Finally! Wild Animals in Circuses WILL be Banned!

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We're kicking off March with a bang!  According to the Daily Mail, Ministers will today announce that circuses will be banned from using wild animals within two years!

Pressure from members of the public (like us), MPs and celebrities have forced Minsters to make a U-turn and implement the ban.  Until the ban is introduced a tough licensing regime will be put in place for any circuses still using wild animals.

Read the full article here.

Update on Proposed Beagle Farm (More Good News!)

More good news!  Do you remember this?

This proves how what you do makes a real difference to the lives of animals, if you signed BUAV's petition back in October you were one of the 28,000 people who encouraged the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, Eric Pickles, to reject plans by Bantin & Kingman Ltd to build a breeding facility in Grimston, Yorkshire with the aim of supplying beagles for experiments in the UK and overseas.

BUAV's petition contained over 28,000 signatures which were collected in just over two weeks, they submitted this along with a document explaining why there was no justification for another dog breeding facility and although Bantin & Kingman appealed the decision Eric Pickles has declined the planning application thus saving the lives of thousands of beagles.

Read more.

(on behalf of the Beagles!)

VICTORY: Air France Backs Down!

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We welcome February with some excellent news!  

Thank you to all of you who read and acted on yesterdays post asking you to contact Air France and ask them not to transport 60 live primates from Africa to the USA for vivisection purposes.  Within just 24 hours of Peta finding out about the planned Air France transportation and prompting all of us to take action, 68,000 e-mails, thousands of Facebook and Twitter posts along with hundreds of calls were generated in support.  Peta has now confirmed that Air France has cancelled their plans!

This once again proves that there really is strength in numbers and simply sparing a moment of your time to sign a petition or send an e-mail really makes a difference!

As always, there is still work to be done and we now need to continue to work on Air France and ask them to create a formal policy prohibiting future shipments of primates to animal testing labs.  Please click here in order to contact the Home Office and urge them not to weaken protection laws for animals in laboratories in the future.

Thank you, thank you, thank you!

Update on Stray Dogs in Ukraine

Good news brought to you via Four Paws!

You may remember my post back on 29th November reporting the dreadful situation in Ukraine, where the many stray dogs were misguidedly being poisoned in order to remove them from the streets in time for Euro 2012.

Four Paws and the Ukraine government have reached an agreement, and signed a treaty, for a comprehensive neutering and vaccination project for the stray dogs in Lvov, which is the venue of several Euro 2012 football matches.  Read all about it here!

Happy Christmas :-)

VICTORY! Bull Fighting banned in Catalonia!

It is always nice to be able to share a small victory. Today I can share the great news with you that bull fighting has been banned in Catalonia (the north eastern region of Spain). Yesterday the Parliament of Catalonia's vote passed the motion to ban bull fighting by 68 votes to 55. Hopefully Catalonia is going to pave the way to outlawing this blood sport and the rest of Spain will follow.

The ban will be in force by 2012 but there is still work to do be done as each year around 11,000 bulls are killed due to the practice and we need to aim for a complete ban on bull fighting altogether.

Please spare a minute to click on this link and e-mail Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero and urge him to follow Catalonia's example and put an end to bull fighting across Spain.