Riddle of the Lion's Roar: Animal Sanctuaries, Zoos & Wildlife Management.

I bunderson it's just one of these
things what does the word abolition really mean what does the word sanctuary really mean I mean it's surreal the whole thing it's it's I I understand completely the sentimentality behind it I myself as a vegan i do care about animals but for me what makes sense is having animals die in the wild where other animals eat their corpse after they're dead it doesn't make sense to me to reproduce half of the problems with a farm and half of the problems of the zoo and to promote this animal sanctuary model as the solution to all our problems but with this boy sort of a little gray area when it comes to rewriting first line yeah I'm never reload first ever oh my gosh I've never been in the position where do I go somebody I'll did me and on the track why I had to rewrite my first I never even given given again that ultimately we have priorities we have limited amounts of money and everything else if I have the two hundred thousand dollars just even to compare the two humble examples okay buy a plot of land and open an animal sanctuary versus open a restaurants a vegan restaurant downtown somewhere let's say it's a vegan restaurant with a gym or something upstairs you know whatever and promote veganism you know to human beings uh to me you know the second option is much more meaningful as much more likely to really have a dynamic change in the world but still I mean I do understand why people want to have these these sanctuaries when I was in France I knew a couple of really hardcore vegan activists the one guy he had formerly been an employee of pettah for years they both just had years and years of experience with vegan activist of different kinds everything from giving pamphlets to lectures to showing movies they've done all kinds of vegan vegan activism and you know they also would go and volunteer at a sanctuary once in a while and they just said the reality of this sanctuary is because they don't kill the animals so they accept a certain number of animals and it's very finite how many horses can you really take care of for real-time money labor the food for the horses can you can you keep five forces maybe that's your capacity okay so you accept five horses and a certain number of dogs and a certain number of cats and a certain number of pigs and that's it and then the door is closed and those animals live for years and years until they die and then after that people including the people who donate money to you because somebody who's donated thousands of dollars to you phones you up and says look we've rescued this pig or the Sheep some circumstances there's the Sheep maybe it's a deer there's this animal in these circumstances anchor we want the dev put slip and you say no we can't help you we're already full and then the animal inevitably is either sent to a kill shelter so a shelter where it's kept alive for a couple of days for skilled or it's just shot in the head it hope this is the depressing day-to-day reality of animal sanctuary whether it's horses or whether they just do dogs or cats or what have you as I say for me the actual lives the animals that are on the sanctuary for me again it's better than some farms but it's it's very similar to some other farms including you know something like a petting zoo you know I think it's very very similar to a petting zoo normal which what you get in the sanctuary so once we get past it's just one of these things what does the word abolition really mean what does the word sanctuary really mean can we can we think about this in practice and then can we make decisions about our own own priorities and what have you in life you talked about how you talked about on that you understand nostalgia behind the idea of the animal sanctuary I'm wondering where do you think that comes from do you think that comes from you know I I mean what I think of us I think of you know you grow up you you see the movie about the griller the chimpanzee that you know someone buys like the airport like coming home from Africa or some trip or something and it gets too big and then it goes to live on the beautiful plate it's the beautiful forest the beautiful reserved and it has this amazing life that's implied at the end of the movie rid of your thoughts on that so look I'm going to I'm going to come out of the closet on this one I never mention this on my youtube channel before I don't think I mentioned the Internet I literally grew up with the sound of lions roaring in the background in my childhood in Canada because there was uh not a zoo there was an open plain reserve I'm not going to say sanctuary specifically for wild African animals in the part of Canada where I I had a very memorable part of my childhood so this is obviously rural Canada and obviously that facility was there because the land was cheap so these are really early childhood memories for me but like the other businesses in that part of Canada were like there was a huge jail so there were people there is like some of the other kids in my school their parents worked in the jail it's all the type of stuff you put in an area where the land is cheap empty and worthless and I would literally fall asleep was within earshot you know of lions roaring and my parents never once took me to see the Lions I never saw them but I heard them and on a really deep in state you'll level you know the sound of a lion roaring at a distance it's not that different from Thunder on the horizon but you feel differently about it on a level of instinct I think you do respond to it as you know this is a threat this is something I need to pay attention to so I remember waking up in the middle night not feeling scared just feeling alert waking up as a kid to that rumbling roar clients in the distance now where was where was i living at that time as a child and again I think this impacted my view I i I'm not going to say too much about impacted my view of animals and ecology and what of civilization at that time my childhood I was living on a fake farm so it was a farm that existed as an historical recreation it was a farm that was created partly so the government could preserve historical architecture Canada we don't have much historical architecture so ever so often there'd be a building and they'd say well this building is 200 years old let instead of destroying it let's relocate it let's actually dig up the building this special place and they put a bunch of these buildings together and then they decided to recreate the other elements of what life was like in that period of canada's first colonization by europeans so you know they put up a fence and had some sheep and they actually showed the type of machinery that people used in that period of how they made sheep's wool into a useful type of wool they would have this kind of demonstration exhibition there were other kind of primitive technologies of the frontier settlement Aaron cannon so I got to see these animals that were in some ways ludicrously happy because they want to fake farm they were not really being exploited they were just there to exist so you got to see sheep you know acting like sheep and you got to see you know obviously sorry we should obviously these were not wild sheep they're not know this is fella still a farm was a totally fake farm and there were some horses but the horses didn't really do much and what have you so you know they they owned these animals but it is really like animals in a museum exhibition and they're animals that just fundamentally were not suffering and not being exploited although still of course they're not living in anything like like wild conditions it's also not anything like a zoo so there I've come out of the closet J on my early childhood experience with animals and animal agriculture and zoos and specifically even Lions that did it gave me a really really strange starting point for how I viewed human beings animals living together and what I thought of his normal agriculture and I just say you know I'm literally on the horizon like when my father would drive me to school which didn't happen every day I just mentioned normally take a take a bus to school this is rural Canada you know school bus would come and collect you but on some days my father would drive me I can remember my father drive me and literally on the horizon you would see this dull gray metal shed and that was the dawn of you know industrial chicken farming it was a huge shed you know the current what's now you see everywhere but I gamera my father saying you know when I was child we didn't have that when I was jailed that didn't exist you know raising chickens in a factory like that this this high-density a chicken coop technology and so actually you did see around you the transformation of the landscape to reflect a new and darker era of the exploitation of animals I just think I was just thinking that you're telling the story about the Lions and the Sheik I wonder on only other chic spells about right yes yes I mixed them with another population sheep like that had never been with the Lions like what their behaviors would be different then like I wonder like how wonder if they drip represent more like some of this in some ways that represent more like real living a wild like you know undulates on like the Savannah you know lion looking over your shoulder cuz they are these great predators that although they never see them may be there maybe they're just like oh what's that sound but um yes I ok you see you see what I'm so anthropocentric I never thought of that I never thought that the other animals living so close to me they also were probably not sleeping very well on those nights when I was walking up I Roerig ya know I wonder I wonder if there's something I wonder if there's something in a prey animals DNA here the the side of a predator and even if they don't know what it is you know they know there's something wrong and that's something that they grow up with that's more real more wild than any other you know example of that what so so far as I know in terms of evolutionary time I mean human beings did evolve in pretty much the same ecological niche as as lions so it's not surprising that on some level we can just respond to a lion roaring and think this is a problem some some instinct you know certainly you know lion roaring is a frightening thing I wonder if you and I are the cuz I you know I worked with lines I worked around them and I wonder if I'm the other vegans are there to say that they felt that they felt that I described as waves pulsating waves do you even feel it through the structure yeah I mean I just remember cats are cats are scary I remember on there's one line that he liked to roar and keepers faces and they're on their their keepers that worked there for years there were like you don't honestly what he does that I still jump yeah you know cuz like it's like a slow thing like he would turn he would go to the back of the stall and they would slowly turn like when you were checking a lock or something like that readers and then like all of a sudden like he's back and all of a sudden he's right there I think so so we have this in common Jay you and i you were saying before we have so much in common maybe this way anyway you know I just mentioned obviously most of my critics are not worth responding to but you know one of the statements I made that's been I've been attacked for that but misunderstood for I talked about it not just endangered species but some endangered breeds of animals so you know sometimes the breeds were created by human being sometimes they just came about you know through the happenstance of nature where I said that yes actually I do think that governments can have a role in preventing some some breeds of animals from disappearing from the world you know I would hope it's not in a circus or not anything to exploited them but I thought that in a museum like capacity we can keep some populations of animals alive because you know meat-eaters and sometimes vegans ask this question well what about domesticated animals that can't return to the wild that can't exist in the wild you know should they disappear entirely and I say no I think there's a museum like you know capacity to keep these these things alive so it is funny but in my own childhood I did actually live in a museum of that kind you know the animals were really only a small part of it but it was it was really a museum for the lifestyle of how human beings exist at that time now overall you know did that make me become vegan faster or slower actually it probably delayed my becoming vegan because it gave me a sense of respect for tradition and as you know veganism is such a such a challenge to tradition but on this on this issue I mean I think that's why I always talk about the wildlife management paradigm wildlife management I'm not saying back to the wilderness you know i'm not saying primitivism i'm not saying Deep Ecology not saying I'm definitely not an anarchy primitive s uh you know when human beings manage wildlife they have to ask questions again this is not even a zoo not a zoo but genuinely wild animals human beings have to keep track how many wolves are there how many deer are there sometimes there are too many wolves sometimes there are too many deer sometimes you know you've dealt with this with Wolves you get these ridiculous questions of are these coyotes really coyotes or of the Coyotes interbred too much with the wolves and they're not coyotes anymore getting ridiculous questions of trying to keep different you know breeds and species alive but that's you know that's wildlife management that's the reality I think if we're talking with the future 21st century in the 25th century I think what we really need to look at again zoo zoos are still interesting and you know obviously all the other issues abolition of you know evolution of meat and leather or period I think the obviously an enormous challenge next 400 years but I mean here and now I just kind of can't put enough emphasis on trying to make wildlife management the paradigm not pets not animal sanctuaries which to me in some ways are a type of pet keeping or type of zoo or what have you but for us to kind of face up to those realities which include to be blunt ultimately include killing animals ultimately any wildlife management even if you're even if you are met you you've got the spirits wolves even if your purpose is to save the wolves sometimes you end up killing wolves and that may be brutal and terrible you may literally go home and weep over it or have nightmares about it you know but that that's part of the game that's also part of all that man I've actually I've actually I remember on what I one of the wolf facilities that i worked at we actually we had on this was one of the this is one of the places where we'd actually accept wild animals that had died to feed through our animals when I got in the zoo field late later that started to disappear um but I remember one one day there was I'm actually a wildlife official who actually he brought you know I found this dear you know it's dead it looks all right to me you guys can look over it if you'd like but I'm I thought I would drop it by you know I know you guys are small facility I know you know if you guys can have extra food but he sat down he actually talked to me and um I mean my idea I had never met a wildlife official who had you know was dealing with management responsibilities in those areas worlds have been reintroduced I honestly at that time you know I was you know learning all this information to talk to our visitors about about the wolf reintroduction program and stuff like that and I was under the assumption that every single wildlife manager was you know a fan of wolves you know that they were working towards you know facilitating you know they return the wild and getting them used you know gain them back in there and this this individual was not a fan of wolves you know he stated you know that you know wolves kill indiscriminately you know not necessarily just to eat they just kill cuz they liked it that was something he actually said and that you know he had killed wolves himself and that you know he thought that you know all these renters they had legitimate point he actually told me that I'm cuz they what they did in the United States was they actually set up I don't know if some guy I don't remember if it was a government organization or some rich people literally donated money that say you know if you can prove that you know you lost cattle to wolves you know we'll pay you this much worth of the worth the animal I think it was something like a hundred fifty percent of like the animals worth or something like that um he actually his official opinion on that was that the money it all dried up and that people didn't get paid you know what they were supposed to be worth I I looked it up but I was like you know it appears to be this is still going from every source so I wasn't at the time I wasn't sure what he was talking about I'm I can be frank I thought he was a blithering idiot um but um but you know I think there's not not every well like manager you know you know killing is you know is an aspect and you know you're gonna get different you know pins on it some guys were absolutely for it and some level there's a malevolent suspect in there sure sure but I mean it's also like anything else like when you do real humanitarian work in a country like Laos I never had this attitude but like the point is not to regard Lao people as angels if you actually work with poverty stricken people and starving people they're [ __ ] like everyone else you know what I mean and they're cheating on their wives and they're going to the brothel or their gambling addicts and some of them are drug addicts and yes some of them are poor and they're nice people but some of them are poor and they're poor for a reason they're poor because they made terrible decisions in their lives and some of them are war criminals some of them are poor and you're giving them food and you're helping them not starve or you're helping them access job training so they go and they literally have committed crimes against humanity that's what they did with a couple decades of their lives they were mercenaries in local wars or what have you that's helping poor people is helping people because they're poor not because they're nice not because you like them not because they're angels so in the same way I mean like people who actually work with animals are going to know these kinds of contradictions and have these kinds of mixed feelings because they've seen both sides of it you know they've seen they've seen many many dif different sides of it you know I read an account so I've told you before my work on First Nations indigenous people north america american indians it was almost entirely on the the korean a jib way but i did i did do some reading about other other groups another native group further west i read a really interesting first-person account this was fry this is in an academic peer-reviewed journal but the interesting part was this guy speaking was basically you know from an interview and he said that in his tribe and in his region of Canada he was the last person to do mercy killings of bears which she said like a hundred years earlier was a proud tradition in his tribe I'll tell you exactly what that means because this is very interesting question for vegans and for wildlife manager what have you apparently often enough you know adult bears are injured with something like a broken leg they fall in that part of Canada anyway they fall off a cliff or something happens they have an injury that they can't recover from and they are very dangerous in that state and they are howling with rage and howling with pain they scream and scream and anything that comes close to them they will kill because you know obviously they have no no medication they're just an extreme physical pain and of course what will kill them is graduate starving to death if they're just left out in out in the wild and his tribe his his ethnic group in Canada they had a tradition that in the past they were proud of of hunters going to kill those bears out of mercy not to take the meat not to take the skin but so that that bear would not die an incredibly long slow horrible death now as you can imagine because these bears are making a lot of noise you know they would track them mostly just by the by the sound but the men who did this this was considered the highest level of hunter he said maybe a good look I know maybe this guy is lying you know I'm assuming this is all true but whatever anyway this guy is speaking for his own his own culture addition but he said that was highly respected as the highest level of a hunter who takes on that responsibility because it was also acknowledged to be extremely dangerous like once you got close to that bear even if it had a broken leg because it was in such an adrenaline-filled state that bear could still charge at you could still try to kill you you know with its it's dying strength or what have you in this in this state of excruciating pain Sam you know what is wildlife management I mean you know we're in a situation now where guys like Gary Yourofsky endorse violence in what you know ways that are completely repugnant to me talk about violence against you know meat-eaters basically but at the same time they claim they literally do not kill insects and that vegans just by becoming vegan we can live in a magical fairy Kingdom where nobody has to kill animals and where there are no hard questions of this kind so as you know I mean I'm the one voice I'm intensely hated by so many for this on youtube where I say no I really want to talk about I really want to talk with these contradictions I want to deal with contradictions whether they're in medical science and that kind of research or in wildlife management or you know or even I'm willing to MIT every time I eat a piece of bread that piece of bread kills insects and it kills mammals it kills animals like Gophers and groundhogs and enormous numbers when we grow wheat in Canada you think we don't kill anything we kill all kinds of stuff so you know in my video I talked about killing animals i mentioned one individual who was responsible for you not this one facility that got all these [ __ ] donations I was responsible for killing you know the horses that had all these little tricks that he learned in order to get the horses to be in the right position nerd of him to deal the one shot and then in the end he was the one who butchered all the animals is it individual was Native American oh really no kidding okay that is very interesting so he really felt more comfortable with that process the killing in the butchery than than other people yeah absolutely he was he was even the one who on the lands like he would he would be the one like if we Etta because one of the things and I've talked about this a little bit with mice you know the reality that you kill mice is a zoo keeper um because and because of you know pestilence getting in affecting your collection you know there are other animals larger animals that this was a drive-thru park you know there are all kinds of animals that could get in there and stuff like that you know and you know make roofs that you didn't really want had there that could hurt wildlife not just get them sick hurt them I mean he was the one who kind of like no sod all those animals up to tracking so much speed and like try to figure out the best way to remove them and stuff like that there were no clear he was very well respected I don't even think he had to do he did some cleaning Bree even quite do it the right way but everyone who goes to school of it because he was you know he had these abilities that no one else had um yeah and look that's why i say management i mean it's it's a bloody mess but i think nobody will admit it if you run an animal sanctuary all those things are going to be true right you can change the name from a zoo to a sanctuary you think you don't have to kill rats honest if you're running if you're a vegan running an animal sanctuary you don't have to kill rats or it could be owls or anything else or pigeons you know even a seemingly harmless animal like pigeons well if you have a bunch of pigeons moving into your sanctuary and messing things up the end other animals what do you do it could be bees could be Hornets whatever i mean you know uh i think you have all the same contradictions as on a zoo or in a or in a farm you know ablution