Interview:Born Free USA on Recreational Animal Slaughter in the United States
Erica chats with Devan Schowe from Born Free USA
June 27, 2023.
Devan Schowe, Campaigns Associate for Born Free USA, sheds light on their new report, Thrill Kill: Recreational Animal Slaughter in the U.S., released in May 2023. Born Free USA’s investigative research explores the dark world of animal slaughter in the name of entertainment, where across the U.S., animals are slaughtered for fun in killing contests, canned hunts, fringe youth group activities and other events.
Devan also discusses her journey into animal advocacy, her work in researching and writing reports on wildlife trade, fur trade, and social media's impact on animals. She emphasizes the importance of educating the public and raising awareness about animal issues through sharing resources and urging social media platforms to regulate harmful content.
Devan also highlights some successful legislation that Born Free USA has been involved in, including the recent introduction of The Mink Virus Act to ban mink farming and the passage of The Big Cat Public Safety Act, which bans private ownership and public interaction with most big cat species. There is also mention of The Captive Primate Safety Act, aimed at banning the private ownership and interaction with primate species.
Devan also talks about her involvement in creating the "Findings Sanctuary" documentary, which sheds light on the challenges faced by monkeys rescued from the primate pet trade and their rehabilitation process.
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Full transcript
Welcome to the Rising Lioness podcast on All About Animals Radio, a place dedicated to animals and all those who act to protect and advocate for them.
Hi, I'm your host, Erica Salvemini, and I'm thrilled and honored to be here representing All About Animals Radio using my voice for the animals.
Thank you for joining us for what intends to be a thought-provoking and soul-inspiring series where we discuss topics aimed at understanding the importance of the relationship between empathy, animal rights, and our peaceful coexistence with the animal kingdom.
And now, on to our show.
Hi, today we welcome Devan Schowe, Campaigns Associate for the Wildlife Conservation and Animal Welfare Organization, Born Free USA.
Her mission is to fight against the exploitation of wild animals in captivity.
Before achieving her master's in primate conservation in 2019 at Oxford Brookes University, Devan worked for several years as a primate caregiver and veterinary assistant at the Born Free USA primate sanctuary in South Texas.
In her current role, Devan researches and writes reports on target issues, including the private trade of wild animals, wild animals in captivity, effects of social media on wild animals, the fur trade, and trapping.
Devan also increases public awareness on these issues by campaigning on various platforms, including social media, blog posts, and podcasts like the Rising Lioness.
Hi, Devan, welcome.
Thank you so much for joining us today.
I really appreciate it.
Yeah, of course.
Thank you for having me.
Definitely.
So tell us a little bit, how did you get started in animal advocacy work?
Yeah, so I've always been really passionate about animals and I knew from a very young age I wanted to go into some line of work that would have me either directly or indirectly dealing with animals in some capacity.
So at first, I was thinking that would be a veterinarian, but after all of the chemistry and math courses that have to take for veterinary school, that quickly changed and I started to get more into animal welfare and wildlife conservation work and focusing more on animal needs in captivity and how that relates to their behaviors in the wild.
So I got my undergraduate degree in animal behavior at a small liberal arts college and right after that, I started working at the Born Free Primate Sanctuary in South Texas, and that was really my first exposure to seeing victims of the wildlife trade and the pet trade and animals that had directly come from really traumatic experiences that needed a lot of attention and care to rehabilitating them essentially to become monkeys again because most of them had never been able to experience really living as a monkey should.
So that was really interesting and it got me thinking how I can, instead of treating the sort of symptoms of a larger problem, which is the primate pet trade, which is where we got a lot of our monkeys from, I really wanted to start to focus on looking at the source, the causes of why these monkeys end up at primate sanctuaries and why behaviorally they are struggling so much after growing up in that environment.
So yeah, long story short, I went to grad school, did a degree in primate conservation, and then found myself back with Born Free USA in this position as a campaign associate, and in this role, I'm able to pay more attention to the root causes of legislation, for example, that allows people to own wild animals like primates and how that feeds into the wildlife trade both legal and illegally throughout the world.
So it's been a little bit of a winding road, but it got me here in this position now that I really enjoy.
Yeah, it sounds amazing.
You can relate completely to your love of animals and lifelong passion and having that lead you to your destiny, and it sounds like it's with Born Free USA and helping do part of that good work that they do, which is really noble work.
So I applaud you and everything that Born Free USA does.
It's just really very much needed, and so thank you.
And so to that point, so many questions came up with all that you said but I'm going to stick to the line of questions that I have so that I don't confuse myself or you.
I just have to ask you what exactly, well not exactly, but if you could share a little bit about as a campaign associate for Born Free USA, what are some of the things that you do for them?
Yeah, so my main job is to research and write reports on topics we want to increase public awareness on, so whether that is issues of the wildlife trade, as I brought up earlier, trapping the fur trade, animals on social media and how that affects different things.
So those are really the core issues that I've been focusing on and researching and generating the data to put into reports that we can release to the general public and to lawmakers who are able to make changes in terms of legislation that relates to private animal ownership or even the social media platforms if we're able to communicate with them in some capacity and get them to change their policy guidelines of what they're allowing on social media.
Things like that are the goals exactly.
So that's really at the core of what I do.
So you're changing hearts and minds out in the public and then also changing legislation or at least supporting that change in legislation and trying to get the people to realize I guess that they're constituents, they have a voice, that voice should be heard and because if you're trying to change legislation, the people need to support that change as well.
So I guess the two go hand in hand, which is all really important.
So yeah, that's got to be, it's amazing work, but it's got to be frustrating too, right?
Because I feel like I'm doing that, we're all doing that, all of us animal advocacy is out here doing that.
And it feels like increasing the public awareness, it's just like you can never get enough of it.
There's not enough to put out other, what other ways are there?
So you have all these amazing reports that you're putting together and you're pushing them out through your website, I guess, and to the public, but what else can be done with them?
Is there anything that regular people can do to help anybody listening in terms of becoming more active from their home in their regular everyday life?
Yeah, for sure.
So we always stress the importance of sharing our resources because that's really the first step is educating people and educating yourself on these issues and why they're problematic.
Because the example comes again with social media and that there's so much content out there featuring wild animals that doesn't necessarily seem to the person who doesn't know a lot about either their species-specific behaviors or what their environment is supposed to look like, where they evolved.
It doesn't necessarily look harmful or abusive or exploitative to the average person.
So we really want these resources to number one, educate people.
So if we can help spread that as much as we can and get rid of that misinformation that is so prevalent on social media and on the internet in general, that would be an amazing first step.
And then also more recently, we've really taken the angle of getting social media users themselves to have more of an active role in trying to regulate this content and flag it when it's problematic because the platforms are a lot slower to respond to wanting to change their policies and wanting to monitor these things and take them down if we say that they're problematic, but they don't necessarily agree based on the guidelines they have in place now.
So we've kind of put out more resources and campaigning tools more recently that put more power in the average person and the average user to just say, look, these are the things that you need to look for in terms of content that featured wild animals.
And this is how you can know it's problematic.
And these are the steps you can take to let the social media platform know about this problem.
That's great.
I love that.
I think that's a fabulous idea.
I say things on there when I see stuff like that.
That animal's not supposed to be there.
What are you doing?
Or whatever.
But that doesn't really do anything, I guess.
It's more important to actually reach out to the platform itself and say, hey, this isn't right and this is why.
I don't like it.
Please do something about it.
And if everybody starts to do that, I actually see billboards out on the highway where they have PSAs about put your phone down.
Don't be texting.
Maybe there should be things about social media content out there too because a lot of times people don't realize initially when new things start, you're just like, oh, you're kind of mindlessly going through life and oh, there's a cute tiger in somebody's house and being pet and how sweet the baby's playing with the baby tiger.
It's like, no, wait, this isn't normal.
This isn't supposed to be.
And remind people and let them know, don't become numb to this stuff.
It's not normal.
Let's not normalize it.
Exactly.
And people don't oftentimes realize how many animals are being harmed by extension.
So you might just be watching one baby tiger in that video, but how many other baby tigers are going into that trade and that cycle of abuse just from the demand increasing from more people seeing that kind of content and seeing, oh, look, tigers are harmful to play with.
They're not dangerous at all.
They're not threatened in the wild.
These are all of the sort of false beliefs that people develop after seeing this content.
And like you said, it becomes so normalized after seeing it so much that people don't realize there's thousands of animals being exploited for every one that you're looking at in a video that becomes viral.
Yeah, it's horrific.
And then once they're not cute kittens that you can actually touch and play before they start trying to maul you, what ends up happening to them then?
You know, roadside zoos at the best.
The best case scenario, which is a horrendous exploitative industry as well, or killed or ground up for their bones for Chinese medicine or stuff like that.
So yeah, I don't mean to get graphic, but people do need to understand.
And that's kind of a lot.
But yeah, we can all do something.
And that's the good news.
Right.
So we can all be advocates.
We can use our voice.
We can educate ourselves.
And it starts with stuff like this, where we can have conversations and we can drive people to your website and have them look at some of the reports.
To that point, I wanted to ask, is there any legislation that Born for USA is, I know that there is that you've helped to make changes, you know, for creating new legislation for helping animals?
But yes.
Yeah, we've been involved in a number of initiatives over the years.
So most recently, actually, last week, new legislation was introduced that prohibits the farming of mink for their fur, which fur farming has been something we've campaigned about for years and years.
So the bill is called the Mink Virus Act, and it seeks to protect public health and human safety by implementing a one year phase out period of all domestic mink farms.
And it also implements a program to compensate those farmers as they transition out of the fur farming industry.
So that's really huge.
And we're really hoping to get a lot of traction behind that bill.
And we're urging everyone we can to reach out to their local Congress representative and just tell them to support that bill, because it would be really huge for the United States, because as a country, we are very far behind in banning mink farming, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic in Europe.
A number of countries have taken the initiative to ban it just as a response to public health.
So it's really important that we get up to speed in terms of that.
And then another one that was also pretty recent, it was back in December of 2022.
The Big Cat Public Safety Act was passed, which was huge because, yeah, it was amazing.
So that bill basically banned the private ownership and public interaction with most big cat species.
So Born Free Alone, in addition to other organizations and individual citizens and champions on Capitol Hill, all together had been campaigning for that bill to be passed for 10 years.
So it was first introduced in 2012.
So it was a long time coming and lots of work over the years.
So it's just a huge win.
And that was really incredible to see and very exciting for us.
And it'll help curb horrible things like the cub petting industry and canned hunts, things like that.
And then the other big one I just wanted to mention is the Captive Primate Safety Act, which was introduced in May of 2021.
And so it hasn't really gotten very far.
It's supposed to be reintroduced the next congressional session.
So that bill will basically do the same thing as the Big Cat Public Safety Act, but with primate species.
So it will ban the private ownership of primate species and the public interaction with them throughout the country.
That's amazing.
Congratulations on the wins.
Big Cat Public Safety Act, yeah, it was huge.
It was tremendous.
I was going to ask you about that.
So thank you.
I didn't know about the virus one.
So when is that supposed to be or was introduced already?
Yeah, it was just introduced last week.
So yeah, so it's very, very new.
Okay.
Did you put out a post at all on that?
Because I would absolutely love to help support that.
And I'll take a look myself.
Yeah, we just did today, actually, just this morning.
So everything's new.
Wow.
Well, good luck with that.
Yeah, I'll help do my part and support that.
Great.
Thank you.
Of course.
That's amazing.
And my next question was going to be a little bit about the captive primate safety act.
So thank you for bringing that up.
I know that because you started as a primate caregiver for Born for USA, your heart is probably in that a lot even deeper and more so.
Not that that takes precedence over all this other work, but I'm sure that's near and dear to your heart.
And I know that you created, or at least you were in part a creator of the Finding Sanctuary documentary, the one called Life After the Primate Pet Trade.
And I watched that recently, which was an amazing movie.
I highly recommend anybody go and see that.
It's only about, I think, 20 minutes long and is really important and really astonishing.
Like it really tells you and shows you what happens, which is exactly what you were just telling us about in the beginning of this podcast, how these animals, these poor monkeys, who many of them don't even make it out alive, right?
Because they're going to do what monkeys do, which is pick fights and attack whoever they're hanging out with, which in this case are humans who have chosen to take these monkeys, they're supposed to be wild animals and make them their own companion pets.
And they're making them do unnatural, abnormal things monkeys shouldn't be doing, wearing, they have leashes around their neck, they have clothes on, they're living life with these humans as though they're their children or companions.
And so the few that do get rescued, it's not a fairy tale ending, is it?
Is how the documentary describes it and what you see is not a fairy tale ending because they end up with OCD and they have to spend the rest of their life recovering in a sanctuary, which sounds really nice, but that's a living hell still because some of them are self-harming and hurting themselves just because of the trauma that's been done.
Same thing is that humans, when we're traumatized, we have our own journey to recover and heal from and these are animals and they have their own behavioral issues now that come as a result of what's been done to them.
So I don't know, that must have been challenging for you to make that movie and kind of go through all of that again, right?
Yeah, it's always challenging to see the damage, the irreversible damage that has been done to these monkeys from the time they were babies.
It's always challenging to witness that, but I knew that the importance of making that documentary really outweighed that uncomfortable feeling I had throughout making it because as a caregiver, you do develop a sort of...
It's not like you ever become numb to it because it never really loses its impact when you see them carry out these behaviors, the self-harm.
The really troubled expats oftentimes will bite themselves or pluck their hair out or you'll see them rocking or just pacing a lot.
So it's always very troubling to see, but you also develop a sort of, okay, as sad as it is, this is kind of their normal and we do everything we can to lessen the experience of those behaviors.
So we'll give them things like enrichment, we'll try to vary their social opportunities as much as we can and vary their environment to keep it stimulating and lessen the boredom that they might experience where these behaviors would really increase.
But yeah, for the most part, you just, unfortunately, just get used to seeing it as a caregiver and just trying to do the best you can for them.
But it was actually also really kind of nice for me to go back there and see all of the monkeys I used to work with because a part of me does really miss that direct animal interaction that I had as a caregiver.
So it was almost like a reunion for me.
And it was nice because yeah, it was like one of my first big projects I had coincidentally after I left working at the primate sanctuary, it was actually focused on the primate sanctuary and primates in general.
So it kind of coincidentally worked out that it was like a very soft transition into this new position where I wasn't working with the, well, I was supposed to not be working with the monkeys at all, but I ended up going back and seeing them and getting the footage.
And we had the opportunity to work with a wonderful filmmaker named Jack Wooden.
He did a great job capturing everything.
So it was definitely bittersweet, but I'm really glad that we were able to get that footage and put it out just to increase that awareness.
Yeah.
I can see how that would be pretty fulfilling.
So it was a beautiful, beautiful piece.
Thank you.
Yeah.
Full circle moment for sure.
Yeah.
Yeah, for sure.
And so I wanted to ask you next, the last time we spoke, you were telling me about an aquarium report that was being worked on and you explained how fish are some of the most exploited animals in the world.
And I think if I remember correctly, is that your kitty?
Yes.
I was going to warn you at the beginning, but recently she hasn't been very active.
Yeah.
You can hear me meowing.
Awesome.
I have an orange cat floating around here too.
So if he, if he had a tail in the way.
The yeah, you had said, I think 80% or something like that of the fish don't even make it out alive during transportation.
Is that accurate?
Yeah, that's correct.
There's pretty much during transport of the private trade, the mortality rate has been documented to exceed 80%.
So any of that can range from just stress of transport or capture injury, disease or mistreatment.
So it's a really high number.
And unfortunately, most percentages of mortality have been not quite that high, but also very high for other species as well in the wildlife trade.
Wow.
That's super upsetting.
When you say, you know, so this is an aquarium report is that, and you say fish, what includes that?
Are we talking about the big, big animals there, they're actually mammals, whales and dolphins and are we talking strictly about fish?
So for this report, we're actually talking only about fish, which still includes thousands of species.
So of course we don't go in depth with that many species for this report, but we wanted to really focus on fish and not mammals, marine mammals, because we just feel like fish have been very neglected from the welfare discussion for a long time now.
And we wanted to give them that spotlight and make sure that people are also aware of the struggle of fish.
Because I think the tendency for humans is to sort of overlook welfare issues with fish because they're so different from us.
And you know, what their life looks like, their appearance is just so different from us that we are a lot of the time almost unable to empathize with them or consider them to have a similar experience to us that would involve suffering.
But what the data is showing actually confirms that they are a lot more similar to us than we ever thought was possible before.
And we really just want to shed light on that with this report and emphasize that as much as we campaign for removing species like elephants or giraffes or polar bears, like large, wide-ranging mammals from captivity, from zoos, we also want to make the same argument for fish species as well because they have most of the same health issues and welfare issues as a lot of the larger animals that we focus more on.
"That's incredible.
I think that's really, really beautiful.
I'm sure the fish really appreciate you finally giving them their day.
And so are you saying that fish are sentient beings as well?
For sure.
They feel and they, wow, that's incredible.
And does the report go into that and talks about that?
Yes.
Yeah.
Is that out already or is that almost not yet?
No, we will release it within the next few months.
So yeah, definitely keep a lookout for that.
But yeah, there's, we cover a lot of different topics from legislation regarding fish and captivity, which it turns out there is basically none of other than just farming and aquaculture.
Things that protect fish from disease spread and completely depleting the populations that we eat a lot of.
That's basically the only legislation in place to protect fish.
From a welfare standpoint, there is none.
So if you, for example, are a private exhibitor, like you have a zoo, and even if you own a lot of fish, you still are not required to get any type of license or have the fish registered in any way.
You don't need to document the transfer of these animals, the breeding.
There's no requirements for like minimum tank sizes.
None of that.
Right.
So it's completely 100% unregulated.
Correct.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Like most of the animal industries that exist.
Correct.
Yeah.
It's got to keep working at it, right?
Yes.
Yeah, so I was going to ask you about some other like wild animals in captivity, stuff that you're working on, but I happen to notice you had a new report.
I think it was a new report called thrill killing on your site.
Yes.
Yeah.
That's upsetting.
I mean, it makes me shudder, but I'm glad that you have that up and that you did a report on this.
Can you share a little bit about what that is?
Yeah, definitely.
So this report summarizes what we're referring to as thrill killing, which is essentially just killing mass numbers of animals, some of them that are protected species that are threatened with extinction in the wild.
And we document the way that these animals are killed on mass throughout the country because in 42 United States, these types of competitions are completely legal.
So it's anything from a rattlesnake roundup where people are encouraged to find as many rattlesnakes as they can, where they're killed basically in a pit at a venue to bobcat killing contest where people are encouraged to get the biggest bobcat they can find.
A lot of these contests don't have any kinds of limits.
So it's just incredibly damaging and doesn't do anything for conservation whatsoever, especially in terms of the wild pigs that are in Texas.
The argument has been made that the killing competitions help wildlife conservation, but there has been evidence that suggests that it actually does the opposite and increases the populations.
The populations rebuild right after these competitions.
So it's just not scientifically founded and it's hunting just quote for the fun of killing animals.
Oh yeah, that's an excuse.
And I remember from my abnormal psych class in college that thrill killing, like killing animals just for fun was considered sociopathic.
And I don't know where that changed.
I don't know what's happened in our world, in society where it is not only not considered sociopathic, but this behavior is being encouraged and it's actually becoming a money-making industry.
So what's going on in the world?
Like what's happening?
This is becoming popularized.
This is, what is it?
I see this increasing exponentially since COVID.
It started a little bit before, but ever since then, and you don't see it just here in the United States, you see it all over the world, which is actually why I started doing this podcast in the first place.
I've always been an animal advocate and somewhat of an activist, but it seems like we've all had to come alive and really start to invigorate and become active.
As much as the exploitation is happening, the good news is you see all these animal advocates coming out and like really going to work because we have to, because it does feel like a genocide is happening.
And I don't say that lightly.
It really does seem to be what we're witnessing, I think.
And can you talk to that a little bit?
Like what's the psychology behind this?
What's, does some of the report that you have, thrill killing, talk about some of this stuff?
Yes.
There is actually one competition I kind of already mentioned that comes to mind, which is the Sweetwater Rattlesnake Roundup, which essentially people are encouraged to round up as many rattlesnakes as they can.
And it's resulted in the collection and death of, and they actually measure the rattlesnakes in pounds instead of individuals, which is also concerning.
But in one year it was recorded that they had 24,262 pounds of rattlesnakes.
And so they kill all of these rattlesnakes.
And it's actually sponsored by this organization, which is a youth leadership development organization.
Very nice.
That's what it is.
Yes.
It's called the Junior Chamber International, JCI.
I cut you off.
Can you repeat that again?
Oh yeah, sure.
It's a youth leadership organization.
It's called Junior Chamber International or JCI.
And they essentially define themselves as a grassroots movement of young active citizens starting at age 18 who are dedicated to creating positive change in communities around the world.
And it claims to empower young people.
And so organizations...
It's empowering young people to murder, mass murder animals.
This is astounding.
Okay.
Go on.
Yeah.
And this is just one little tidbit that we found from our undercover investigation.
They had really troubling things happen at this rattlesnake roundup.
One of the activities they had for the kids was to paint their hands in rattlesnake blood and have them put handprints all around like a mural.
So it's a lot of just really concerning...
So this isn't even adults.
They're indoctrinating young people to mass murder animals.
Correct.
They're future sociopaths.
This is really disturbing.
I didn't know that this was going on.
I'm going to read that report as hard as it will be for me to do.
And I will further act by putting out some posts on it because this is really just so upsetting.
You have to become hardened to do this work, don't you, Devan?
A little bit.
A little bit.
Yeah.
I'm not reading this report any less difficult.
My supervisor actually led this report and just...
Yeah.
It's really heartbreaking what is legal.
And we do discuss the fact that things that are still legal today aren't necessarily right.
So it just goes back to...
With animals, you need to think of them as individual beings and just the fact that they're
measuring them as just a lump weight just goes to show that there's no value at all
whatsoever on these individual lives.
And we did actually reach out to that youth organization a couple of times for a comment,
but they never returned our request.
So yeah, it would be interesting to hear what they would say to try to justify that.
But in my opinion, there's just no way to justify something like that.
There is no justification.
You're absolutely right.
And so it does not surprise me that they did not respond back to you because what could
they possibly say?
Right?
Yeah.
So, my gosh.
On that note, we have to find a positive way to end our podcast together because it is
really important to let people know that their voice is important and what they do matters.
All of us, what we do matters.
Living consciously, being consciously aware of our actions every day matters to the world,
matters to the animals right now more than ever.
So what you're doing, Devan, and what Born for USA is doing and other organizations,
do you ever work with organizations to join forces like PETA or any of these other to
do these monster legislative moves?
Yeah, absolutely.
We collaborate with several organizations pretty regularly, just either if it's drafting
a bill like the Mink Virus Act bill that was just introduced.
We drafted similar legislation with coalitions that involve several organizations similar
to Born Free that have all had some kind of role in developing things like that.
It's interesting you mentioned PETA because we actually are working with them.
Still, it's an ongoing effort, but we're working with them to rescue more than a thousand monkeys
that were taken from the wild for laboratory exploitation who could be sold back to labs
for further experimentation.
So it's actually related to this case where the US Department of Justice subpoenaed Charles
River Laboratories with news reporting that up to a thousand of their juvenile long-tail
macaques at the company's primate center may have been illegally taken from the wild.
I remember.
Yes, we've done a lot of publicity on that case.
We wouldn't be able to, Born Free, the primate sanctuary wouldn't be able to take quite all
a thousand of them, but we have been speaking with Fish and Wildlife Service and trying
to iron out some logistics that could lead to us being involved more with that rescue,
but we're still waiting to hear back on a final decision.
But that is something we've been campaigning for pretty actively just to rescue these monkeys
from basically a life sentence of lab research.
So that's another really recent project we've been involved with.
That's amazing.
I wish you all the luck in the world and I send you lots of love and light blessings
towards that.
Thank you.
Yeah.
And did you said you mentioned the monkey fur trade, but then you mentioned the laboratories.
Does that mean they were rescued from a fur trade organization and now they're looking
down the barrel of maybe going to be sold to laboratories for, is that what, did I misunderstand
that?
Oh, so the fur bill is for minks.
Okay.
I'm sorry.
I thought you had said that with regards to the monkeys.
So the monkeys are totally separate.
Yes, totally separate.
Laboratory's got it.
I understand.
Right.
So hopefully you guys will be able to find other sanctuaries for them, right?
So that they can live out their life.
Well, recovering really from, you know, but at least they've been rescued from the labs
now.
So there's that.
Yeah.
We're still, we're still kind of in conversation with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to
figure out the logistics of what that rescue would look like.
But until then, we're not sure.
So they're still there in the lab.
Okay.
I understand.
Got it.
So hopefully, hopefully that goes through.
All right.
I'll, yeah, maybe we can stay in touch on that.
And there's so much to talk about and there's always going to be stuff to talk about because
this isn't something that's going away anytime soon.
Hopefully it will improve and will continue to improve with the work that you're doing
and other organizations like Born for USA.
And I hope you'll come back again and maybe talk to us again with an update on the latest
reports that you guys are working on.
So you always have an invitation here and I really appreciate that because the work
that you're doing, the work that your organization is doing is so needed and helping promote
this to regular people who are listening and want to do something to make life better for
all of us here on the planet, as well as for the animals, because really we are all just
one and we all are sharing this planet together.
So it does really, you know, behoove all of us to do the right thing and treat them well
because without them, we can't really survive, can we?
Exactly.
Yeah.
So, well, thank you, Devan.
It was a pleasure.
I really enjoyed our talk today.
It goes so fast.
And I encourage everyone to go on to our podcast profile.
You can check out Born for USA and check out that Primates documentary and keep an eye
on what Born for USA is doing and get involved every day.
Every day we should all use our voice for the animals.
And thank you and we'll see you again next time, I hope.
Absolutely.
Yes, we'd love to be back.
Great.
Thanks, Devan.
I'll see you next time.
Have a good one.
Thanks so much.
Thank you.
This has been Erica Salvemini for the Rising Lioness podcast on All About Animals Radio.
A special thank you to Chris Corley for generously lending us his song Zero Gravity for the Rising
Lioness podcast theme.
Please take a moment to write a review for our show as it helps others to find us.
Please also support our guests and their work, All About Animals Radio and our social networks.
Doing this further supports the animals and their advocates too, thereby making you an
animal kingdom warrior also.
You can find our links on the Rising Lioness podcast page.
Until next time, in the words of Sharon Nunez, Animal Equality President, remember this,
the small actions of one passionate individual can create a butterfly effect leading to a
movement that has the power to change the world.
Please use your voice for the animals today.
See also
External links
- Thrill Kill: Recreational Animal Slaughter in the U.S. Born Free USA
Notes
 | This page is part of the Animal Talk portal. The opinions expressed by guests, blog authors and interview hosts are their own. |