U.S. Lab Chimps experience freedom and wild space in retirement - film

It's not exactly related to the released chimps, and their first experience of natural surroundings and behaviours, but while some of these captured animals are now enjoying their new found freedoms, other are being trapped and killed. Many species of birds and animals migrate around the world, from whales to tiny birds. However, the world is getting a more dangerous place due to human activities and human hunger. Around the world, many of the most spectacular migrations have either disappeared due to human activities or are in steep decline. Birdwatchers in North America and Europe, for example, complain that fewer songbirds are returning each spring from their winter quarters in Latin America and Africa, respectively. Indeed, a recent continent-wide analysis of European breeding birds concluded that long-distance migrants (i.e., those species that breed in Europe but winter in sub-Saharan Africa) have suffered sustained and often severe population declines, more so than related nonmigratory species. Birdwatchers can still see all of the species of migratory songbirds they seek each spring; they simply have to work harder to do so. Going, Going, Gone: Is Animal Migration Disappearing The situation in the Mediterranean is appalling: Every year, from one end of it to the other, hundreds of millions of songbirds and larger migrants are killed for food, profit, sport, and general amusement. Italian hunters and poachers are the most notorious; for much of the year, the woods and wetlands of rural Italy crackle with gunfire and songbird traps. The food-loving French continue to eat ortolan buntings illegally, and France’s singularly long list of huntable birds includes many struggling species of shorebirds. Songbird trapping is still widespread in parts of Spain; Maltese hunters, frustrated by a lack of native quarry. It's considered a "sport" to find "free food". National Geographic - Last song for Migrating Birds With feet and wings stuck to “lime sticks,” the songbirds cannot escape. Poachers placed these decoy shrubs along a highway near the Mediterranean. It's the trapping, torture and killing of the innocents - the ultimate human domination of tiny and delicate singing birds that want only to sing, twitter, migrate and come back to breed. For centuries eating songbirds was a prized delicacy in Cyprus, but now economic crisis is luring many out-of-work Cypriots back into the centuries-old trade. They risk stiff fines and even jail time by supplying an underground market for the tiny songbirds illicitly served up in the country's tavernas - but they say it's their only way to make ends meet. Cyprus jobless turn to illegal songbird trapping It's an easy and free meal. Served whole either boiled or pickled, the fatty birds are such an ugly sight on a plate that outsiders find it hard to fathom how there could be any profit to be made from them. For many Cypriots, however, the tangy-sweet taste of the birds is pure bliss. It's the ultimate of human power, to capture, enslave, kill and consume the weak, the strong, the moving and all of the animal kingdom as much as possible. It's not a wild boar, an strong lion, a raging elephant or the usual trophy catch that hunters usually desire. Eating songbirds is about violating a taboo that we honour and protect the weak, pretty, innocent and musical. Some humans think by eating animal or bird body parts they can capture the elements that make them endearing, or the qualities that make them appreciated. That's why the Asian market in animal body parts is used in Traditional Chinese Medicine is so popular. It's not based on science, but of being able to capture the qualities that make up the once living creatures by consuming them!