Animals - the Canary Islands' beastly record

Animals have always been badly treated in the Canary Islands. On the one hand, there are pet-owners who keep their animals in appalling conditions, on the other there are the vast number of dogs and cats that are simply abandoned. A small band of volunteers tries in vain to deal with stray animals but there are just not enough municipal dog and cat pounds to cope. There are also people who take pleasure in beating their pets within an inch of their lives. Newspaper articles on cruelty to animals in the Canary Islands appear regularly in the foreign press but not in the local papers. This is because the government considers such items "harmful" to the island's tourism. It seems that censorship did not die with the Franco dictatorship.

The municipal cat and dog pounds kill animals as soon as the legal period for owners to reclaim their pets has expired.

Yet curiously enough, the island is full of "zoos" (although these establishments prefer to call themselves "parks", they are little more than vulgar shows). In any case, they pack a large number of exotic animals into small areas, providing an "attraction" for thousands of tourists every day (many of whom are bussed in by travel operators, which take a cut for getting the hordes through the turnstiles). Places like "Loro Parque" and "Aguilas del Teide" throw in penguins, exotic bats, eagles, vultures, gorillas, crocodiles, and species protected in their countries of origin.

When it comes to the Island's native fauna, the situation is nothing short of disasterous. The Canary Islands' politicians silence information on the disappearance of endemic species, whose habitats are destroyed without conducting environmental impact studies. Instead, the authorities only talk about those animals for which there are existing conservation plans (e.g. the Hierro Lizard). The tragedy is that the Canary Islands are the last refuge of fauna and flora from the ancient super-continent of Gondwanaland. Their extinction will not only be a loss for the islands but also for the whole of Mankind.

ATAN reports