HOW YOU CAN
HELP SAVE
ANIMALS AND
THE ENVIRONMENT
Critical factors to slowing population growth are
improving access to family planning, better education
and health care, and improving the status of and options
available to women. In Iran, the fertility rate dropped
from 7 in 1980 to 1.7 in 2010. The country attributed
their success to education for girls, along with free access
to birth control, and media and government mobilization
around advertising the importance of contraception.
Please consider these other ideas:
1
1. Together, we can make the biggest difference
by reducing the number of children we have—
voluntarily. If everyone strives to have no more than
two children, the overall fertility rate would drop
to 1.5. Also, consider alternatives to childbirth,
such as adoption, foster parenting or sharing the
responsibility of friends’ and relatives’ children.
1. decimates habitat that belongs to wild horses, bison,
wolves, coyotes, foxes and other animals who are
often killed to benefit ranchers.
4
2. Elect leaders who are not afraid to address the
urban sprawl issue. Case in point: Paul Danish, a
City Council member in Boulder, Colo., in 1975,
mounted a citywide referendum fight for a 2
percent growth limit. Boulder voters approved the
“Danish Plan.” It expired in 1982 but has been
bolstered by a 55-foot height limit on all buildings,
an aggressive, voter-approved sales tax-financed
open space purchase program, and a master plan
agreement with Boulder County that gives the city
veto power over most new local development.
5
3. Support leaders who protect women’s access to birth
control and reproductive health care and don’t attack
vital Title X funding for family planning providers
here in the U.S. Low-income, American women
face the real threat of having crucial family planning
programs de-funded. We also need leaders who
support U.S. aid to the United Nations Population
Fund, a critical partner in the effort to expand access
to contraceptives and to provide women with basic
reproductive health care.
2
6
3
7
2. Get involved in national and worldwide efforts to halt
population growth through ensuring that women
everywhere gain access to affordable birth control,
reproductive health care and literacy. Groups such as
Population Connection (formerly Zero Population
Growth, www.populationgrowth.org), Planned
Parenthood Federation and Engenderhealth (www.
engenderheatlth.org) work on these specific issues.
3. Adopt a vegan lifestyle. While adopting a vegan
diet and lifestyle is not a cure for all of our planet’s
woes, it remains an effective way to combat climate
change and most atrocities that are waged against
animal populations all over the world. Nearly half of
earth’s entire land mass is used for farming—with
a staggering 30 percent of earth’s land surface used
for doomed livestock. And of all the agricultural land
in the U.S., 80 percent is used to raise animals for
food and grow grain to feed them—that’s almost half
the total land mass of the lower 48 states. And all
lands used for “free-range” cattle and sheep farming
4. If you are an educator, introduce curriculum that
increases students’ awareness of population and
consumption habits and inspires them to consider
personal lifestyle choices that influence the
environment. In Oregon, for example, a high school
education program called Living Within Limits has
been designed by Alternatives to Growth Oregon.
Population Connection offers curricula and teacher
training workshops.
5. Become a member of Friends of Animals. We place
critical habitat, wildlife protection and veganism
at the core of animal advocacy. Our Wildlife Law
Program remains steadfast in filling a niche
between animal and environmental activism and
we will continue to use environmental laws as a
means to protect the rights of animals to live free
from human interference.
777 Post Road | Darien, CT 06820
Tel: 203-656-1522 | Fax: 203-656-0267
Friendsofanimals.org
HUMANS ARE
THE MOST
OVERPOPULATED
ANIMALS ON THE
PLANET. PERIOD.
I
ronically, instead of focusing on effective ways to
keep their own population in check, humans have
become obsessed with trying to control any wildlife
who dares to exist, from addling the eggs of mute swans
and forcibly drugging wild horses with a fertility control
pesticide, to hunting down bears, deer, wolves and many
other animals.
Our runaway growth left unchecked is already
devastating animals and their habitats. The two primary
reasons for the loss of animal habitat: our growing
population’s demand for wood as a source of fuel, lumber
and paper; and an unabated appetite for the flesh of
cattle, which involves the use of vast ranch lands.
To be clear: Friends of Animals is not anti-children; we
are pro family-planning, pro contraception for humans
and pro taking a rational approach to leading a fulfilling
life, which we believe can be found whether we choose
to have children or not. No matter what, we hope to see a
future where all people who have children did so by choice.
By the best estimates, some 80 million pregnancies
around the world are unintended. The unplanned
pregnancy rate here in the U.S. is significantly higher
than in many other developed countries. Currently about
half of the 6.6 million pregnancies in the U.S. each year
are unintended.
237,211
HUMAN EXPANSION = ANIMAL EXTINCTION
Human population growth is the single largest threat
to animal life, and the major cause of environmental
degradation and global climate change.
We are fast becoming a “single species” planet as we
have already used about half of the world’s land surface
to grow crops, raise “livestock,” construct roads and build
towns and cities. According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s
international statistics, our planet’s human inhabitants
number about 7.3 billion and grow by 80 million a year.
The Population Reference Bureau estimates that 237,211
more people are added to the planet every day as every
second worldwide, five people are born and two people
die, leaving three more humans to inhabit the earth.
So where does wildlife stand today in relation to 7.3
billion people? According to the Center for Biological
Diversity, worldwide, 12 percent of mammals, 12
percent of birds, 31 percent of reptiles, 30 percent of
amphibians and 37 percent of fish are threatened with
extinction.
While it may not be obvious to most people in their
daily lives, human overpopulation is an issue that affects
every living being. In our work at Friends of Animals, we
are all too familiar with non-human animals in America
being accused of overpopulation—from wild horses on
public lands in the West and black bears in the Northeast
and deer everywhere...to mute swans along the East coast
and barred owls in the Pacific Northwest.
An example that represents what is happening to
wildlife everywhere is black bears living in New Jersey.
In 2010, the New Jersey Department of Environmental
Protection approved a Comprehensive Bear Management
Policy that included the first, sanctioned black bear hunt
since 2005. The agency claimed that the northwestern
New Jersey bear population had grown from 500 bears
in 1992 to 3,400 bears in 2010, and that overall the
population has been increasing and expanding southward
and eastward from the forested areas of the northwestern
New Jersey. But guess what? New Jersey’s human
population increased by 1,044,144 people from 1990 to
2010, according to the U.S. Census. And northern New
Jersey, along with New York and Long Island tied for the
most populous metropolitan areas in 2000 and in 2010.
Sadly, 2,379 New Jersey bears have paid the price of
human overpopulation with their lives since the hunts
began in 2010.
Illustration by Sebastian Gomez de la Torre / illseabass.com
MORE PEOPLE ARE ADDED TO THE
PLANET EVERY DAY
ENVIRONMENTAL CONSEQUENCES OF
OUR REPRODUCTIVE CHOICES
There is serious doubt about the capacity of earth when
it comes to considering renewable resources as well as
its ability to absorb carbon, toxic chemicals and other
forms of pollution. By 2030, two earths will be needed to
sustain us.
Oregon State University’s 2009 study “Family planning:
A major environmental emphasis” put the consequences
to having children on the table by calculating the extra
carbon emissions a person helps generate by choosing to
have children. It revealed:
•
The carbon legacy and greenhouse gas impact of an
extra child is almost 20 times more important than
some of the other environmentally sensitive practices
people might employ their entire lives – things like
driving a high mileage car, recycling or using energyefficient appliances and light bulbs.
•
While most of the world’s population growth
is taking place throughout Africa and India,
industrialized countries’ energy consumption levels
take a larger toll on the environment. The average
long-term carbon impact of a child born in the U.S.
– along with all of its descendants – is more than 160
times the impact of a child born in Bangladesh.
•
The long-term impact of a child born to a family in
China is less than one fifth the impact of a child born
in the U.S.