Worldlog week 47 – 2013

On Sunday last week we had a very nice day in the Dutch village of Daarle when we visited ‘our’ protest forest. 100 of the 4800 nature buyers visited the area. After our action, the Government stopped the sale of nature in the Netherlands, which was initiated by State Secretary Bleker. State Secretary Dijksma said that the reason for this was the social unrest that had arisen because of the sale of nature. We played an important role in organising the Growing Resistance against the sale of nature. One quarter of a million euro was raised through a ‘forest funding campaign’ in over two weeks’ time to buy the freedom of the most vulnerable nature area. Quite successfully: in the auction, we acquired almost 100,000 square metres of the most vulnerable pieces of nature. See the small photo report below.

Success for the cats in the Netherlands! Last week our motion that called for the Government to end the shooting of stray cats was adopted. The Dutch Society for the Protection of Animals started a big action against the shooting of cats a few weeks ago, which resulted in more than 134 thousand signatures. Last week the Dutch Society for the Protection of Animals presented these signatures to the State Secretary, who, however, said that he did not want to prohibit the hunt for cats. I am delighted that a majority of the Lower House voted for our motion to put an end to the shooting of cats.

There are over three million cats in the Netherlands, of which an unknown number are living in the wild. We advocate an animal-friendly and effective approach to reducing and controlling the number of stray cats. We have successfully pleaded for registration and sterilisation of the animals!

Meat the Truth, our film about the link between meat and climate change among other things, was shown in Zürich last week. Afterwards I had a Skype-interview. It is great to see that our message is being spread.

An interesting article from New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman about the literally breath-taking growth of China. Read it here.

Last week, the Labour Party (PvdA) voted against our motion to ban mega stables, which was previously submitted by former Labour MP Sharon Dijksma (State Secretary at present). Incomprehensible because nothing had been agreed on mega stables in the coalition agreement with the People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) (which is in favour of mega stables), and because the majority of the Lower House is in favour of pulling the plug out of mega stables. The PvdA took a mega turn. We are going to have an extensive debate on mega stables in a few weeks’ time, and I really hope that the PvdA will have changed its mind again and will adhere to its election promises!

Greetings,

Marianne