Animal welfare and ethics

                                    

 

Wildlife & Animal Welfare:

This programme complements our natural heritage; climate change & sustainability work & underpins the compassionate, ethical, cooperative & educational culture that we seek to foster. To promote welfare for all creatures. To offer volunteering & training opportunities & infrastructure support to partners.  To complement our learning programmes, especial the healthy plant-based diet & lifestyles unit in our well being programme & the international equity unit within our international cooperation programme.

Promoting bioethics & challenging speciesism: For thirty five years First Peace Chaplaincy Eco-spirituality mission has delivered community learning activities that have been cutting edge and trail blazing. Biodiversity, animal welfare, climate change, sustainability, wildlife, landscape conservation and habitats, heritage culture and wellbeing all remain key work streams. Since we started our work, parts society have moved on to embrace the vital importance of climate change, biodiversity and veganism, which are now main stream rather than marginal issues. We believe that climate survival and speciesism are crosscutting issues. In these areas we are long established as expert educators and project delivery agents.

Our wildlife friendly organic heritage trials garden, has a much loved worm hotel, the worms have an excellent, comfortable, predator free home with as much food as they can eat. In exchange they provide us with rich compost and liquid fertilizer. Earth worms benefit the planet, making our soil healthy and increasing the capacity for rain water to be stored at root level. Pesticides, compaction from heavy machinery, lack of bio-matter and other modern farming practices have led to a steep decline in earth worms. 42% of UK farmland surveyed was deficient in earth worms. It is not just farming; many golf courses eradicate worms with chemicals to prevent spoiling of the greens. Some experts warn that not only does our planet have a crisis in pollinating insects (such as bees) and earthworms (both essential to food production) but that all insects and invertebrates, given current rates of decline, could vanish within 100 years. This would lead a total ecosystems collapse.  We had a huge response to our simple online survey asking people if they pick up worms from paths and move them to a place of safety; it is heartening to know that so many people care about earth worms!

We set up a virtual learning community event during lockdown, aimed at anglers, individuals and community wildlife groups, to increase awareness that fish feel pain. We have also stimulated community based discussion to try to help stop shrink-wrapped live packaged lobsters being sold in supermarkets to be bought to boil alive. Education, beneficial activity and involvement are vital to fight climate change and biodiversity decline. We support many eco-conscious and animal rights campaigns and create peaceful pathways for members of the community to become involved in creating social and environmental justice and making the positive change that they wish to see in the world.

Above: mental health service users enjoying pond dipping in a First Peace Chaplaincy Eco-spirituality & wellbeing event. Our biodiversity activities include a strong commitment to “social prescribing” & good pond management experience & members have offered advice to landowners interested in conservation. This is vital because, in the twentieth century the UK countryside has lost half of its ponds.  Pond Conservation estimate that of the remaining ponds, 80% are in poor state. Agri-pollution has played a huge part in damaging these ponds & the associated wildlife. Pond dipping makes a great community activity, led by a responsible conservationist, and helps us to realise just how important ponds are. Your could consult your Local Biodiversity Action Group website and look at the Habitat Action Plan for ponds in your area.

Other activities recorded the historical and cultural heritage value of ponds, and lakes to our local communities in areas such as Dark Lane in Calverton.

First Peace Chaplaincy was keen to offer support during lock down. We set up a virtual learning community event during lockdown for individuals and wildlife community groups, promoting awareness of the dangers of moving spawn, frogs or plants from a natural pond or between garden ponds. Transmission of pest plants and diseases can follow. It is better to create in your garden or field corner, lush hiding places as frogs don’t actually live in ponds but will visit supportive habitats on your site. DO NOT move frogspawn or tadpoles from pond to pond or site to site, it can transfer & spread a virus around the country that kills frogs. The deadly frog disease is spreading across Britain with 80% of frogs killed in some areas. People taking spawn from ponds to new places are spreading it. Frogs can develop skin ulcers, sores and can bleed and die due to the devastating ranavirus.

Below: access to nature can teach that habitats are vital to wildlife and people.

This Green Woodpecker was a recent rescue, by a member of our community, it was cared for after being hit by a car. We are pleased to report that after being checked out by the Cedars Animal Sanctuary by Wendy & Phil, the Green Woodpecker has recovered well and has been released in the Burton Dumbles area.  Wendy said: "it has done well, woodpeckers usually get so stressed". Our volunteer, Andrew said "When I released it, it knew where it was, it seemed pleased to be home, it fly in a great arc around the meadow & up into the top of the tree where it sat calling"

During the snowy weather, lots of people ask us for advice on feeding garden birds, including many parents seeking to get children interested; it is important to feed & put out water for birds. In the spring people seek advice on baby birds who have fallen from nests. We only hand rear birds, such as the nestling below, as a last resource, mother birds knows best how to look after chicks.

In May 2015, a community member scooped up young great tit fledglings, who had become soaked in the storm and were stranded in a puddle in the dark . Overnight the young birds were dried out & released next morning. Check out our Facebook page for more news like this and to get tips on caring for wildlife, like this wood-pigeon who needed attention. 

We have specific expertise in rodentology & have completed training in the care of rodents teeth. Do you like this cheeky wee fellow.

We are seeing lots of support and demand for our wildlife and animal welfare work. We work through direct intervention and by raising awareness of good practice and animal welfare issues through contact with communities, children and family activities, support for volunteers and businesses, information networking and digital inclusion. 

The welfare of farm animals is of great concern and we offer educational advice and activities, on compassionate & plant based healthy eating.

Our Kosy-Kitchen project was set up to celebrate the millennium (in 2000) and nurture a plant based vegan diet, promote health and compassion. Our resources on Pinterest are well accessed & popular We initiate animal care and welfare activities. We encourage moral, ethical thinking towards animals, challenge speciesism and explore bioethics. We actively oppose all cruelty. We challenge animal abuse, including vivisection, as we do racism, bullying and exclusion. We champion the concept of a world where all animals can live freely, in peace and lead dignified and naturally fulfilled lives.

In the wild, chickens spend their days pecking at the ground for food and dustbathing. In factory farming chickens do not have the opportunity to live natural lives. Most people are now aware of the terrible suffering of battery hens. In addition, the males from egg-laying hens (who being male do not produce eggs) are culled whether the egg farm is free range or battery. The few short hours of a male chick’s life are ended in a gas chamber or they are minced up alive. Chickens reared for meat are called ‘broiler’ chickens. ‘broiler sheds’ can hold 40,000-50,000 birds. Crowding and machinery noise offers little opportunity to rest. Bred to grow fast, and with just 670cm per bird, they can be more crowded than caged egg-laying hens. This unnatural rapid growth, enormously strain their skeletons, often causing leg deformities that can prevent them from reaching food and water. Other health problems are documented and burns to the chickens’ legs are common, from ammonia in the excrement on the shed floor. Antibiotic-laced food is needed to keep them alive. It is said that six per cent of all chickens reared for meat (50 million per year) die in broiler sheds. Most chickens reared for meat are slaughtered at just six weeks old, having lived just a tiny fraction of their natural lifespan of around six years. At First Peace Chaplaincy, we support initiatives that work to rescue chickens and other poultry and improve the lives of these widely abused birds.

Above: rescue chickens, well cared for and living natural lives.

The beautiful picture of the much-loved pony, below, was sent to us by our supporter Niki Senior from Norfolk, who runs an animal welfare programme.

Above, rescued, re-homed and good companions. Look out for volunteers on the leaflet stalls in your community. Shawn one of our supporters, a priest in Norfolk, after seeing our hedgehog house building & hibernation resource, sent us the picture below, that she took, saying: "Fancy doing a hedgehog workshop here in Norfolk?" We are updating forty learning resource packs, including our hedgehog pack; they will be available soon.

Above: One of our over wintering hedgehogs.

In July 2016 we installed a new observation and recovery pen, it is occupied at the moment by a friendly young wood pigeon who was picked up after a RTA

Above: our Calverton cat project has two work strands, the care of large numbers of homeless cats and a safe antifreeze campaign following the death of 22 cats from antifreeze poisoning in Calverton. Compassion for animals is fostered.