Stakeholder Perspectives on a Code of Practice with Legislative Status Relating to Flying-Fox Camp Management

Flying-fox camps near human settlements represent a contentious issue that requires management to alleviate the impacts on communities. In New South Wales, land managers undertaking flying-fox camp management actions require a defence to a prosecution for an offence under the Biodiversity Conservation Act 2016 for those activities. During 2018, the New South Wales Government released a draft code of practice for public exhibition, which was proposed to be made under the Biodiversity Conservation Regulation 2017 and thus have legislative status to provide public land managers with an alternative to licensing for undertaking flying-fox camp management actions. During public exhibition, there were 99 public submissions received. The purpose of this paper was to examine stakeholder views on the proposed document and, more broadly, perspectives on flying-fox camp management expressed in public submissions. There were highly polarised views on both flying-foxes and their management and whether a code of practice with legislative status was appropriate for authorising flying-fox camp management actions. The majority of public submissions were not supportive of the draft code of practice, with many referring to the existing licensing framework as a more appropriate regulatory option. There were also concerns that the draft code of practice could potentially result in a marked increase in camp dispersals; however, this did not happen, most likely due to safeguards built into the resulting code of practice. This outcome demonstrates the importance of the public consultation process undertaken

Reflections on the Ethical Premises Underlying the Proposed UN Convention on Animal Health and Protection

This article examines the ethical underpinnings of the proposed UN Convention on Animal Health and Protection (UNCAHP), a framework treaty drafted by the Global Animal Law Association (GAL). The object of the draft treaty is, first, to establish for the first time an international animal protection regime comprehending all non-human animal species. It aims, secondly, to provide the animal pillar of the UN sustainable development agenda, which now encompasses only the human and nature aspects of life. These are challenging objectives, given the eclectic and fragmented way international law has previously tried to come to grips with animal ethics. The article, therefore, looks at UNCAHP from the perspective of animal ethics and asks how likely it is that, if the treaty were to be adopted, it would achieve its objectives in ways that are compatible with both with its own ambitions and the broader agenda of animal law

Domestic Abuse and Pet Cruelty

Cruelty to pets is often a means of control utilised by perpetrators of domestic abuse. Not only does the act itself cause suffering to the victim, but the threat of future harm can also prevent a victim from leaving their abusive home. Currently, there is no legislation in England and Wales that provides protection for the companion animals of those experiencing domestic abuse.  The Domestic Abuse Act 2021 provided an opportunity to make the much overdue change to the lack of protection afforded to companion animals of victims of domestic abuse, however, it failed to do so.  Without this protection, victims of domestic violence will continue be less likely to leave their violent homes out of concern for the safety of their companion animals. The lack of resources and protection for victims with pets makes the threats of the abuser to harm the pets all the more effective, locking victims and their companion animals in a cycle of abuse

”Går jag till sängs med tolv Guds änglar…”: den judisk-kristna konsten att somna och avsomna i bild och bön

Title: “Can death be sleep…”: the Judæo-Christian Art of Dying and Sleeping Well in Picture and PrayerIn Swedish oral tradition, as well as in one example of Dalecarlian folk painting from the late 18th century, an invocation of twelve (occasionally fourteen) angels standing around the bed is evident from at least the 17th century. This invocation, while having taken on several different functions, has predominantly been used as a bedtime prayer but has also been sung during wakes in the home. It parallels numerous European angel prayers, the most famous of which is probably the German version Abends wenn ich schlafen geh, and can be traced to 14th-century ars moriendi practices.The prayer bears a striking resemblance to the Jewish Ashkenazic bedtime invocation of the four angels Michael, Gabriel, Raphael and Uriel, and the two prayers may either be the result of a genetic relationship through borrowing and appropriation or are the result of a shared Judæo-Christian oral prayer repertoire in mediaeval Europe.While the Christian angelic invocation, apart from its (most probably later) use as a bedtime prayer, focuses on death, the Jewish angelic invocation focusses on Divine mystical presence. The conservative development of angelic pictorial representation in mediaeval prayer practices through the early modern period points to the roots of certain 18th and 19th century folk art motifs and themes, and a shared Jewish and Christian heritage behind them

The pig that was not convicted of homicide, or: The first animal trial that was none

The case of a pig burned near Paris in 1266/1268 is widely believed to be the first instance of an animal trial in Medieval France. The paper investigates whether this assesment can stand against the background of a close examination of the primary sources. It comes to the conclusion that the sources do not support the traditional view of the incident and that further canonical examples of animal trials should be put under scrutiny

The Elephant in the Room

According to the Swedish legislator, animal welfare is an important ethical issue in the country that has deep and broad anchoring in human consciousness. Nevertheless, criticism regarding urgent measures needed to raise the level of legislative protection for animals has been articulated in international comparisons. One of these measures being that Sweden ought to ban the use of all wild animals for entertainment purposes. Correspondingly, when the new Swedish Animal Welfare Act 2018:1192 was incorporated in 2019, the supplementary Animal Welfare Ordinance 2019:66 also followed which now added elephants to a list of 11 other kinds of wild animals prohibited to be displayed at circuses or similar operations. Notably, the new ban did however not prohibit the exhibition of elephants at zoos in Sweden. The reason behind the ban was according to the responsible minister that it was obvious that elephants’ natural behavior could not be satisfied in a circus. The Animal Welfare Act distinctly contains the contingent of natural behavior as a stipulation for a good animal environment. This critical animal law article consequently focuses its analysis to the issue of elephant’s prospects of natural behavior in both the circus as well as in the zoo environment. By utilizing elephants as an example and by comparing these two different institutions of entertainment, a systematic study illustrates an inconsistent use in the application of the legal requirement ‘natural behavior’. Key words: Animal Law, Animal Protection, Animal Rights, Animal Welfare, Critical Animal Studies, Ethology, Natural Behavior

Protecting Companion Animals from Domestic Abuse

The purpose of this paper was to compare legislation in the United States and the United Kingdom concerning the welfare of companion animals[1] in domestic violence contexts. The U.S. recently implemented measures designed to protect companion animals specifically in violent homes, whereas the U.K. has not as yet done so. We provide specific legal strategies for both the U.S. and the U.K. that, if implemented, would better provide for the protection and care of companion animals in violent homes.   [1] In the context of the Oxford Learner’s Dictionary “an animal that you have at home for pleasure, rather than one that is kept for work or food; a pet.

LABOR. A Statue Group in the Monument to Alexander II in Helsinki

The statue group LABOR that forms part of the monument to Alexander II of Russia, Grand Duke of Finland, in Senate Square in Helsinki (inaugurated 1894) is discussed in the context of labour movement iconography by Fred Andersson in an article in Iconographisk Post 3/4 2020. The proposals of the sculptor Walter Runeberg (1838–1920) for LABOR paired Agriculture, a mature woman harvester, and a youthful Industry with tools and machinery. The latter figure was rejected and replaced by a farmer with an axe to indicate his role as a rural worker felling timber, the raw material of the forestry industries. The harvesting woman and the farmer-logger form a couple, and the arrangement of Agriculture’s garments intimates that she might be pregnant. The surmise is affirmed in sculptor Emil Wikström’s (1864–1942) tympanum frieze on the façade of the House of the Estates (erected in 1902), in which he has placed the farming couple of LABOR, the man turning earth with a spade and his seated wife teaching their small son to read. The tableau can be read as a comment on the contemporary drive for compulsory elementary education in Finland.LABOR and the tympanum frieze, which has as its central figure Alexander I in 1809 giving his ruler’s affirmation to the Estates assembled to swear their pledge of loyalty to the new ruler, are to be understood in the context of Finnish nationalist politics rather than the imagery of the international workers’ movement. The figures of LABOR are, however, indebted to the art of French Realism, which favoured agricultural workers as motifs around the middle of the 19th century and which was linked to socialist movements