Worldlog Week 14 – 2012

This Worldlog has been written by a colleague of Marianne Thieme who is on maternity leave.

According to researchers of the Privacy Barometer, the Party for the Animals does the best job of protecting the privacy of Dutch citizens. The research studied the voting behaviour among all political parties and concluded that the Party for the Animals placed the most importance on privacy. We are delighted with this recognition and we will continue to stand firm in the future for people’s right to privacy. For example, the Party for the Animals supports a tightening of the Personal Data Protection Act and is against the electronic patient record and the bodyscan.

Good news for the greylag goose and the greater white-fronted goose. Thanks to a motion by the Party for the Animals, it will not be possible to hunt animals without restriction. A House majority supported the motion which was initially submitted by Marianne Thieme and again by Anja Hazekamp during Marianne’s leave, effectively blocking State-Secretary Bleker’s plans to open the hunt on this protected species of goose.

With the new Nature Act, Bleker is literally taking aim at the greylag goose and the greater white-fronted goose. Under the current rules, five animals species may be hunted in the Netherlands without restriction: hares, pheasants, mallards, rabbits and the common wood pigeon. The state secretary now wishes to add geese to this list. The government takes the attitude that the unrestricted hunting of geese would make it easier to control them and prevent damage, but keeps silent about the fact that unrestricted hunting will especially disrupt natural processes and certainly not regulate them. The restrictions to recreational hunting that animal protectionists have been fighting for years would be shot to ribbons just like that. The Party for the Animal’s motion was able to prevent this from happening.

The Party for the Animals is against the unrestricted hunting of geese as culling in this manner offers no guarantee whatsoever of a reduction in geese numbers in the future or any guarantee of less damage to agricultural crops. Behavioural biologists have demonstrated that relatively simple methods can be used to keep unwelcome visitors way from specific areas on a permanent basis.

State-Secretary Bleker has repeatedly argued for a substantial expansion of the number of animal species subject to unrestricted hunting. By adopting this motion, the Lower House has given the state-secretary an advance warning.

Our representative from the province of South-Holland Carla van Vliegen has been pronounced South-Holland’s greenest politician! The South-Holland Nature and Environment Federation has awarded this prize to Carla owing to her enormous dedication to animals, nature and the environment in the Provincial Council. It was Carla, for example, who saw to it that animal welfare was included as a spearhead in the new coalition agreement. Excellent news!

Carla van Viegen

Finally, an interesting article on the world’s largest carnivorous plant. Oddly enough, this plant does not like meat at all…

Until next week!