<story><title>Vancouver bans whales and dolphins at aquarium</title><url>http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-39943267</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ohthehugemanate</author><text>So frustrating.&lt;p&gt;The Vancouver acquarium was one of the top cetacean health, care, and research institutes in the world. It was one of the models of how good a captive and public educational environment can be. Thanks to campaigns like this one, they had to close down and transfer their rescue orcas to the only organizations that could take them... Which turned out to be SeaWorld, where they died shortly after. Of course, SeaWorld is notorious for terrible conditions for the animals.&lt;p&gt;It drives me nuts that kids growing up in my hometown now don&amp;#x27;t understand these magnificent creatures, don&amp;#x27;t feel any special connection to them. For many in my generation, it feels like a betrayal on the part of our local environmentalist movement. They killed our orcas and disconnected our children from one of the most amazing parts of their environment. They destroyed the model that powered legislative attempts to protect cetaceans around the world.&lt;p&gt;We had a similar story with the beavers in Stanley park - our environmenal lobby campaigned to have the city stop dredging &amp;quot;Beaver lake&amp;quot;, because it disturbed the beavers. They stopped dredging, the lake filled with silt and most of the beavers  (and other wildlife) died. Now they&amp;#x27;re debating starting dredging again, to save the one surviving beaver.&lt;p&gt;For people like me that care about our environment and the animals we share it with, it&amp;#x27;s rage inducing. The naturalist fallacy at work. :&amp;#x2F;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jamesgagan</author><text>&amp;quot;They killed our orcas&amp;quot; - really? 2 Belugas just died in captivity at that aquarium -it wasn&amp;#x27;t environmentalists who killed them, it was the aquarium. I have been to that aquarium and it was just depressing. Watching the Orca swim upside down around and around in circles was the saddest thing I&amp;#x27;ve ever seen. Making intelligent creatures perform tricks for profit is hardly a noble enterprise.
Have you seen Blackfish? &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.blackfishmovie.com&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.blackfishmovie.com&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;
Watch it and then come back and tell us that Tilikum had any kind of good life. These animals belong in the wild. They don&amp;#x27;t need to be &amp;quot;rescued&amp;quot;. The idea that gawking at magnificent animals in captivity is somehow required to instill respect for them is ridiculous. The best way to respect all animals is to leave them alone.</text></comment>
<story><title>Vancouver bans whales and dolphins at aquarium</title><url>http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-39943267</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ohthehugemanate</author><text>So frustrating.&lt;p&gt;The Vancouver acquarium was one of the top cetacean health, care, and research institutes in the world. It was one of the models of how good a captive and public educational environment can be. Thanks to campaigns like this one, they had to close down and transfer their rescue orcas to the only organizations that could take them... Which turned out to be SeaWorld, where they died shortly after. Of course, SeaWorld is notorious for terrible conditions for the animals.&lt;p&gt;It drives me nuts that kids growing up in my hometown now don&amp;#x27;t understand these magnificent creatures, don&amp;#x27;t feel any special connection to them. For many in my generation, it feels like a betrayal on the part of our local environmentalist movement. They killed our orcas and disconnected our children from one of the most amazing parts of their environment. They destroyed the model that powered legislative attempts to protect cetaceans around the world.&lt;p&gt;We had a similar story with the beavers in Stanley park - our environmenal lobby campaigned to have the city stop dredging &amp;quot;Beaver lake&amp;quot;, because it disturbed the beavers. They stopped dredging, the lake filled with silt and most of the beavers  (and other wildlife) died. Now they&amp;#x27;re debating starting dredging again, to save the one surviving beaver.&lt;p&gt;For people like me that care about our environment and the animals we share it with, it&amp;#x27;s rage inducing. The naturalist fallacy at work. :&amp;#x2F;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>throwaway2348</author><text>I am rather for a ban on cetaceans in any tank too small to use their sonar, but as a Vancouverite &lt;i&gt;I am extremely uncomfortable with who and how this ban was made&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;p&gt;Vision Vancouver, the political party, is very slick and spends an order of magnitude more on PR than anybody else in the city, in a town now with little news reporting.&lt;p&gt;1. It&amp;#x27;s well known who killed 2 of belugas -- somebody who publicly presents themselves as caring for whales -- but there is no discussion of it in the reporting.&lt;p&gt;2. There has been zero effort to have a conversation with the people at the Aquarium. There is an intentional effort to get shock value, encourage a public squabble that rouses some of their base and that distracts from their overall performance.&lt;p&gt;Vision Vancouver is now feeling the heat for freezing upzoning of single family home neighbourhoods so that they can direct hundreds of millions annually in buildable land grants in one-off variances to the large developers who are their main donors (Wall, Westbank, Concord). The problem in Vancouver is a monopoly of new buildable land where a single marketer, Bob Rennie, can dictate pricing for a year by virtue of controlling over 80% of new units in any given year under Vision Vancouver.&lt;p&gt;The next municipal election is a year away, but they&amp;#x27;ve been around at full speed hiring PR folks on the public dime, setting up astroturf groups, wining and dining the few remaining beat reporters, and sending moles to infiltrate the new Vancouver Renters&amp;#x27; Union. They&amp;#x27;re picking fights that are fake and real, any news is good news now if they can be ahead of the story instead of chasing to catch up for once.&lt;p&gt;---&lt;p&gt;Disclosure: I volunteered for the last two Vision Vancouver campaigns, as a favor to a friend and when I believed they actually meant what they said. I had already given up on them when I was asked to join an astroturf group by Mike Magee last summer</text></comment>