Dear Zoocheck (CanadaHelps) Donor:
Thank you for helping to make 2024 another great year.
As we come to the close of 2024, I wanted to take this opportunity to express my heartfelt gratitude for your dedication to the cause of protecting wildlife held in captivity and free-roaming in the wild. Your actions and support have made a difference. It’s what has allowed Zoocheck to push forward year after year tackling some very challenging issues faced by wildlife.
As you know, a great deal of Zoocheck’s work involves continuation of long-standing campaigns aimed at changing systems, industries and entrenched, widespread practices that negatively impact wild animals. Examples include our multi-decade effort to change the wildlife captivity paradigm in Canada and our initiative to transition entrenched, archaic, destructive wildlife management practices to a more compassionate, science based, ethical future.
These kinds of campaigns have been described as being similar to trying to reverse the direction of the world’s largest ocean liner. It takes a lot of effort and a considerable amount of time. It’s not like being in a canoe where you can dip your paddle into the water and immediately change direction. I know from experience that that’s true, but as daunting as the challenges are, I also know from experience that we can make progress and we can win.
Of course, Zoocheck also works on a wide variety of issues that are shorter in duration. They can be targeted investigations, working on local by-law campaigns, shutting zoos, rescuing animals, conducting training workshops for animal welfare professionals, and a lot more. Throughout the years, we’ve worked on hundreds of short-term campaigns and we’ve moved the bar upward or won a lot of them.
When I write these thank you letters, I typically try to include examples of recent activities that your support has made possible. So, here are few from 2024.
We continued our effort to support the passage of Bill S-15, An Act to amend the Criminal Code and the Wild Animal and Plant Protection and Regulation of International and Interprovincial Trade Act. If passed, the bill would provide significant new protections for elephants and great apes in Canada and, for all intents and purposes, would prohibit their keeping for purely public display or entertainment purposes. Just days ago, Bill S-15 was passed by the Senate and will now move on to the House of Commons where it will go through a similar three step process in order to become law. The biggest hurdle now is whether or not the current government will stay in power long enough for Bill S-15 to be considered. If it doesn’t, all bills, including Bill S-15 will die. That would be a step backward, but Zoocheck and our colleagues in other organziations are committed to bringing it back again should that occur. We’ll have more news on this soon.
Earlier this year, Zoocheck learned that wild horse culls were being considered for this winter in a couple of regions of Alberta, even though the province’s wild horse numbers are already low and have been stable for years. We suspected this would happen, so in 2024 we released our Science Review of 2023 Alberta Feral Horse Management Framework by biologist Wayne McCrory that exposed the lack of scientific rigour in the government’s framework and the anti-wild horse bias it was influenced by. That report was followed by a technical Review of the 2015 Alberta Rangeland Health Reports, written by agrologist Brian De Kock. The review is based on examination of the thousands of pages of rangeland data that Zoocheck fought for years to obtain (we are now trying to obtain reports from subsequent years), none of which identifies wild horses as a serious problem at all.
Remarkably, after years of government officials saying wild horses were causing ecosystem damage, they have suddenly (but not coincidentally) changed their narrative by saying it was never about damage, but more about available rangeland forage. This tactic of shifting an argument from one issue to another is one we’ve encountered with other governments who are trying to manage public criticism about draconian, non-scientific wildlife management practices, but it won’t work. In the coming months Zoocheck will be pushing ahead in opposition to wild horse culls and to promote legal protections for all of Alberta’s wild horses.
Zoocheck’s ongoing zoo and exotic animal advocacy efforts continued throughout 2024 with numerous zoo reviews, complaints to official agencies and work on mobile zoo and other wildlife captivity issues. One initiative that I’ve mentioned before is Zoocheck providing assistance to our colleague organization World Animal Protection in promoting a resolution to municipalities across the province calling on Ontario to regulate exotic wildlife in captivity. The numbers of municipalities and municipal organizations endorsing the resolution continues to grow with each passing week and new outreach activities will be undertaken in January 2025 to keep that trend moving upward. We’ll have more updates as this initiative moves forward.
Zoocheck’s effort to deal with the Reptilia zoo issue in the City of London continues. As you know, the City launched a legal action against Reptilia after they opened a shopping mall zoo last year. Despite not having permission to keep prohibited and restricted animals, Reptilia filled their zoo with them anyway, even though London City Council had refused, on three separate occasions, to change their bylaws to accommodate Reptilia. Shortly before the March 2024 trial date for the case, the City announced that there was an offer to settle the case with Reptilia, but they provided no details. Nine times the City appeared briefly in court and each time they asked an adjournment, saying settlement discussions were continuing. They didn’t seek a 10th adjournment, so the status of the situation isn’t known and the City is still not saying anything. The entire situation is absurd, so we’re looking at some new tactics to find out what’s going on and to move forward. We’ll have some additional news about this issue in the new year.
One of those short term issues I mentioned previously occurred just recently when we jumped in to help ensure a positive outcome for Blueberry, a debilitated, unreleasable black bear that was facing certain death. We facilitated her being moved to one of the best bear sanctuaries in the United States and we’re happy to report that she has settled into her new life and is enjoying playing in the forest and doing the things that black bears do. We’ll definitely have more updates on Blueberry in the future.
As I always mention, there’s a lot going on, so please check the Zoocheck website www.zoocheck.com from time to time and make sure to sign up for Zoocheck’s periodic newsletter. To subscribe all you have to do is scroll down on our website landing page (or any other page on our website) and you’ll see where you can sign up. And feel free to send us an email if you have any questions.
Thank you so much again for your support. In the days, weeks and months ahead, we’ll do everything we can to help make the lives of animals better. In closing, I want to wish you a wonderful holiday season and New Year with health, happiness and success.
Sincerely,
Rob Laidlaw
Executive Director