Monkey Business     Some of you may sometimes wonder if you are on a Pagan site or a site for animal activists. I make no apologies.  To me it is the duty of every Pagan/Wiccan to stand up for animals whether wild or domestic. I can be extremely harsh and critical when folk tell me I am wrong to put animals above humans. Who are you to tell me! Let me make one thing perfectly clear, I think there are too many folk on this planet, many breed without consideration for the future. In olden times large families were acceptable because infant mortality was high and some races needed large families to survive. The children worked the fields and when the girls were of a saleable age they were often sold for marriage for the bride price or labola which could be as little as a few chickens or as high as a herd of cattle, now also these people still breed like wild rabbits but despite a still relatively high infant mortality rate modern medicine and the access to it has improved a thousand fold so huge families in the third world are the norm. The population explosion means more mouths to feed, this leads to over grazing, woodland decimation, soil erosion and the rapidly shrinking habitat of our wildlife. Wildlife is our heritage to thos that come after us. Wildlife is so important, many reasons why are still not obvious but imagine a world devoid of birdsong, where tree only survived in protected areas, where your grandchilren and great grandchildren can only see a creature, if they are lucky, alive in a zoo, or unlucky, stuffed in a museum. We are all dependent on the wildlife. You will probably know that the great primates of Africa and Asia are endangered. Orang Utans- the old man of the jungle - is facing oblivion in the wild. Hunters slay the parents and catch the babies to sell to private collectors. Chimps and Gorillas in Africa are killed and hands and feet chopped off for wealthy tourist to buy. The Narwhal, a large whale with a three meter horn, many believe the Narwhal was the creature responsible for the myth of the unicorn. The Narwhal has been hunted by the Inuit tribe for centuries but sustainable, they only took what they needed for food. Commercial fishing has brought the Narwhal to the brink. Todays newspaper reports on a consigment of monkeys and Apes were discovered at Nairobi International Airport Kenya. The consigee obviously realised she had been rumbled after declaring the cage contained dogs. She gapped it before she could be apprehended. The cage contained 4Guenon Monkeys and six chimps. All were emaciated and in poor condition, one has since died from stress and starvation. The Chimpanzees are worth £10,000 each on the black market The chimps were on route from Egypt to Nigeria. Neither of these countries have populations of chimps and it is likely they originated in Rwanda or the Congo. It is especially disturbing as chimps are endangered, hunted for meat and body aprts and effected badly by shrinking habitat as deforestation is a major problem. An animal welfare expert from Zambia stated for six young chimps to have been captured it is likely that the families were slaughtered. Through much of Africa Bushmeat is becoming a primary source of protein as corrupt goverments fail to feed the swellin population. Page written by: Barbarian Heathen Page Designed by: Silvertaliesihn Crow