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Save the kangaroo
Kangaroo Victory in California!
Dear friends
We are thrilled to be able to share with you the wonderful news that yesterday, the bill that sought to delist kangaroos from those afforded legal protection by the state of California, by way of a ban on the importation and sale of products made from their body parts, was DEFEATED! It remains illegal to import into CA or sell within it kangaroo products. This is a fantastic victory for the animals.
To all our supporters in California: thank you so much for your support and for putting pressure on your Senator to oppose this bill.
This outcome is particularly important as Viva! forges ahead with its lawsuit against Adidas, which continues to sell illegal kangaroo-skin football boots across California.
Viva! would like to thank lauren Ornelas and the Animal Protection Institute (API) for the work on this issue.
The situation for kangaroos is still critical. Severe drought has caused their numbers to plummet. Some species are being shot faster than they can reproduce, and even the hunters themselves are bemoaning a lack of large animals to kill. For further information on how you can get active for the 'roos, please go to www.savethekangaroo.com/tourism.
Yours, for the animals,
Claudia Tarry
Campaigns Director
Viva!USA
www.vivausa.org
For more info, read our Press Release here
The kangaroo killing industry supplies leather for soccer cleats, handbags and baseball mitts, which is fueling the slaughter of millions of kangaroos and their babies every year. 6.9 million kangaroos will be shot this year - it is the biggest wildlife massacre in the world and it must be stopped.
We are targeting companies using kangaroo skin one at a time, (just as Viva!UK did successfully with supermarkets stocking kangaroo meat that have now stopped), until we have wiped out this sickening trade. Our first target is Adidas and their 'Predator' shoe. Adidas is far and away the leader in 'premier' soccer cleats, with 70 percent of the market worldwide.
Viva! in England wrote to Adidas outlining our concerns about their use of kangaroo skin and received a nauseating standard letter claiming to care about 'humane harvesting' which regurgitated the Kangaroo Industry Association's propaganda about population control. We have written back to Adidas contesting the points made in their letter and requested a meeting with them, but so far they have not replied. It's time for us to step up the campaign and make them take notice!
In the USA, we have sent a letter to the Adidas CEO in Portland with a copy of a video of how these gentle animals are slaughtered in the wild.
We're going to take the campaign to the streets and urge shoppers not to buy Adidas products until they cease their part in the largest wildlife massacre in the world.
Here in the USA we will have leaflets, and postcards to send to Adidas exposing them as a driving force behind an industry which bludgeons millions of young joeys to death every year.
It is vital to the survival of kangaroos that we stop the trade in their skins, especially for the manufacturing of soccer cleats. According to Australia's leading tanners of kangaroo leather, Parker Tanning, manufacturers prefer to use the largest skins to make athletic footwear. These skins come from the large red males who take 10 years to reach alpha status and are being continually massacred so few survive to pass on their superior genes to the next generation. This means that smaller, weaker and younger males are left to breed with the females, producing offspring who are less likely to survive a major drought or other natural disasters. We must reverse this trend before a major disaster strikes and Australia's kangaroos are wiped out!
It is frightening that leather suppliers are complaining that there are few large red males left in Australia. Skins are getting smaller and smaller as they now shoot juveniles.
Many top manufacturers now make hi-tech, hi-performance synthetic soccer cleats for professionals without the use of any animal products. Please help us show Adidas that we won't allow them to kick the kangaroo into extinction.
For more information on this campaign, please see www.savethekangaroo.com
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