Ex-POW speaks out for Help Asheville Bears campaign vs. Amazon trap sales

by Jody,  Alex,  & Heather Christina Williams,  founders,  Help Asheville Bears

Colonel Hershel Scott Morgan (Ret.),  our stepfather,  was the fourth longest held Air Force prisoner of war in American history.  He was imprisoned in North Vietnam for seven years and ten months––more than two years longer than John McCain,  the late U.S. Senator and 2008 presidential candidate who became the most famous of all American prisoners of war.

At one point Colonel Morgan was held in iron shackles––manacles––for 50 days and nights straight.

Colonel Morgan,  who thereby knows more than almost anyone what it feels like to be trapped,  ordered a set of illegal bear traps from Amazon to hold Jeff Bezos,  Mackenzie Scott,  and other Amazon executives responsible for the great cruelty and suffering they cause to animals around the world.

The trapping king & queen of the world

The world’s richest people became the trapping king and queen of the world,  as their greed for the profits from selling such barbaric items overweighed their recognition of the extreme suffering and cruelty their traps cause.

Amazon lawyers in 2016 were shown a cub missing a limb from a snare that Amazon sold in India.

Yet that wasn’t enough to stop their hunger to profit from traps and other trapping equipment.

Amazon silently removed snares from sale in India,  but kept their fulfillment centers full of traps elsewhere, including the United States.

Charles Darwin

Traps and trapping were condemned by Charles Darwin in 1863.  Wrote Darwin:

“It is scarcely possible to exaggerate the suffering thus endured from fear,  from acute pain, maddened by thirst,  and by vain attempts to escape.

“Bull-baiting and cockfighting have rightly been put down by law….Some who reflect upon this subject for the first time will wonder how such cruelty can have been permitted to continue in these days of civilization;  and no doubt if men of education saw with their own eyes what takes place under their sanction,  the system would have been put an end to long ago.

“We shall be told that setting steel traps is the only way to preserve game,  but we cannot believe that Englishmen when their attention is once drawn to the case,  will let even this motive weigh against so fearful an amount of cruelty.”

How would Darwin class billionaires who sell traps?

How would Darwin classify billionaires who sell similar traps in these modern times?

Jeff Bezos’ people reached out to Help Asheville Bears early in our fight against Amazon selling steel-jawed traps,  and said that he was aware of the issue and was looking into it.

The only thing Amazon did after this was to try to silently remove some traps from sale,  after over a decade of selling them,  filling the world with traps that will maim and kill for decades to come.

Many petitions have been brought against Amazon over the last decade to stop this.  How could Amazon know what their traps do and still say the price to nature is worth their profits?

This decision should forever haunt these billionaires who try to hide their eyes from the suffering they have caused to animals.

Toll is unfathomable

Jeff Bezos and MacKenzie Scott,  your money is made in part from mother bears and other mother animals caught in traps,  who are willing to chew their injured limbs off to get back to their babies,  like Peaches the bear,  whose suffering led to the formation of Help Asheville Bears just two years ago.  Your traps are full of cubs and younglings who will never see their mothers again.

(See Three-legged bears in the Great Smokies may be no accident.)

The indiscriminate toll of your trap sales on wildlife and pets is unfathomable.  You even chose to sell traps that were illegal to use anywhere and could only be used for poaching!

Jeff Bezos and MacKenzie Scott,  illegal steel bear traps are what your company, Amazon,  mailed to former prisoner of war Herschel Scott Morgan,  who had also been trapped in steel,  unable to move or escape.

Read what Darwin said,  but read it slowly and again and again,  until you understand what class you are really in.

Please be voices for bears

Colonel Morgan and Help Asheville Bears volunteers will work day and night until you have made this right.  Stop hiding,  support wildlife rehabilitation and sanctuaries in every country where Amazon sold traps,  and join all efforts to stop poaching and the wildlife parts trade to which Amazon became an accessory.

To readers:  please be voices for Rose (the bear in India),  Peaches,  Tripod,  Lil Miss Tripod, Miss Beverly,  Koda,  Miss Sherry,  Miss Cooper,  and the rest of the 34 bears missing limbs here in the Asheville area.  They need you.

To Mackenzie Scott,  you have never responded to all of our efforts to compel you to make this right and help animals.  Your ex-husband responded and tried to hide from this,  doing nothing to make this right.

Heart & compassion

We applaud your commitment to the Giving Pledge,  donating millions of dollars to various charities,  but please to look at this cause with that same heart and compassion.

Look at the animals whose suffering in traps we have documented,  including bears,  elephants,  eagles,  foxes,  wolves,  cougars,  raccoons,  zebras,  dogs,  cats,  on and on.

Trapping is indiscriminate cruelty and suffering.  It must end!  And it is incumbent upon Amazon to take the lead in stopping it and in undoing as much of the harm it has done as is possible,  after having enabled trapping and trappers for decades.

Please donate to support our work:

www.animals24-7.org/donate/