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Voices For Change

Animals Speak - Humans Listen

Animals Speak

Become an active participant in the web of life with animals.

Like many of us I am increasingly aware of the challenges we face - including through climate change, dynamic earth movement, human induced conflicts and loss of eco-systems. Challenges which are not only experienced by humans, they are expereinced by all animals, all sentient beings of land, air and water.

We can empower ourselves and our young to be advocates for the natural world and all inhabitants of Earth.

We have to step back from the delusion of thinking it is all about 'us'.

When we do this we can listen to what other inhabitants of Earth say, so that we may find solutions to act for a secure and sustainable future for all.

Let us begin by gently listening with our hearts.

Together we can do this.

We Hear and Act

Below is a link to blogs to inspire you.

For a quick read on this page Elephant and Lion have graciously shared insights for us to consider.

Elephant

A matriarch elephant, now in spirit, shows me a tractor spraying pesticides along rows of citrus trees. She points out that the droplets of pesticide carry far in the air that elephants breath, which adversely affects their breathing and their endocrine systems. She says to be aware that we all breathe this air. That our breathing and endocrine systems are being adversely affected too. That the fruit which we all eat from trees treated with pesticides is tainted.

She tells me that we are "poaching the air". That "it is stupid". We poach them for their tusks, to grind their tusks up for human 'medicines' and then poach the air with pesticides that make us all sick. "No sense!"

Solutions Ideas:

- stop eating / using so much citrus and citrus products

- go organic

- support permaculture initiatives for people living in same eco-system as elephants

- learn to grow and then actually do it - grow more of own food in our western gardens and balconies.

Lion

Asiatic Lions have lost 99.9% of their habitat largely to human activity. There is one place in the 'wild' where they now live: Gir Forest Nature Sanctuary, India. A number of European zoos have 'back up' breeding programmes in case fire, flood or other catastrophe takes this 0.01% land and their lives with it. I visited one of these zoos, tuned in with the pride of three, one lion and two lionesses, asking do they have a message for us? They do. Displaying courting and mating behaviour, there came a clear message from the Lion: "Give us space to increase our numbers."

Whether being gawped at by tourists in jeeps at a nature reserve or by families through windows of a zoo enclosure, there is no privacy - no personal space to reproduce, in addition insufficient land in the wild to increase their range and their numbers.

Solutions Ideas:

- respect privacy for all animals

- develop empathy: imagine what it would be like if our personal activities were being watched and commented on by others looking through our windows and we were in permanent lockdown in our houses

- support initiatives that work with people living in buffer zone regions of nature sanctuaries to secure their livelihood alongside extending ranges for wild animals.

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