May 8, 2008

Wild Animals!

Two more thoughts about yesterday's post.

One is about the Puerto Rican parrot, that little green fellow you've probably never seen because there are only 30 to 40 left in the wild. Apparently they're not just being affected by the environmental factors, like human encroachment on El Yunque, their main home, but also hurricanes. Of course, that wouldn't be half the problem if the population were a better size, but in the meanwhile it's a bit of a race to figure out if anything can be done to protect them before hurricane season starts again in a couple months!

The other thing is saving satos (mutts). Ever since the dog massacre incident last year, a lot of press and attention has fortunately spurred various movements taking care of many of the strays, most sent to the U.S. for adoption. Anyways, here are two blogs talking about the effort.

I really applaud their efforts, since anyone that's been on the island has seen all the dogs roaming around, some with owners but many without. I hope they have lots of luck.

And now a short, cheerful story... in the neighborhood I'm usually in when I visit, apparently a family living down the street had a stray dog get its head stuck in their fence in front of their house. They ended up having to destroy it to get the dog out (and as far as I can remember they hadn't fixed it yet...), and by the end of the process, even though they had hated dogs before, they decided to adopt him! Things have just gotten better from there.

2 comments:

Minerva said...

Proud to announce that Las Casas de la Selva - the 1000 acres nature preserve that the organization I am working with, TVERF (Eyeontherainforest.org) is managing, is being seriously considered as a premier site for release of these green parrots. We are all waiting for them!

Speaking Boricua said...

That is fantastic!! If it happens then I'll have to come visit you someday and see the birds!