by Anitra Marie

Created on: August 19, 2009

AnimalConcerns.org presents a collection of links, articles, and essays pertaining to animal rights and issues. It covers a variety of topics, including animal health, hunting and trapping, animals in entertainment , and factory farms. The site has been built and maintained by volunteers from the EnviroLinks Network, which makes it possible to access EnviroLinks from this site. This makes AnimalConcerns.org a storehouse of information, especially since it is updated by people from around the world. I found the site to be very straightforward and easy to navigate. Articles are grouped into categories like general info, government resources, and educational resources, which makes it simpler to find what you're looking for. For each topic, you can find a page listing all the actions you can take if you desire to get involved or are already involved in animal welfare. There is also a moderately active forum (there are 22 users online as I write this) and pages with e-mail mailing lists.

As I explored the site I found articles that discussed culling, which is the practice of controlling the population of wild animals, usually by hunting, spaying and neutering, or euthanasia. I learned that Australia was planning to shoot camels from helicopters in an effort to bring the population down and keep the animals from invading residential areas to get water. I learned that many feral cats in a residential neighborhood had to be euthanized because they were becoming a nuisance and no shelter could house them. I learned about the movie 'The Cove,' which is partly a documentary of the needless slaughtering of dolphins by the fisherman of Taiji, Japan. I learned all this from reading just a handful of the articles there. This is only a fraction of what's on the site.

Whether you are concerned about animals or not, this is definitely a site worth checking out. You may become aware, like I did, of cases of animal cruelty that have received very little media attention. While I am not a radical supporter of animal rights, I do care about the environment and all the species that live here with us. It's sad to see some of the things that are done to animals by cruel and selfish people, but it's counterproductive to just beat ourselves up about it. We should study the issues, learn what we can, then make informed choices. AnimalConcerns.org is a good place to start learning.

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