Скачать или смотреть CARE 2018 | Martin Balluch: Why we should protect free ranging wolves

Wolves are coming back into all countries of Europe. In those places, where wolves have been missing for the last 150 years, animal agriculture and especially the hunting fraternity deliberately create a media frenzy of the danger of wolves and the suffering of their victims. Most animal groups do not seem to see that as one of their primary issues, some are even opposed to free ranging wolves from a utilitarian perspective. The latter argue that free ranging wolves mean more suffering for wildlife overall, and of that they need to be protected. But carnivores too have a right to autonomy, even if that contradicts the minimising of suffering. But there is more to that story. Looking at functioning ecosystems, it becomes clear that they fare the better, the less there is human intervention. human wildlife management is not just the opposite of autonomy, it is also the by far most cruel way of maintaining wildlife. In wilderness, most animals are happy most of the time. In human society, most animals suffer dreadfully most of the time. Animal rights and welfare groups should strongly support initiatives to protect free ranging wolves!

About the speaker:

Martin Balluch has started his activism in 1979, when he participated in the campaign to get nuclear power stations banned in Austria. He was arrested for the first time in 1979 while occupying the meadows outside the imperial palace in Vienna. Since then, more than 25 arrests have followed. In 1985, he started his first animal rights group at the University of Vienna. For the last 20 years he has been campaigning with the organisation VGT (Association Against Animal Factories) to achieve an impressive long list of law reforms and bans, amongst them bans of fur farming, wild animal circuses, battery farms, vivisection on apes, sow stalls, caging of rabbits and breeding of wild fowl to be hunted and shot.

In 2008, he spent 105 days in prison and then 14 months on trial for charges of leading a criminal organisation in animal rights. After 3 years, he was found not guilty on all accounts because of proven innocence. The latest of his victories was a national ban on hunting enclosures in Austria. For that he is again on trial on different charges, ranging from taping police officers to fly posting and insulting rich huntsmen with his campaigning style.

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