Animals to humans: “Save us from things that go BANG!!! in the night!”

(Beth Clifton collage)

Concern each year soars & fades with the rockets

Ushered in with the traditional fusillade while animals cringe and whimper,  rolling around the world from the first cruise ships firing rockets across the International Dateline,  through Asia,  Africa,  Europe,  South America,  North America,  and finally Hawaii,  2017 will go out with a bang too,  just as 2018 begins.

2017 opened with what appeared to be unprecedented global concern for the animal victims of New Year’s Eve fireworks.

In Airds, Australia, a 26-year-old man was prosecuted for chasing and stabbing a dog to death after the dog,  spooked by fireworks,  bit the man’s leg and groin.

(Beth Clifton collage)

“Why fireworks need to be banned!”

In Barberton,  Mbombela,  South Africa,  the local SPCA posted a photo of a Boerboel impaled on a fence,  captioned “THIS is why fireworks need to be banned!!!  Everyone who fired fireworks last (Saturday) night,  this dog died because of you…”

The photo was still being posted and reposted as recently as November 2017.  Yet the year passed with no other noteworthy legislative or educational efforts against fireworks coming to the awareness of ANIMALS 24-7.

Again on New Year’s Eve 2018,  more than 12,000 fireworks will explode over Sydney,  London,  and New York City,  annually the scenes of some of the most renowned New Year’s Eve displays.  At one time Sydney,  London,  and New York City competed to try to stage the biggest pyrotechnic extravaganzas of all,  but Dubai shot off 400,000 skyrockets and other pyrotechnic devices to usher in 2014,  putting the global record beyond easy reach.  Meanwhile,  many other cities’ fireworks displays now rival those of Sydney,  London,  and New York City.

While Catalan has banned arena bullfighting,  persecuting “fire bulls” in village festivals remains legal.
(Change.org photo)

From sea birds to “fire bulls”

The first animals terrified in the New Year will be night-flying seabirds,  including perhaps endangered albatrosses.

Scarcely a bird or mammal in the inhabited regions of Planet Earth will not have been at least startled by the time the sun rises over the last of the singed cardboard cylinders and drifting wisps of sulphuric smoke left by the midnight revels.

Fireworks were among the first concerns of the humane movement when it emerged worldwide in the early 19th century––and not just because of the frequent misuse of fireworks to deliberately torment animals,  as when firecrackers are tied to a dog’s tail or sparklers are tied between a bull’s horns at village festivals from Spain to India.

Fireworks are often a part of jallikattu,  or Indian-style bullfighting,  shown above in Tamil Nadu. (Sundaram Perumal photo/Wikimedia Commons)

Child labor

Early humane societies that operated orphanages campaigned against the use of child labor to make fireworks,  still a common practice in the developing world,  leading often to deaths and disfigurements.

Early animal shelter managers soon noticed that influxes of lost and disoriented dogs arrived in the wake of every holiday celebrated with fireworks,  whether the Fourth of July;  a patron saint’s day;  the Diwali “Festival of Light” celebrated in India;  Guy Fawkes Day,  celebrated throughout the former British Empire;  New Year’s Eve;  or Chinese New Year’s Day.

Ancient painting shows the first Chinese attempt to send an astronaut into orbit.

Little progress

But humane organizations have for nearly 200 years accomplished little to reduce the mayhem from celebratory explosions.

Indeed,  it may be that more fireworks are detonated each year now,  strictly for entertainment and ceremonial purposes,  than in all the 1,000 years between the Chinese invention of fireworks circa 900 CE and 1900.

Animal Concern Scotland in January 2016 petitioned the Scottish and British Parliaments to “Restrict the use of fireworks to reduce stress and fear in animals and pets.”

“Fireworks now occur at all times of the day and evening for many weeks during the autumn and winter,”  Animal Concern Scotland opened.  “Pet and animal owners struggle to keep their companion animals safe during this extended period.  We call for fireworks use by the general public to be permitted on traditional celebration dates only.”

(Beth Clifton collage)

The Government of Scotland produced an official response:  “We are aware that fireworks can cause distress to animals. Restrictions on the general public’s use of fireworks,  and permitted noise levels,  already exist and we have no plans to extend them.”

In other words,  bang off.

Success in South Africa

But 2016 appeared as if it might have been the year that public and political opinion began to turn against fireworks,  if only just a little bit.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Announced the National SPCA of South Africa at year’s end,  “The City of Ekurhuleni Municipality recently advertised an event,  the Ekurhuleni New Year’s Extravaganza, boasting the biggest New Year’s Eve fireworks display in South Africa to be held at a venue in Kempton Park.

“The Kempton Park SPCA submitted an application to the High Court in an attempt to stop the fireworks display in an effort to prevent unnecessary and devastating suffering to animals.

“The High Court ruled in favor of the Kempton Park SPCA,  stating that the Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality is interdicted and restrained from holding its planned fireworks at this event.

(Merritt Clifton collage)

“Subsequently the City of Ekurhuleni issued a statement claiming that they had no intention of using fireworks and that the event had been incorrectly advertised.”

Success in the Americas

In between,  much else happened.

In June 2016,  for example,  when Buenos Aires mayor Horacio Rodríguez Larreta announced the closure of the 140-year-old city zoo,  media mentioned among the other deficiencies of the zoo the stress to the animals from Christmas fireworks displays.  This had barely won a mention previously.

Larreta spoke,  however,  only days after Walt Disney Parks & Resorts opened Disney’s Animal Kingdom in Orlando,  Florida to night safaris,  with the promise that soundtracks and lighting had been designed to minimize stress to the resident animals,  and that the Animal Kingdom would be the only Disney theme park which would not close each night with fireworks.

And success in China!

Two months later,  in early August 2016,  regional officials in Huichang County,  in southeast China,  not only pledged to end the use of fireworks during the annual Laigong Temple Fair,  but also pledged “to eradicate a nearly 70-year religious tradition of sacrificing tens of thousands of ducks at local temples” during the fair,  reported Adam Hegarty and Huang Nan for China Daily.

“Every year since 1949,”  Hegarty and Huang Nan explained,  “thousands of Huichang residents have descended,  in particular, on Cuizhu Temple in Fuwei,  carrying ducks and fireworks to worship the local god Laigong,  and pray for health and safety.”

About 35,000 ducks per year were killed,  but that stopped at instigation of U.S.-born Taiwanese playwright Stan Lai,  whose father was born in Huichang.

Foreground: playwright Stan Lai. Background: a social media meme symbolic of change coming to China.  (Merritt Clifton collage)

Instead of sacrificing live ducks,  worshippers now burn paper or plastic ducks,  distributed free to temple-goers.

Fireworks were officially discouraged,  along with duck sacrifice,  Huichang Bureau of Ethnic and Religious Affairs chief Guo Jinghong told Hegarty and Huang Nan,  because they make “too much noise and pollution.”

What happened?

Why 2016 brought a few landmark instances of governmental and corporate recognition of the deleterious effects on animals of fireworks,  while 2017 did not,  is unclear.  No humane organizations of global influence campaigned specifically against fireworks in either year.

East Valley Animal Shelter

Indeed,  the only humane initiative of note on the fireworks front was the introduction in 2016 of a four-day fostering program by the East Valley Animal Shelter in Los Angeles,  to make extra space available for the annual post-Fourth of July lost dog influx.  The program temporarily placed 64 dogs,  helping the shelter to accommodate 264 new arrivals.

But social media may have helped,  publicizing several appalling instances of fireworks use to harm animals.  One case,  near Bosqueville,  Texas,  in which video of a dog’s body being blown up was posted by the alleged perpetrators,  in October 2016 “was shared more than 9,500 times,  and one post had about 658,000 views and 1,400 comments,”  reported Kristin Hoppa of the Waco Tribune.

Guy Fawkes,  Guy Fawkes Day,  & German shepherd.
(Beth Clifton collage)

Guy Fawkes Day dog attack

Several cases of dogs responding to fireworks by mauling people also won widespread notice––especially a Guy Fawkes Day 2016 incident in Dagenham,  Chelmsford,  England,  in which Sara Blackman,  34,  of Chadwell Heath,  came to the rescue when a large stray German shepherd lunged at her youngest child.

“There were fireworks and the dog was going mad.  He was almost at the baby’s throat,” explained Blackman to Phoebe Cook of the Barking & Dagenham Post.  “That baby wouldn’t have stood a chance.  The dog would have killed that baby.”

But Blackman was mauled herself,  suffering serious arm injuries,  before truck driver Stephen Selfe,  53,  intervened.

Said Selfe,  “It was absolutely terrifying.  It was more frightening than serving in the Gulf War.”

Widespread concern

The ANIMALS 24-7 files document dozens of similar incidents occurring during the past dozen years alone,  and others involving mass deaths of startled birds flying from their roosts into obstacles,  dogs mistaking tossed fireworks for sticks and trying to retrieve them,  even nominally closely guarded endangered species suffering fatal consequences when panicked by unexpected nearby explosions.

Merritt & Beth Clifton

Before 2016,  however,  such cases tended to receive only local attention.  And they don’t seem to have made much noise since.

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