Photograph by @andyparkinsonphoto/@thephotosociety Kamchatka brown bear – Look at this image and it’s so very easy to see where the distinctive toy teddy bears got their look from. This bear is actually standing on its hind legs, probably standing close to 8-9 feet tall, but with just my 200-400mm lens to hand I had zero chance of trying to fit the whole bear into the image. Instead I decided to go in a bit closer, concentrating my image on his distinctive looks, the water streaming from his sodden fur. They are absolutely magnificent creatures and so I find it beyond any level of my comprehension that in Russia where this image was captured, or in the United States of America, or even in the more liberal country of Canada it remains legal for people to pay for the privilege of killing these animals. They are not killed because they pose a danger, they are not killed because they have committed any heinous act, or because there are so many of them that their mere presence is having a devastation effect on their local environment. No, they are killed for fun, for pleasure and this is legal. This is accepted, this is apparently normal, in 2019! Yet it is us, it is those that fight to stop these atrocities from happening, those that argue that the lives have animals have some value, it is us that are labelled extremists, apparently forcing our views onto others. ‘People have always done this’ they’ll whine, like this is some kind of logical reason to continue. Well people have done lots of disgusting things since the dawn of time, I see no reason why that can be used as some kind of justification for it to continue. ‘Hunting is natural’ is another classic. Yet indeed, our starving Neolithic ancestors did indeed need to source any kind of calorific nourishment that they could but in 2019 is there not another way. Can we not live perfectly well without causing harm, with inflicting misery and terror and suffering and abuse. If then we can live without causing harm then why would we choose to do anything else?

thephotosocietyさん(@thephotosociety)が投稿した動画 - 2019/02/03 02:35:08