Bake Sale, Puppy Love, Marius the Giraffe, Rock Creek Park Deer and More!

Puppy Love Bake Sale! Tonight we will be having a bake sale in Ivory Tower as part of our week long Valentine’s Day Puppy Love Events. Please come buy some delicious treats, made by our very own board, In Ivory Tower from 8-10 tonight. All proceeds from every bake sale go to the Washington Humane Society! Please come out and show your support.

Need some cuddling and loving on Valentines Day? Come play, cuddle and enjoy some sweet treats with our bake sale. On Friday February 14th, come to Kogan Plaza for Puppy Love! Brighten up your Valentines Day with bright faces. Bring anyone and everyone you know and arrive early– This event’s going to be huge! Come support the Washington Humane Society. The event will run from 4-6. Make sure to come out, for the love of dog!

General Body Meeting and Screening of Shelter Me!   On Febuary 20th, We will be hosting our monthly board meeting! We would love for all of our members to be there and give us their great ideas for how to improve our amazing organization! We will go over all the great things we’ve done in the past month and try to find ways to get everyone more included in Animal Advocates.  We will also be  featuring FREE vegan comfort food to drive away the February cold. (Who doesn’t love free food?) In keeping with our dog theme of our Puppy Love, we will continue our monthly documentary screening with Shelter Me.This is an uplifting documentary that celebrates the human-animal bond with positive stories about shelter pets and their new homes. The film follows the journey of two stray dogs, from the day they are picked up on the streets and brought to the shelter until the day they became a beloved family pet. We have lots of great events coming up to talk about, and will be discussing sweet T-shirts!! Come and get ’em in MSSC ROOM 104!

“Catch and Kill” Policy Protest This friday from 2- 3 pm there will be a peaceful protest at the Embassy of Australia against the new “Catch and Kill Policy” that allows Shark Culling in Western Australia.  .Come stand with us at this peaceful protest of Shark Culling in Western Australia. Demand the end to the new law which allows the slaughter of these majestic creatures. They have existed for 400 million years on our planet, and are a critical part of marine ecosystems. This cruelty that is being advocated by the government of Western Australia is a global outrage, not simply a national one.

Marius the Giraffe: A sad tale of zoo brutality Many of you have probably heard of Marius, the giraffe that was killed in the Copenhagen Zoo on Saturday. This is a horrible example of how animals are treated in the zoo system. The Zoo claims that “Marius was euthanized in an effort to avoid inbreeding and overpopulation”. However, the the giraffe was perfectly healthy and many other zoos were willing to take it. Marius was slaughtered in front of horrified children and fed to the lions. The zoo used the baby calf to attract visitors and then slaughtered him. As the events of this weekend illustrate, breeding animals in zoos is not a sustainable practice because of space limitations and also because the practice creates a surplus of unwanted animals. It is estimated that approximately 7,500 animals in European zoos are considered “surplus” at any one time. Zoo breeding programmes serve no conservation purpose because giraffes and other animals born in zoos are rarely, if ever, returned to their natural habitats. From the moment he was born, Marius was destined to lead a life of misery at the hands of his human captors. Giraffes rarely die of old age in captivity. Had he not been killed yesterday, he would have spent his short life as an exhibit, stranded in a cold climate, thousands of miles away from his true home. Although his death is heartbreaking, it’s his birth that should have been prevented. We wish we could see this kind of outrage every time an animal is born at a zoo. For everyone who genuinely cares about giraffes and all the other individuals serving life sentences in zoos, let’s hope Marius’ story is a wake-up call. Read more about Marius the giraffe and the problem with zoos here: If You’re Really Sadden by the Death of Marius the Giraffe, Stop Visiting Zoos

Save the Rock Creek Park Deer!   One of our newest initiatives that we have been working on is saving the deer of Rock Creek Park For 120 years, Rock Creek Park has been an oasis in the middle of a bustling capital city, providing refuge to visitors tired of the urban grind. Comprising fewer than 5 square miles, this small jewel has provided sanctuary to native wildlife, protecting the animals and their habitat from the encroachment of human development. This is a place given over to nature, and people have never been allowed to kill any of the native wildlife that lives there. Until now. For the first time in the history of Rock Creek Park, the National Park Service plans to kill native deer. This bloody cull – which involves baiting and shooting deer at close range – will occur over several years and will decimate the deer population, killing half of the deer in the first year alone. But there’s a better way. Reproductive controls can achieve the same result without the violence. We’ve stopped the kill this year by filing an emergency litigation, but we need your help to stop it forever. Let’s keep Rock Creek Park safe. Let’s save the Rock Creek Park deer. Stay tuned for action you can take to save the deer! We are planning to have an event to lobby City Council in the near future.