Help End Duck Shooting and Greyhound Export in Australia

1. Please click and sign HERE to ban duck hunting in Australia.

2. Please click HERE to ban greyhound export in Australia.

1. Background | From Animals Australia

The beautiful wetlands of South Australia, Tasmania and Victoria should be safe havens for wildlife; instead every year in Autumn and early Winter they become killing fields.

At this moment the lives of hundreds of thousands of native waterbirds are under threat. Tasmania and Victoria have already confirmed that they will permit a duck hunting season in 2012 and South Australia will also soon decide.

While numbers of active shooters dropped substantially during the opening weekend of the 2011 season, there was no reprieve for ducks, with numbers of birds killed and captured more than doubling from an estimated 270,000 in 2010 to more than 600,000 in 2011, in Victoria alone. For every bird killed and captured it is estimated that at least one more escapes injured. So in excess of one million birds will have been harmed or killed during the 2011 shooting season — with those who escaped likely to have suffered prolonged pain and even death from their untreated wounds.

Queensland, New South Wales and Western Australia have already banned duck shooting due to the extreme suffering caused to birds.

Please help us protect these defenceless birds and send a strong message to the Governments of Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania, urging them to ban duck hunting.


2. Background | From Animal Australia

Australia’s greyhound racing industry is not one with a glowing track record for animal welfare. Just like in the horse racing industry, animals whose only fault is that they are not fast enough to win are disposed of in the thousands. A very small portion of these unwanted animals are rehomed, however the vast majority are killed. But perhaps the grimmest fate that can await these unlucky dogs is export, and this export trade may soon grow if not stopped.

A primary export destination for greyhounds from Australia is Macau, with hundreds of racing dogs facing cruel conditions in this region of China. In Macau’s greyhound racing stadium, the Canidrome, these dogs are kept in cages so small they can barely turn around and must literally run for their lives on the track.

Greyhounds from Australia were killed at the Canidrome at a rate of more than 1 every day in 2010. Nearly all of these dogs were healthy and not even five years old. All they had done wrong is fail to finish in the top three for five consecutive races. With an ongoing supply of dogs from Australia, this unethical practice can continue, and is even threatening to expand.

Macau is the only place in China where greyhound racing is currently legal. But with racing industries from around the world pushing for the legalisation of greyhound racing on mainland China many more greyhounds are at risk.

The Australian government can help stop this cruel practice by banning the export of greyhounds. Please call on Minister for Agriculture, Joe Ludwig, to stop Australia’s export of greyhounds.

See More: Animals Australia

common sense to us
would be
not killing any animal,
being a peaceful
society
but apparently to many
these notions exist not
so our world sits in decline
so sickens the plot

Karen Lyons Kalmenson