Species Unite

Suzanne Roy is the Executive Director of the American Wild Horse Campaign. an organization that has been fighting for years to save America's wild horses. If you didn’t know that our wild horses needed saving, or even that we had any wild horses, here is some back story: We do, we have 30,000 of them. They roam freely in 10 western states. They need saving because they are threatened, pretty much single day of their lives by our government. The BLM, the Bureau of Land Management, doesn’t like these horses and they would much rather lease that land to ranchers for cattle. They already do lease most of it for cattle. It's 50 to 1, so for every 50 cows on public lands in those states, there's one horse, but that's still too many for the BLM. And so, they organize roundups, which means they go after these horses with low-flying helicopters and chase them, sometimes for over 20 miles. The horses run at full speed, breaking legs, falling down, some die, mothers get separated from foals, they’re terrorized and terrified, and then rounded up, loaded onto trucks and put in government holding like prisoners. Until I met Suzanne I didn’t know big this fight was. It’s huge, and it’s really complex and there are many smaller battles that happen within it constantly. The crazy part is, well there are a lot of crazy parts to this story, but one of them is that when polled, the American public wants these horses free. 75% of the USA says keep them free. Between the helicopters and the holding, there are millions of dollars spent on getting rid of these horses. The rounded up horses live the rest of their lives either in government holding or in some sort of captivity, or they end up in the slaughter pipeline, which means they end up going to slaughter houses in Canada or Mexico. These horses were supposed to be protected. In 1971, Nixon signed a law called The Wild Free and Roaming Horses and Burro Act. The law states that the BLM is supposed to manage these herds, but no management has happening at all. Instead, it's inhumane, it's unsustainable, and it makes no financial sense whatsoever. Right now, we have 30,000 horses on public lands, and 50,000 in government holding. Most of them will never leave. Very few of them are adopted and the rest of them stay in holding or end up on their way to Canada or Mexico, and there’s just no reason for any of this. There's a birth control vaccine called PZP, which is a perfect solution to the entire issue. It’s used in wildlife populations all the time. The horses would get darted once a year and they would not get pregnant, but the BLM would rather spend the money on helicopters and government holding. PZP costs $30 a year per horse. Because this is such an enormous issue and it's happening right in our backyard, and because we can actually do something about this, we've decided to make this a two-part series. The first part was with American Wild Horse Campaign President, Ellie Phipps Price. Suzanne Roy is a hero in the animal rights movement. She has been fighting for the plights animals since the '90s, including chimps, elephants, marine mammals, and for the past nine years, America’s wild horses. Even after decades of showing up and fighting for so many animals in terrible situations and seeing the horrible lives that so many of them have to endure, Suzanne has not lost her resilience, her determination, nor her hopefulness. She's a joy to be around, she inspires, and she also tells a really great story.

Ellie Phipps Price is the president of the American Wild Horse Campaign, an organization that has been fighting for years to save America's wild horses. If you didn’t know that our wild horses needed saving, or even that we had any wild horses, here is some back story: We do, we have 30,000 of them. They roam freely in 10 western states. They need saving because they are threatened, pretty much single day of their lives by our government. The BLM, the Bureau of Land Management, doesn’t like these horses and they would much rather lease that land to ranchers for cattle. They already do lease most of it for cattle. It's 50 to 1, so for every 50 cows on public lands in those states, there's one horse, but that's still too many for the BLM. And so, they organize roundups, which means they go after these horses with low-flying helicopters and chase them, sometimes for over 20 miles. The horses run at full speed, breaking legs, falling down, some die, mothers get separated from foals, they’re terrorized and terrified, and then rounded up, loaded onto trucks and put in government holding like prisoners.  Until I met Ellie and Suzanne Roy, who’s the executive director of the American Wild Horse Campaign, I didn’t know big this fight was. It’s huge, and it’s really complex and there are many smaller battles that happen within it constantly. The crazy part is, well there’s a lot of crazy parts to this story, but one of them is that when polled, the American public wants these horses free. 75% of the USA says keep them free. Between the helicopters and the holding, there are millions of dollars spent on getting rid of these horses. The rounded up horses  live the rest of their lives either in government holding or in some sort of captivity, or they end up in the slaughter pipeline, which means they end up going to slaughter houses in Canada or Mexico. These horses were supposed to be protected. In 1971, Nixon signed a law called The Wild Free and Roaming Horses and Burro Act. The law states that the BLM is supposed to manage these herds, but no management has happening at all. Instead, it's inhumane, it's unsustainable, and it makes no financial sense whatsoever. Right now, we have 30,000 horses on public lands, and 50,000 in government holding. Most of them will never leave. Very few of them are adopted and the rest of them stay in holding or end up on their way to Canada or Mexico, and there’s just no reason for any of this. There's a birth control vaccine called PZP, which is a perfect solution to this entire issue. It’s used in wildlife populations all the time. The horses would get darted once a year and they would not get pregnant, but the BLM would rather spend their money on helicopters and government holding. PZP costs $30 a year per horse.  I met Ellie this summer in northern California. She has been involved with the American Wild Horse Campaign for the past 12 years. The way that she got involved is pretty amazing. She read a book about mustangs and shortly after, read an article in Vanity Fair. I don't think she planned in that moment that she was going to be changing her entire life, dedicating it to saving our horses, but that’s what happened. She put the article down and started making calls. She hasn’t stopped protecting these horses since. We are so lucky to have people like Ellie on this planet. Without them, I don't know if we'd have any wild horses left.

Sarah Blaine is the founder of the Mahouts Elephant Foundation, a project in northern Thailand and a model for what elephant tourism should and hopefully one day will look like. Ten years ago, Sarah and her husband, Felix, and their two small kids got on a plane, showed up in Thailand at an elephant trekking camp for tourists, eager to learn to help and to just be a part of things. But shortly after they arrived, they realized something was really off. The elephants were miserable. The conditions were terrible, and the Mahouts, the guys who train and handle the elephants, were living in abject poverty and in a cycle they just couldn't get of, living in these little, tiny shacks, barely able to afford to eat or take care of their families. And so Sarah looked at Felix and they quickly left and went to another camp, and things weren't much better. And this set them on a decade long journey. For the first few years, they researched and they learned all that they could. They went to camps, they went to sanctuaries, they spoke to tons of elephant handlers, to locals from villages all over Thailand, they found a Karen village up in the North that seemed to be a perfect fit for the project they’d envisioned.  And so they created the Mahouts Elephant Foundation, which is an 8,000-acre sanctuary for rescued elephants, where both the Mahouts and the elephants can be safe and free. In Thailand, there are only 6,000 elephants left. They're critically endangered. Half of those that remain are captive, the other half wild. The wild elephants live in national parks and the captive elephants work in tourism and entertainment. And they have pretty hard lives. Some of them have unbearable lives. And so that is what Sarah and Felix decided they wanted to change in any way that they could. The reason so many elephants have ended up working in tourism and entertainment is because in the '80s, logging became illegal and when it did, itput a lot of elephants and their Mahouts - well, all of them, out of work. And for the handlers, this was the only way they knew how to survive. It was generational. This is all their fathers had done, their grandfathers and back beyond, beyond, beyond. And so they fled to the cities, and a lot ended up begging in the streets in Bangkok, and a lot ended up in tourism. I visited the Mahouts Elephant Foundation last spring. I had this conversation with Sarah a few months after that. When I arrived at a small Karen village up in northern Thailand, I looked around and wondered, "Where are the elephants?" I didn't realize that Sarah's model of tourism is very different. There were no elephants until the next morning when we had to go find them. So, she and I and about six other people, and three or four Mahouts, went to find the elephants, which meant we hiked through the forest for hours. It was 100 degrees and we were trudged up and down the hills until, a few hours later, we walked into a opening in the forest and there, at a large mud pit, were a family of elephants right there in front of me. It felt like something out of Alice in Wonderland. We followed them around throughout the day. We followed them up and down hills, we trekked through the forest, we watched them eat and play and interact. None of us really spoke much to each other because it was so incredibly mesmerizing. When I say it felt surreal, it felt like this enormous gift of being dropped into this incredible world and being allowed to witness it without feeling like you were imposing or in any way getting in their way. And this is the model Sarah's created and since then, they've opened up a second project, and hopefully they're going open up a third and a fourth and a fifth, and many other people will replicate what they're doing.

Anita Kranjc is living proof that one person can create earth shattering impact, because that is exactly what she did when she made global headlines after being arrested in 2015. She was charged with criminal mischief for giving water to thirsty pigs  on their way to the slaughterhouse. And after two years awaiting trial, she was acquitted. Her case attracted media from all over the world and brought global attention to her movement, The Toronto Pig Save – which has spawned The Save Movement: numerous Animal Saves that take place all over the planet. Each save group is shows up to their local slaughterhouse once, twice, or three times a week and bears witness to cows, pigs, chickens, fish, even whales and horses on their way to slaughter. But it all started with one woman, Anita and her dog Mr. Beans. In 2010, she was living near a slaughterhouse in Toronto. Everyday as she walked the dog, she’d see the truckloads of terrified pigs being driven to the slaughterhouse. She wondered why no one was doing anything, and six months later, she formed the Toronto pig save, which began as a small group of people that stood vigil outside of the slaughterhouse, three times a week. As the trucks pull into the slaughterhouse gates, they have to stop at a red light. Anita and her group (and most Save groups around the world) give water to the thirsty animals, who are often on the trucks for as long as 36 hours and are not fed nor given any water in that time. When they finally arrive they are often insane with thirst (plus, a little water is the only act of compassion that these animals ever receive in their entire miserable lives).  Even in the beginning, with a tiny group of activists bearing witness, Anita had big ideas for the movement. She wanted and still wants all slaughterhouses to have glass walls and watching the pigs being driven into a single slaughterhouse in Toronto was a first step. Since her arrest, the Save movement has grown into more than 330 groups in countries all over the world, including Canada, the US, Mexico, The UK, most countries in Europe, Central and South America, all over Asia, and Africa. It truly is a global movement and her goal, to see inside and bear witness to all of the slaughterhouses in the world is becoming a reality. She is exactly why we all need to Dream BIG. She is a force. I met Anita in Toronto. The day before we met, I’d been at an all day vigil at with the Toronto Pig Save. It was my first vigil and I had no idea know what to expect. On one hand, seeing live six month old animals in abject terror, packed into truck after truck was horrifically sad and way more real than I had anticipated. But there were also many wonderful moments throughout the day. The people were kind and generous and incredibly good to me and to one another. By the time the 2nd or 3rd truck pulled in, I felt like a part of the community.  I didn’t really understand the power of what it meant to bear witness until that day. I don’t think you can know what it is until you do it -  it’s so much bigger than I could have possibly imagined. I felt changed by the end of the day. Depressed yes but it also gave me enormous feelings of hope and connection. I’ve been vegan for a few years, but seeing animals being driven inside to their death is a whole different beast. It made me question everything that we are doing as humans to all of the other species on earth. I think it’s because you can’t deny or compartmentalize when there are living beings right there in front of you. I met Anita and Mr. bean at her home the following day. She is an inspiration and an example to all of us that one person can indeed create a tremendous impact.

Marc Ching has all of the makings of a superhero. He is the founder of the Animal Hope and Wellness Foundation, which is an organization that’s dedicated to rescuing abused and neglected animals. In 2015 he expanded that outreach to include rescuing dog from the horrific Asian dog meat trade - where it’s estimated that 30 million dogs a year are killed for their meat. What makes it especially horrific though, is that many of those dogs are brutally tortured first. Between 2015, when he first he learned of the trade and 2018, Marc has made close to twenty trips going undercover into multiple dog slaughterhouses. When he’s been inside, posed as a wealthy meat buyer, he has filmed hundreds of videos that show some of the worst things that human beings are capable of: dogs being nail gunned to walls, being beaten with lead pipes and bats, being blowtorched, having their limbs chopped off while they bleed out, all while the dogs are fully conscious and alive. This is done because of the myth that dogs that die in terror and agony taste better. I think that until Marc started risking his life to go inside and make these videos, very few people in the US at least had any idea that the dog meat trade even existed and far fewer knew of the torture that often goes hand and hand within it. Marc is a huge hero of mine but I would guess that he’s a huge hero of anyone who has ever met him. He’s tough, he’s brave, he’s relentless, and he is as compassionate as they come. He is one of those people who - the minute that he heard about something terrible happening jumped on a plane, and then he figured out how he could help. He hasn’t stopped helping since, not only with dogs from the meat trade but also in the US, taking on some of the hardest rescue and abuse cases there are, running clinics and doing rescue in Mexico, and working on legislation and changing laws to give the animals here better lives. I interviewed Marc right after one of these trips. He’d just returned from China, Cambodia, and South Korea. Our conversation will give you some insight as to what he’s faced, what these dogs go through and just how incredibly difficult the work he’s done and is doing is. Just a warning, some of what we discuss is tough to hear: details on some of what he’s seen, filmed and bared witness to inside the slaughterhouses. I think our minds often want to skip through the terrible parts because it’s so hard to hear about, but I also think that’s part of our responsibility as humans on this planet, to bear witness to see or hear about what we are doing to other species. If Marc can be in it, and see it first hand and film it and if these animals have to actually endure it, then I think that the least we can do is allow ourselves to hear about it, to become aware of it.