India
No, Pakistan's non-Muslim population didn't decline from 23% to 3.7% as BJP claims
During the debate on the Citizenship Amendment Bill in Parliament, the BJP repeatedly claimed that population of religious minorities in Pakistan has declined from 23% in 1947 to 3.7% in 2011. Analysis of official data however shows this argument is faulty.

Mukesh Rawat New Delhi December 12, 2019 UPDATED: December 12, 2019 23:59 IST


It is a fact that religious minorities have been persecuted and face discrimination in Pakistan and Bangladesh, but the figures quoted by the BJP are untrue. (Photo: Reuters file)

While moving the Citizenship Amendment Bill in the Lok Sabha on Monday, Union Home Minister Amit Shah said at the time of Independence, non-Muslims comprised 23 per cent of Pakistan's population and that by 2011 their share was reduced to 3.7 per cent.

With regards to Bangladesh, he claimed that in 1947, non-Muslims comprised 22 per cent of its population and their share in 2011 fell to 7.8 per cent.

Amit Shah's verbatim quote in Hindi: "1947 main Pakistan ke andar alpasankhyakon ki aabadi 23 pratishat thi, aur 2011 main wog ghat kar 3.7 pratishat ho gayi. Bangladesh main 1947 main aplsankhyakon ki aabadi 22 pratishat thi aur 2011 main wo kam ho kar 7.8 pratishat ho gayi. Kahan gaye ye log? Ya toh unka dharm parivartan hua. Ya wo maar diye gaye, ya bhaga diye gaye, ya Bharat aa gaye."

(Refer to Amit Shah's speech from the video on his Twitter profile below from 9min 40sec onwards for this quote.)
Replying on Citizenship (Amendment) Bill 2019 in Lok Sabha. https://t.co/L2A9ZcbCny
Amit Shah (@AmitShah) December 9, 2019

On Wednesday, while moving the Citizenship Amendment Bill in the Rajya Sabha, Amit Shah reiterated his claim, saying Pakistan and Bangladesh have seen a decline of up to 20 percentage points in their populations of religious minorities.

"Whan ke alpshankyak kahan gaye? Ya toh vo maar diye gaye, ya unhone Bharat main sharan liya (Where did the minorities disappear in Pakistan and Bangladesh? Either they were persecuted or they took shelter in India)," Amit Shah said in the Rajya Sabha.

This has been a position maintained by the Bharatiya Janata Party and its supporters. To highlight the persecution of religious minorities in Pakistan (particularly of the Hindus), the BJP and right-wing Hindu organisations in India have been citing similar figures to argue that non-Muslims were brutally persecuted in an Islamic Pakistan after the Partition of 1947.

But how true are these numbers? Has population of non-Muslims in Pakistan really shrunk to 3.7 per cent today from a high of 23 per cent? What is the basis of this claim?

IndiaToday.in's analysis of Pakistan's Census data shows that these claims are faulty.


TRACING PAKISTAN's NON-MUSLIM POPULATION

Pakistan got its identity as a separate nation on August 14, 1947. Back then, Pakistan also included present-day Bangladesh which was known as East Pakistan. These two territories were carved out as a new independent nation with Islam as its state religion.

There is no authentic and reliable official data on the religious composition of Pakistan's population in 1947. While presenting the data on religious composition of Pakistan in 1947 in his speech, Home Minister Amit Shah did not mention his source either. A similar figure was mentioned in an article published by the Hudson Institute in 2013. The artilce 'Cleansing Pakistan of Minorities' was written by Farahnaz Ispahani, former member of Pakistan's Parliament. But she too did not mention the source of her figures.

The preceding figures on Pakistan's religious composition that are available are from Census 1941. But since it was conducted in an undivided India, referring to it is futile as it doesn't reflect the ground situation created just after the bloodied Partition in 1947.

After its formation, the first census in Pakistan was carried out in 1951. This census included both East and West Pakistan.

As per this census, the share of Muslims in Pakistan's overall population in 1951 was 85.80 per cent, while the share of non-Muslims was 14.20 per cent. (Pakistan here refers to East and West Pakistan taken together).

What is important to note in Census 1951 is that Pakistan's non-Muslim population wasn't evenly distributed.

In West Pakistan, the non-Muslim population was just 3.44 per cent, while in East Pakistan (today's Bangladesh) they had a significant share comprising 23.20 per cent of the population therein.

As per Census 1951, share of Muslims in Pakistan's overall population was 85.80%, while share of non-Muslims was 14.20%.

To understand the change in population of religious minorities in present-day Pakistan, we need to separately analyse the trends in West Pakistan and East Pakistan (now Bangladesh).

WHAT HAPPENED IN WEST PAKISTAN

In 1951, Muslims comprised 96.56 per cent of the total population in the territory that is today known as Pakistan. The table below details the religious composition of each of Pakistan's five provinces.

The next census in Pakistan was carried out in 1961 which said the non-Muslim population in West Pakistan had reduced to 2.83 per cent of West Pakistan's total population.

By 1972 when Pakistan carried out its third census, East Pakistan had been liberated and was now known as Bangladesh.

The 1972 census shows non-Muslims in Pakistan comprised 3.25 per cent of the total population. This was higher than their share in 1961. By the time the next census was carried out in 1981, Pakistan's non-Muslim population saw a miniscule rise--from 3.25 per cent in 1972 to 3.30 per cent in 1981.

Following Census 1981, Pakistan did not carry out a fresh census for more than 15 years and the next census was carried out in 1998.

As per this census, Pakistan's non-Muslim population was 3.70 per cent of the total population in 1998.

Recently, though Pakistan carried out a fresh census in 2017 but its religious data is yet to be released.

ALSO READ | Abduction, oppression and forced conversion is fate of Hindus in Pakistan

Thus in a nutshell, based on Pakistan's census data we find:

1) Population of non-Muslims was never 23 per cent of Pakistan's total population.

2) Even in undivided Pakistan, share of non-Muslim population never even touched the 15 per cent mark. (The highest was 14.2 per cent in 1951.)

3) When it comes to today's Pakistan (i.e. erstwhile West Pakistan), non-Muslims comprised 3.44 per cent of the region's population in 1951.

4) Census data show that share of non-Muslims in Pakistan has hovered around 3.5 per cent over the decades.


THE SITUATION IN EAST PAKISTAN (today's BANGLADESH)

Now, since the trend of non-Muslim population in the region that comprises Pakistan today is clear, we shall look at what happened in East Pakistan, which in 1971 became Bangladesh.

Pakistan's census data show that non-Muslims formed 23.20 per cent of East Pakistan's total population in 1951.

Over the years, this share has indeed reduced significantly, but still not as much as the BJP has claimed.

By 1961, share of non-Muslims in East Pakistan had reduced to 19.57 per cent, In 1974 it further reduced to 14.60 per cent; in 1981 to 13.40 per cent; in 1991 to 11.70 per cent and in 2001 to 10.40 per cent.

Bangladesh's latest census carried out in 2011 revealed that the share of non-Muslims has gone below 10 per cent of the country's overall population. In 2011, non-Muslims comprised 9.60 per cent of Bangladesh's population.

Thus, between 1951 and 2011, population of non-Muslims shrunk from a high of 23.20 per cent to a low 9.40 per cent.

ALSO READ | 1,792 persecutions on minorities in 11 months in Bangladesh, claims Hindu alliance

WHERE BJP'S CLAIM IS WRONG

Having separately examined the trend in population change in the regions that are today known as Pakistan and Bangladesh, let's examine the claims made by the BJP.

The BJP has claimed:

1) Population of non-Muslims in Pakistan has reduced from 23 per cent at the time of Independence to 3.7 per cent in 2011.

2) Population of non-Muslims in Bangladesh was 22 per cent at the time of Independence and has been reduced to 7.8 per cent in 2011.

3) This decline in population share of non-Muslims in these two Islamic countries was due to widespread religious persecution.

As discussed earlier, there is no official data on the religious composition of Pakistan at the time of Partition (then including today's Bangladesh). The closest official figures available are from Census 1951. What happened between 1947 and 1951 is subject to individual interpretation.

It is a fact that thousands of non-Muslims were persecuted in Pakistan at the time of Partition in 1947 (just as thousands of Muslims were persecuted in India). Besides this, thousands of Hindus and other religious minorities left Pakistan and entered India in 1947 and thousands of Muslims left India to become Pakistani citizens. This widespread migration and killings did alter the religious composition of the regions concerned in comparison to the situation before Partition. But the exact scale of these persecutions and migration remains unknown in absence of data, and hence the population share of non-Muslims in Pakistan in 1947 remains unknown.

Taking Pakistan's Census 1951 as benchmark for our analysis, we find that while raising the issue of religious persecution in Pakistan and Bangladesh, the BJP mixed-up data for the two regions.

Firstly, it said non-Muslims once comprised 23 per cent of Pakistan's population. The fact rather is that non-Muslims comprised 23 per cent of only East Pakistan's population, not the entire country. Taken together (East plus West Pakistan), share of non-Muslims was 14.20 per cent (the highest ever) in 1951.

Secondly, the BJP claimed that share of non-Muslims reduced from 23 per cent to 3.7 per cent in Pakistan. This too is incorrect because share of non-Muslims in Pakistan has hovered around 3.5 per cent from the first census onwards.

1951: 3.44 per cent

1961: 2.80 per cent

1972: 3.25 per cent

1981: 3.33 per cent

1998: 3.70 per cent

Thirdly, the BJP is correct in saying that the percentage share of non-Muslims has decreased significantly in Bangladesh. But it is wrong in saying that the decline was from 22 per cent to 7.8 per cent. As per official census data, the decline was from 23.20 per cent in 1951 to 9.40 per cent in 2011.

Fourthly, BJP has argued that religious persecution was the reason for decline of non-Muslim population in Bangladesh. There is no denying that religious minorities were brutally persecuted for decades in East Pakistan and later also in Bangladesh. It is a fact that hundreds of them were raped, murdered and forcibly converted into Islam.

But besides religious persecution, there were other strong factors that contributed in out-migration of non-Muslims from Bangladesh, which too resulted in decline of their share in population.

Persecution based on language in Bangladesh and greener economic opportunities in India have been strong push factors in Bangladesh for thousands of illegal immigrants who entered and settled in India.

These illegal immigrants are not just Hindus, but also comprise a sizable number of Bengali Muslims. Thus out-migration from Bangladesh has been a multi-factored phenomenon. Ascribing it entirely to persecution of religious minorities is erroneous.

This, however, does not reject the fact that religious minorities have been persecuted, raped and forcibly converted in Pakistan and Bangladesh. In many instances, such prosecution had explicit or tacit approval of the government in power.

This was particularly true in during decades of military rule and even after 1971 when East Pakistan was liberated and Bangladesh formed.

In summation, it appears that while championing the cause of religious minorities in Bangladesh and Pakistan, the BJP has used the 23 per cent figure of non-Muslims in Bangladesh (erstwhile East Pakistan) in 1951 and compared it with the 3.7 per cent figure of non-Muslims in Pakistan in 1998.

The result of this mix-up is a narrative that says population share of non-Muslims has been reduced from 23 per cent to 3.7 per cent in Pakistan.

(NOTE: An earlier version of this article had a line which said "Census data show that share of non-Hindus in Pakistan has hovered around 3.5 per cent over the decades". This line was part of the four bullet points just above the sub-head 'The situation in East Pakistan'. Instead of 'non-Hindus', the term should have been 'non-Muslims'. The error is regretted and has been corrected.)


FROM OUR ARCHIVES | Hindu refugee influx from Bangladesh fuels tension in West Bengal


ALSO WATCH | Is Citizenship Amendment Bill against Constitution? Watch SC lawyer Harish Salve's take

PROFIT OVER PEOPLE
Bolivia’s New US-Backed Interim Gov’t Wastes No Time Privatizing Economy

From privatizing natural resources to partnering with other right-wing regimes, Bolivia’s new interim government has wasted no time in reversing years of hard-fought gains.

by Alan Macleod



PROFIT OVER PEOPLE


It has been barely one month since the administration of Jeanine Añez seized power in a military coup in Bolivia, but it has wasted no time in attempting to transform the economy and society. Its latest move is aimed at privatizing the country’s economy. A government spokesperson confirmed the fears of many, claiming that “I believe the government should reduce its own size” and a protagonistic role should be given to private enterprises. In case that was not clear enough, he emphasized, “Yes, I’m talking about privatization.” Bolivia’s economy is dependent on its nationalized oil and gas industries.

That was fast.

Just 1 month after their coup in Bolivia, Development Minister for the unelected ~transitional government~ spells out their agenda:“Yes, I’m talking about privatization. The govt role should be seriously reduced and the leading role given to private enterprise” https://t.co/s51qGRecsG— Wyatt Reed (@wyattreed13) December 12, 2019

After military generals appeared on television demanding his resignation, longtime president Evo Morales stepped down, citing the growing, targeted paramilitary violence against his MAS (Movement towards Socialism Party) colleagues. Morales, and his Vice-President Alvaro Garcia Linera, fled to Mexico for safety. The military chose Senator Jeanine Añez as his successor.

Añez is a strongly conservative Christian who has described Bolivia’s indigenous majority as “satanic” and vowed to bring the Bible back into politics. She has also provided the military carte blanche to use unlimited force in suppressing all resistance to her rule, even creating a squad of masked, heavily armed death squads aimed at uprooting leftist and foreign “terrorists.” Despite this, large areas of the country are in open rebellion and completely uncontrolled by the new government.

The unelected govt of Bolivia is threatening to disenfranchise the entire region of El Chapare (the country’s biggest MAS stronghold). Unless the overwhelmingly indigenous citizens allow the police who massacred them at Sacaba to take over, “they won’t be able to have elections.” pic.twitter.com/vcYyW61JMw— Wyatt Reed (@wyattreed13) December 13, 2019

For a supposed “transitional” government, a caretaker regime holding the reins until imminent elections are organized, the Añez administration has certainly made some bold moves. It has already pulled Bolivia out of multiple international and intercontinental political and economic organizations, such as ALBA (the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas) and UNASUR (the Union of South American Nations), both of which had a more left-of-center outlook.


Meanwhile, it has expelled large numbers of foreign nationals, including around 700 Cuban doctors that made up the backbone of the country’s new free healthcare system. It has also recognized U.S.-backed anti-president Juan Guaidó as the rightful ruler of Venezuela. With U.S. support, Guaidó attempted another Bolivia-style coup last month. Interior Minister Arturo Murillo has accused the Venezuelan government of being at the head of a vast narcotics conspiracy, ignoring his own boss’s ties to drug-runners (Añez’s nephew was caught with more than half a ton of cocaine in Brazil).


Murillo has formally requested the Israeli military come to train Bolivia’s armed forces and has eliminated entry visas for Americans and Israelis. Considering the IDF’s expertise in suppressing an indigenous population, Murillo’s intentions are worrying an increasing number of his countrymen. The government has also participated in a crackdown on dissenting journalism, closing down many TV networks including Bolivia TV, RT and TeleSUR. Even foreign journalists have been assaulted, detained and killed.


This latest move at privatizing the economy is part of an effort to “dismantle the apparatus of the dictatorial regime of Evo Morales,” as the Minister of Communication, Roxana Lizarraga, put it. On the orders of the International Monetary Fund, criticized by many as simply an extension of the U.S. government, the country’s oil and gas industries were privatized in 1996. International corporations like Enron, Shell and Repsol YPF were not even required to pay for their shares, making the move tantamount to the biggest giveaway in modern Bolivian history. Furthermore, royalties paid to the government were slashed to just 18 percent.


Water was also privatized. Bechtel, an American corporation, increased the prices to levels almost no Bolivian could afford to the point where water and sewage cost over half of an average Bolivian’s yearly wage. Bechtel also persuaded the government to privatize the sky, making it illegal to gather rainwater. The result was mass thirst that led to nationwide protests that became known as the Water War.


Within months of gaining office, Morales made good on his promise to nationalize key sectors of the economy. The move generated an extra $31.5 billion in government revenue over the next decade. He used the money to fund ambitious social programs. For example, over 11 percent of the revenues went to fund public universities, indigenous associations and a basic income grant to all low-income Bolivians over 60 years old.


Under Morales’ guidance, poverty halved and extreme poverty fell even further as citizens felt the benefits of the country’s natural resources. This, the Center for Economic Policy Research stresses, could not have been possible without nationalizing the hydrocarbons industry. Perhaps more important than all this, however, was the newfound dignity Bolivia’s indigenous majority felt at seeing the first indigenous president in the country’s history. The community is often treated with contempt bordering on revulsion by the light-skinned elite, but Morales has been part of a movement that inspired them to organize and take a protagonistic role in their country’s politics and society.


With the U.S. and the local elite back in charge of Bolivia and promising to re-privatize the economy, both their newly won social status and their improved economic circumstances are at imminent risk. A reversal of this policy will take coordinated resistance on the scale of the 2000 Water War.


Feature photo | Bolivia’s interim President Jeanine Anez gives a press conference at the presidential palace announcing the elimination of entry visas for citizens of the United States and Israel. La Paz, Bolivia, Dec. 11, 2019. Juan Karita | AP


Alan MacLeod is a MintPress Staff Writer as well as an academic and writer for Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. His book, Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting was published in April.


Republish our stories! MintPress News is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 International License.

AMERICAN HEALTHCARE MEME'S

Kenney's claim carbon tax damaged Alberta economy is refuted in court documents 

NDP’s Climate Leadership Plan had marginal effect on GDP growth, analysis shows

Charles Rusnell, Jennie Russell - CBC News

Posted: December 16, 2019

Premier Jason Kenney's claims that the former NDP government's carbon tax crippled the Alberta economy are refuted by his government's own analysis, filed in court. (Jason Franson/The Canadian Press)

During the provincial election, and on many occasions since, the government of Premier Jason Kenney has claimed the NDP government's carbon tax damaged Alberta's economy.

That claim is false, according to economic modelling contained in the Kenney government's own legal documents. 

"I think not surprisingly to those of us who have studied carbon taxes, [Kenney's claims] seem quite exaggerated," said University of British Columbia political scientist Kathryn Harrison, an expert in environmental, climate and energy policy. 

Those legal documents are now before the Alberta Court of Appeal as part of the province's constitutional challenge of the Trudeau government's federal carbon tax. 

• Alberta Court of Appeal to live stream carbon tax reference case

The federal tax will be imposed on consumers in Alberta on Jan. 1 to replace the one contained in the Notley government's Climate Leadership Plan, repealed by Kenney this spring as one of his first acts as premier. 

The federal government recently accepted Alberta's plan to tax the emissions of heavy emitters at a rate of $30 a tonne in 2020. 

The court documents show the economic effect of the Notley government's Climate Leadership Plan, which included a $30-per-tonne carbon tax, was an average reduction in annual growth of Alberta's gross domestic product (GDP) of only 0.05 per cent. 

GDP is the total dollar value of goods produced and services provided and is considered a basic measure of economic performance.

Healthy growth under carbon tax, expert says

A recently released government report, entitled Economic Assessment of Climate Policy in Alberta, looked at four different economic scenarios, including the looming federal carbon tax.

Those government scenarios examined how Alberta would fare:

• Under the province's 2015 pre-carbon tax climate policies.
• With the NDP's climate leadership plan and a carbon price of $30 a tonne.
• With the climate leadership plan and a carbon price rising to $50 a tonne.
• Under the federal carbon pricing system.

UBC political scientist Kathryn Harrison says the Alberta government's own analysis showed healthy economic growth and job creation under a carbon tax. (CBC)

"What they found is that there is healthy economic growth and healthy job creation under all of the scenarios from 2020 to 2030," Harrison said.

And she said the data showed even with a carbon tax rising to $50 a tonne, the difference in effect on the province's GDP would be marginal.

"The difference in the average growth of GDP at the maximum is a difference between 2.57 per cent [growth] per year and 2.5 per cent per year," said Harrison, who in addition to a doctorate in political science, holds a masters degree in chemical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

But job creation would be affected by a carbon tax, Harrison said. The government report said the Notley carbon tax would reduce the number of jobs created by between 10,000 and 16,000 a year.

In an emailed statement, a spokesperson for Alberta Environment Minister Jason Nixon did not address the government analysis filed as part of its court challenge. 

Instead, she referenced the government report that said Alberta's average annual GDP growth, under the Climate Leadership Plan with a carbon tax rising to $50 per tonne, would be reduced by between 0.6 to 0.9 percentage points, which is about $2 billion to $3.9 billion a year. 

The statement also maintained the UCP government's position that the carbon tax imposed an unacceptable financial burden on individual households.

Government relied on Pembina Institute modelling 

Simon Dyer of the Pembina Institute said the reduction in GDP growth under the Notley government carbon tax was insignificant. 

"The carbon tax was misrepresented in the most recent provincial election in Alberta," Dyer said, adding that the tax "hasn't had a significant impact either on consumers or on industry."

Pembina Institute executive director Simon Dyer says the UCP government's public attacks are at odds with its praise of the institute in court documents. (Nathan Gross/CBC)

The Pembina Institute has been publicly targeted by the UCP government for allegedly being anti-oil-and-gas development. And so the irony is not lost on Dyer that the Alberta government, in its legal challenge, chose to use environmental modelling by Pembina rather than its own modelling. 

During cross-examination in October as part of Alberta's challenge to the federal carbon tax, Alberta assistant deputy minister for energy Robert Savage seemed to admit the Alberta government chose Pembina's modelling knowing it produced emissions-reduction data that was better for the government's case.

"So you had information that the Pembina Institute's modelling provided significantly smaller differences [in emissions reduction] because it had a more optimistic 'business as usual' approach?" B.C. government lawyer Gareth Morley asked Savage.

"My understanding is that there were some differences in the forecast," Savage replied, adding that he believed Navius Research, the firm hired by the Alberta government to model the effects of a carbon tax, was working with the Pembina Institute on that issue.

Under questioning, Savage also conceded the general consensus among economists is that a carbon tax is one of the most economically efficient ways to curb emissions.

Savage however, resisted a line of questioning that sought to establish that the Notley government's carbon tax had resulted in a significant reduction in emissions.

Attempted 'to misdirect Albertans,' NDP says

The environmental model Pembina used to forecast emissions reduction was developed by a San Francisco policy firm. The Alberta government used a draft version of that model to forecast that a $30-per-tonne carbon tax on building and transportation emissions would only reduce annual emissions by 1.4 megatonnes in 2020, and 2.7 megatonnes in 2030.

As part of the Paris climate agreement, Canada has committed to lowering its greenhouse-gas emissions by 30 per cent from 2005 levels by 2030. That means lowering emissions to 513 megatonnes from 732 megatonnes.

The Alberta government's own environmental modelling data, produced in court after the government filed its initial legal documents, forecast the carbon tax would reduce annual emissions by one megatonne in 2020, and by five megatonnes in both 2025 and 2030.

Dyer said the Pembina model is a "rigorous but simplified" model that doesn't consider how carbon-tax revenues could be used to drive further emissions reductions, for example through investment in public transit.

He said while carbon pricing isn't the only solution to reducing emissions, it is a critical and relatively low-cost tool that has proven effective.

"Carbon pricing works. It works for consumers in terms of helping them make different choices, especially if you provide rebates to ensure that they're not out of pocket," Dyer said, adding it is also necessary for industry.

"If we don't have strong enough carbon pricing in place, this industry is never going to be able to innovate fast enough to compete in this global market that is demanding low-carbon oil," he said.

Under the former NDP government's climate leadership plan, about 60 per cent of households were eligible for carbon-tax rebates.

University of Calgary researchers found four out of 10 households received a rebate that was greater than their carbon-tax costs. The federal government has said that under its system, that figure would be eight out of 10 households.

NDP environment critic Marlin Schmidt said the Kenney government misled the public about the carbon tax.

"I think what we saw during the election campaign was an attempt to misdirect Albertans," Schmidt said.

"We know that Albertans have been going through a really tough economy over the past few years, and Kenney used the carbon tax as a simple but wrong explanation as to what was going on with Alberta's economy."

If you have any information for this story, or information for another story, please contact us in confidence at cbcinvestigates@cbc.ca

Follow us on Twitter: @charlesrusnell @jennierussell_

RELATED STORIES

• Ottawa accepts Alberta's new $30-per-tonne carbon plan for large emitters in 2020
• How Alberta will keep its $30-per-tonne carbon tax but make it easier for some big emitters to avoid
• Alberta makes it official: Bill passed and proclaimed to kill carbon tax

HOLIDAY CLIMATE CHAT FOR OUR FUTURE
David Suzuki Foundation
One of the most important things you can do about climate change is to talk about it. Our new chatbot will help guide you on how to have productive conversations. Check it out! https://bit.ly/3403iZ6 #CliMateConvos

Blind Betrayal: BC Government Uses Collared Wolves to Kill Entire Wolf Families | Wolf Conservation Center

Who are the pilots and who are the helicopter companies ......December 11, 2019 – A new report released by the British Columbia government revealed that not only are radio-collared wolves used to lead government killers to their families, but they are left alive while the rest of their pack is killed. The BC government then uses those same wolves in following years to locate their new family members and kill them, thus repeating a vicious cycle.
The nefarious details of B.C.’s wolf-killing program, uncovered by Wolf Awareness, are published in a government report titled South Peace Caribou Recovery Following Five Years of Experimental Wolf Reduction. The methods section details “The radio-collared individuals were often left alive following the conclusion of the winter reduction efforts in order to facilitate the location of wolves the following winter.”
The B.C. government has repeatedly denied using this tactic, but the 2019 experimental report highlights their usage of this cruel strategy. The collared wolves are often known as “Judas wolves” for their unknowing betrayal of their families.
The South Peace wolf-kill program has killed more than 550 wolves under the guise of protecting an endangered caribou population, and is proposed to continue for an indefinite period.
“Knowing that wolves are highly sentient and dependent on each other for survival makes this practice unbearable to think about, yet we must. Imagine what these collared wolves experience. How many times do they have to suffer?” questions Sadie Parr, executive director of Wolf Awareness.

New Report Reveals BC Government Repeatedly Uses Wolves to Betray their Family Packs December 11, 2019 - A new report released by the British Columbia government revealed that not only are radio-colla

NYWOLF.ORG

New Report Reveals BC Government Repeatedly Uses Wolves to Betray their Family Packs December 11, 2019 - A new report released by the British Columbia government revealed that not only are radio-colla

STOP the killing of wolves under the guise of caribou recovery!

The British Columbia government doesn't want you to know that they are planning on expanding aerial wolf gunning as well as cougar killing in more caribou ranges. Consultation on this proposal was closed to the public, but thanks to a leaked memo, many were able to stand up for caribou, for wolves, for cougars, and for the hundreds of species that make up the fragile and biodiverse forest ecosystems.

Read our RESPONSE to the BC Gov't

Highlights of the BC Wolf Killing expansion proposal include:

At least 70% of wolves are targeted for death where programs are underway, significantly harming wolf families and populations and further damaging these ecological communities. Aerial gunning is inhumane and violates Canadian guidelines for humane euthanasia of wildlife.

In addition to wolves - cougars, bears, wolverines and other carnivores are targeted for death in many caribou ranges. ALL individuals have intrinsic value and deserve respect. Removing carnivores disrupts many ecological functions and benefits of Nature.

Habitat protection is being neglected. The government continues to deny caribou and the species they cohabitate with the protection they deserve.

The killing programs are expensive and serve as a distraction from ecosystem protection. Money would be better invested in immediate habitat protection and restoration, and diversification from an economy based on exploitation of natural resources.

An individually written letter can have a huge impact on government officials. The more informed, individualized and targeted a letter is, the better. (Identical letters are counted as a single voice, and we need as many voices taken into account as possible! It also makes it more difficult for governments to adopt a standard response.)

The real culprit driving caribou to extinction is habitat loss and impoverishment. Wolves did not put caribou in this situation, we did.

Provincial governments have knowingly allowed caribou to be pushed to their brink by inviting logging, oil and gas infrastructure, access roads and motorized recreational activities into critical caribou habitat.

Aerial gunning and strangling neck snares are equally inhumane.   They cause prolonged anxiety, pain and suffering. No animal should have to experience such agony.  Simply put, the ends do not justify the means.

Killing hundreds of one species to benefit another is unethical.

Killing wolves and other carnivores over a prolonged period has major ecological repercussions, negatively impacting species, systems and important biological processes.

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LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment:


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A Kerala scientist's Arctic quest: nosy bears, unending night and icy zen

Dr. Vishnu Nandan, a remote sensing scientist from Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, will be the only Indian aboard a research ship serving as home base for the largest Arctic expedition in history.

Ganesh Radha-Udayakumar 

New Delhi November 21, 2019



Vishnu Nandan has already been on several polar expeditions -- as many as 16 -- and he specialises in radar-based sea ice remote sensing.

HIGHLIGHTSVishnu Nandan to leave for largest ever Arctic expedition on Nov 22He will collect sea-ice measurements using radar sensorsNandan will work in complete darkness in the polar winter

For a man planning to spend winter on an Arctic ice floe plunged in darkness, Vishnu Nandan seemed in no hurry to pack.

Asked on Tuesday if he had begun, he answered coolly: "Nope."

The emoji on the WhatsApp screen smiled in the manner of one obviously flirting with danger. "I will start tonight," Nandan said.

Danger is abundant where Vishnu Nandan, a remote sensing scientist from Kerala, is headed. It is, in fact, one of the few abundant things in a wilderness ruled by scarcity: a scarcity not just of warmth -- the last sunlight for months was an amber sliver on the horizon before it vanished -- but also of colour and comfort.

Later this week, Nandan, 32, will begin a three to four-week journey from his home in Calgary, Canada, to the RV Polarstern, a German research ship frozen in place atop moving sea ice near the North Pole -- not unlike a chocolate chip encrusted in a cookie. Snowstorms are common here. Temperatures, in the negative, read like respectable test cricket scores. Deeply inquisitive polar bears roam free.

But where there are perils, there is also intellectual excitement. Polarstern is essentially a floating lab; for a whole year it will be home base for hundreds of experts from 19 countries, all taking part in a polar expedition of unprecedented scale. They will collect valuable new data about the Arctic's changing climate, whose effects are felt across the globe.

Vishnu Nandan, 32, is the only Indian on the ship; he represents both his country and the University of Manitoba's Centre for Earth Observation Science, where he's currently a post-doctoral fellow. He will remain on board till late February.

In phone interviews with IndiaToday.in, he explained how his own expertise helps the expedition, known as MOSAiC (Multidisciplinary drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate).

MELTING LIKE CONFIDENCE DURING A BAD DATE

Imagine you're on a first date, but you aren't really feeling it. It isn't your companion's fault -- he's quite charming, actually -- but that aggravating conversation at work is still stuck in your head. Your date notices. His mood dampens. He wonders if you would rather be somewhere else. His confidence begins to melt: he starts talking too much and too fast; his humour now sounds forced; he's trying too hard. Suddenly you really are considering texting a friend to call with an "emergency".

Now, what does this have to do with a warming Arctic? More than you might think.

Your perceived lack of interest set off a chain of events that made the date gloomier and gloomier still for both you and your companion. That's a simple example of a "positive" feedback loop: yes, positive, because the trend (of ever increasing gloom) reinforced itself. And it is such loops that govern Arctic climate and its effects elsewhere.

When reflective white surfaces like ice recede due to warming, more sunlight is absorbed. This accelerates warming and eats up more ice. Melting sea ice also makes it easier for the atmosphere to draw heat from ocean water, causing even more ice to melt. As the TED-Ed video below explains, such feedback loops can reduce the difference in temperature between the poles and the mid-latitudes, disrupting weather across the globe in dangerous ways.

Arctic sea ice is a key research focus for the MOSAiC expedition. A graphic generated by NASA, captivating and alarming in equal measure, shows how this ice cover expands, spins and shrinks with the seasons each year -- and how much it has thinned between the mid-1980s and the current decade.

Now, MOSAiC researchers like Vishnu Nandan "will have the opportunity to continually monitor changes in the ice throughout every season", the expedition's website says.

Nandan specialises in using radar to monitor changes in polar sea ice thickness; he will collect measurements using surface-based radar sensors that have already been deployed around Polarstern, the German research vessel.
But why radar?

Nandan explains: unlike optical satellites, radar works in the absence of sunlight, in the unending night of the Arctic winter.

A winter, as you'll soon see, that's capable of shaping much more than choices of equipment.

Vishnu Nandan posing with a surface-based radar sensor in Cambridge Bay in the Canadian Arctic, in 2018. The sensor emits radar waves that penetrate sea ice and help researchers understand its geophysical state.

'A PHILOSOPHER-SAINT'

Vishnu Nandan may be a veteran of several polar expeditions -- 16, to be precise, both to the Arctic and the Antarctic -- but that doesn't mean life aboard the Polarstern will be easier for it.

"It's cold. It's dark. There is no sunlight, so there is a big deficiency of Vitamin D...and on top of it, your loved ones are in Canada, in India, and all over the place. There is limited means of communication. You can get easily depressed," he said.

And the forbidding conditions can test relationships, even with friends. "You see the real character of these people when you work with them in the Arctic, under tough, emotional and technically challenging conditions," Nandan said. "You get to see their real faces."

Due to the #storm over the weekend, some new cracks showed up on our floe. The ice movement opened a lead between #Polarstern and 3 of our #science stations. The entire logistics team worked on the ice, pulling out the cables, which got trapped in the lead.
: Esther Horvath pic.twitter.com/JMBJYJGLNcMOSAiC Expedition (@MOSAiCArctic) November 19, 2019

When he was growing up in Thiruvananthapuram, Vishnu Nandan didn't dream of icy climes. His current life, he says, "just happened". But his own account describing how is worth a quick retelling: he began as a rookie engineer in TCS, where he resigned "before they threw me out"; he then sat for 71 exams ("I'm not kidding."), for everything from the Indian Engineering Services to the post of assistant loco pilot in the Railways; he finally caught a break with a scholarship to earn a master's degree in earth observation sciences in the Netherlands.

Last week, Nandan grew a touch poetic -- and not a little jocular -- as he contemplated life after a long Arctic sejourn cut off from the world.

"It's silent. You get this profound peace," he told IndiaToday.in. "I'm sure I'll have a bigger, longer beard and moustache when I come back, with better insights about the whole planet."

"I'll most probably become like a philosopher-cum-saint."

He already has the laugh: warm, hearty, free.

Vishnu Nandan in the East Siberian Sea in 2017.

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