You all sure know how to welcome someone. Please except an apology for all of us here. Devonvm from your postings you seem to have miss-characterized yourself and often people on this site tend to jump to conclusions sometimes. There is a difference between Animal Rights and Animal Welfare. You dug yourself a hole when you mentioned animal rights. Just like the rest of us, we strive for the best in Animal Welfare as you may seem to care for. Animal Rights takes welfare to a very liberal viewpoint and does often anthropomorphize - as these people tend to have rather large egos. I too learned the hard way in how to choose the best diction for a situation. You might want to consider yourself an Animal Welfare activist, not an Animal Rights activist.
I consider myself more of an animal rights activist than an animal welfare activist, but do not paint every situation with a black and white brush. Maybe I need a new term to label myself with, a cross between the two. One cannot look at me, look at what, say, PETA believes, and automatically apply all of their believes to me. I am quite controversial even amongst both my animal rights friends and animal welfare friends. For instance, I participate in and volunteer at the Edmonton Reptile Show and Sales every year, this year I purchased a 1.1 pair of Albino African Clawed frogs and would be thrilled if they produced tadpoles... I maintain and purchase fish for my aquarium... I purchase and would love to produce various exotic insects...all interests and behaviors that most of my animal rights friends would condemn. I am not full out against all zoos, condemning them all as evil, as many of my animal rights friends would. But I also have strong beliefs as to what zoos should be in existence, what animals should be kept in them, etc...that many of my animal welfare friends would think are too extreme. HOWEVER, I am capable of putting my personal beliefs aside and judge each and every individual situation in what I feel is a fair manner, without anthropomorphizing.
so far Devonvm seems like a perfectly rational person. The only people on the forum who should be apologising are animalpassions and isupportzoos, the latter of whom seemingly only joined the forum to attack her although claims to have no connection to GuZoo. btw, isupportzoos has posted some of the 500 photos said to have been taken at GuZoo showing opposite conditions to what are shown in every other picture ever taken there -- and by "some of the 500 photos" I mean TWO!!!
Thank you, Childonias. To be fair, he and his friend have posted 24 pictures from their trip a few weeks ago. If you're a member of facebook, you can see them at their "Promoting a Good Future for Guzoo" group... http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=9635326930#/group.php?gid=10764675819 There are also more pictures posted by supporters of the zoo at the "In Support of Three Hills Guzoo Animal Farm" group... http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=8294903202
No, they don't, they may as well re-name their groups "Devon Hate Group" or something. I really try to stay away from personal attacks but they don't, and they take it too far sometimes. I've long since given up trying to stick up for myself because it's like talking to a wall. They think attacking me as a person is the same as me "attacking" Guzoo.
