The most popular animal to be bought and set free is the passer montanus bird (called burung gereja/church's bird in indonesia)
In most temple here in Medan-Indonesia you can almost be sure you can spot a man selling this birds outside the building. Temple goers buy them in groups and set them free, and go home feeling good about themself, proud that they can be categorized as one of those person who try to make the world a better place. Ohhh the beauty of ignorance, did they really help those birds??why would the guy sell this birds at the 1st place anyway?? why would he go the trouble to catch them?? need time to think.......??
....insert you own personal fav thinking music here....
its simple economic's principle called supply and demand, those birds are almost of no economic value if not because of the demand from these people. stop the buying, and the catching will stop too.
YOU are the reason they end up being caged and treated badly (those seller are poor people who had trouble landing a job themself, its not exactly like they are running a bonavide pet shop, they can't really afford to keep feeding the birds and hundreds and maybe even thousand are kept inside a small cage so that it can fit behind his bike, some of the birds die inside the cage)
YOU did this to them, but yet you walk home thinking you have been a saving grace to them!!
if you really do care about the well being of these wildlife, then donate your money to one of the wild life organization fighting to help this animal, or get involve in their project. But i know for a fact that most of the people who buy those birds from temple won't be bothered, because they doesn't want to take time out of their "busy" life to actually do something meaningful, going to the temple and spend some money to buy and then release those birds take only 10min, and they can feel good about themself for days and weeks. Make me remembered an episode from the sitcom friends where Joey argure that there aren't any unselfish good deeds, all good deeds are selfish.
Somebody should really tell the temple's elders and explain it to them so they can stop their followers from continuing doing this stupid good deeds.
4 comments:
Smart post. Rather than 'save' these poor birds by creating a demand for them to be captured in the first place people should just live the right way in their everyday life.
"people should just live the right way in their everyday life."
thats exactly what the problem is, most people don't and this is some of the way to make them feel better about themselves, casually tosing out gopek to a beggar on the red light and they think that even out all the shite they did
It's the same psychological situation bout giving donation using other name in order to 'transfer' the good deeds, the so-called good karma to those person that usually have been passed away, that for me sounds more like reducing the guilt, and make them feel better bout themselves, ridiculous. Fish and turtle freeing is worse I guess, lots of fish were freed to rivers that not even their real ecosystem, they might died right away :(
that would be the least damaging if they die right away, whats worse is a boom in population of the non native species that eventually disturb the habitat of the native species...the whole habitat is fucked up
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