Cecil the Lion and All the Other Animals
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Sometimes I really hate the world we live in. I watch people being mistreated/murdered by the police, a man shoots up a movie theater as James Holmes awaits sentencing for doing the same thing. Then I find out a dentist shoots a lion with a bow and arrow, allows him to bleed out for 40 hours, then shoots him again (killing him), beheads and skins him. A lot of people are up in arms about this because the lion is only 13 years old and Oxford University has been studying Cecil the lion for years. But even if this lion wasn’t famous or beloved, he was still a living, breathing creature and he deserved a full life.
If you don’t know much about what goes on in the wildlife community- if you don’t know about the ivory trade, poaching, SeaWorld’s many offenses, or what is done to elephants in the circus- please educate yourself. You can google all of these things or you can follow various celebrities who are also activists and they provide a lot of information on their Facebooks and Twitter accounts. For instance: Ricky Gervais (@rickygervais), Holly Marie Combs (@H_Combs), and Leonardo DiCaprio (@LeoDiCaprio), or go to TheDoDo.com every day and read, read, read. They all provide petitions and accurate information on animal cruelty.
We’re losing our animals because people with too much money are bored and looking for something to make themselves feel better about their lives. Unfortunately, they’re doing so at the cost of animals. Hunting, poaching, captivity- they’re all forms of killing in some way or another. I’ve signed countless petitions, I’ve donated money when I can afford to, but most importantly I keep myself educated on what’s really going on in the world. We can’t keep pretending like our animals aren’t being killed on a regular basis.
When you hear about an animal being killed, share the article, retweet it, talk about it in any way you can. Make sure you are always, always outraged by it.
We cannot let this become our normal.