Any student of animal liberation would be well-advised to read The Animals’ Freedom Fighter in order to help them determine what role is appropriate for them. The book is a welcome addition, as both a tactical encyclopedia and an important historical account. Lee’s life as an animal advocate has been full and diverse, and one has to wonder what else Lee might have up his sleeve. Hopefully Hochshartner will have no choice but to update Lee’s biography in the coming years.
Chad Nelson is a peace advocate.
This article was originally published in Counterpunch.
New overflight photos have revealed that the land of one of the world’s most vulnerable uncontacted tribes is being illegally invaded and destroyed for beef production.
The land invasion now underway is in flagrant violation of a 6-month Land Protection Orderissued in September which bans all outsiders from the Piripkura Indigenous Territory.
Only two members of Brazil’s Piripkura tribe are known to live in the territory, though others are also believed to live there, having retreated to the depths of the forest. Many Piripkura have been killed in past massacres.
The overflight was conducted last month for the “Uncontacted or Destroyed” campaign and petition organized by COIAB (the Coordinating Body of Indigenous Organizations of the Brazilian Amazon) and OPI (the Observatory for the Human Rights of Uncontacted and Recently Contacted Indigenous Peoples), with the support of APIB (Articulação dos Povos Indígenas do Brasil), ISA (Instituto Socioambiental) and Survival International.
The campaign has just released a dossier “Piripkura: an indigenous territory being destroyed for beef production.“ It’s revealed:
– Land clearances for cattle ranching have now reached an area where the uncontacted Piripkura are known to live.
– Roads, fencing and even an airstrip have been constructed, and hundreds of cattle brought in.
– The rate of deforestation in the territory has “exploded” – by more than 27,000% in the last two years.
OPI has also released a report on the invasion of the Piripkura lands. Their research has revealed that the Piripkura’s is now the most deforested uncontacted indigenous territory in Brazil. More than 12,000 hectares has already been destroyed.
The Uncontacted or Destroyed campaign highlights several uncontacted territories currently shielded by Land Protection Orders which are due to expire soon.
The only contacted Piripkura, a woman known as Rita, recently told Survival in a unique video appeal that outsiders operating illegally inside her people’s territory could soon kill her relatives, and described how nine of her relatives were massacred in one attack.
Sarah Shenker, head of Survival’s Uncontacted Tribes campaign, said today: “There could be no greater proof of the total impunity – indeed, active support – that land invaders enjoy under President Bolsonaro than this: commercial ranching operations in a vitally important indigenous territory that’s supposed to be protected by law. The invaders are fast approaching the uncontacted Piripkura. They’re resisting with all their might, and so must we. Only a major public outcry can prevent the genocide of the Piripkura and other uncontacted tribes. And an added bonus? A far cheaper and more effective way to protect Amazon rainforest than the fatal ‘solutions’ pushed by governments at COP.”
Elias Bigio of OPAN said today: “That area we flew over has been newly-cleared for beef production. They’ve already logged it, now they’re turning it into pasture for cattle.”
OPI said: “The Indigenous Territory and the Piripkura are extremely threatened. It’s the same thing that’s happened in other uncontacted tribes’ territories – the destruction is the ‘Bolsonaro Effect’, as it’s accelerated since 2019.”
eating animal flesh while at the same time continuing to consume other animal byproducts. It only took a single vegan role model for Lee to connect the dots and realize veganism is not only just, but healthy too.