News Room

Tales of the City

By Margaux Ortiz
Inquirer
Published on page A12 of the October 22, 2006 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer

The appalling sight of dolphins being butchered off the coasts of Japan has led to a decade-long crusade for animal rights.

Trixie Concepcion, coordinator of the nongovernmental organization Earth Island Institute (EII) in UP Village, Diliman, Quezon City, was a grade school student when she saw the disturbing image on television.

°I was horrified. Dolphins, whom young children consider as friends, were apparently thought of as pests in some major islands of Japan and butchered," Concepcion said in an interview with the Inquirer.

Despite her youth, Concepcion thought the injustice committed against the friendly marine mammals had to be stopped. "I said to myself, one of these days I'm going to do something to end it," she said of the experience that nearly drove her to tears.

Years later, she would be able to fulfill that vow. As a student majoring in geology at the University of the Philippines, she joined environmental organizations like Haribon, Marine Biological Society and UP Mountaineers.

TRIXIE Concepcion with her dog Moo, a stray whom she adopted.

Shortly after graduation from college, she began working at the institute, a United States-based NGO that monitors the tuna industry for dolphin safety.

Unusual choice of work

It is unheard of for local geologists to work for environmental companies. Geology graduates usually ended up in mining companies or industries that extracted resources," said Concepcion, who worked briefly at the Legal Rights and Natural Resources Center, which dealt with the legal aspect of environmental issues, before becoming a researcher for EII.

After more than a decade with the NGO, Concepcion said she became "an animal rights activist." She said intensive research on animal cruelty influenced her decision.

Concepcion explained that there were three schools of thought in the campaign against animal maltreatment.

Different views

Animal welfare advocates, she said, were against the cruel treatment of animals. "If people should kill animals for food or any important need, they should do so humanely," Concepcion said. Their group can eat meat and consume animal by-products.

Animal rights activists, on the other hand, do not eat meat or use animal products. She explained that EII, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta), and the Palawan Animal Welfare Association Inc. belong to this category.

The most radical, according to Concepcion, are the animal liberationists. "Liberationists do what others (consider) as criminal activities: breaking into laboratories and setting free animals used for experiments, for example," she said.

"Blurred concepts"

Concepcion added that while the three schools of thought were well-defined in the United States, they were still "blurred concepts" in the Philippines.

"Animal rights advocacy in the country is not as strong as in the United States and Europe. We are still a long way off," she said.

Concepcion said it was when she began working for the institute that she gradually became an advocate for animals, especially marine mammals like dolphins.

One of her proudest achievements was preventing a traveling dolphin show from performing in Pasay City a few years back.

"We told people that dolphins got seriously stressed out when confined in small containers while being transported from one place to the next," the animal rights activist said.

She felt vindicated when many customers began returning their tickets after hearing about the dolphins' plight.

Concepcion is also strongly opposed to marine parks which feature performing sea creatures.

"Dolphins-characterized by their beak-like snouts, teeth and dorsal fins-are often used as show animals because of their intelligence," she explained.

She said dolphins, which had never been domesticated in their evolutionary history, are used to swimming for miles in the ocean and felt confined in tanks.

Depressed

"Dolphins get depressed when they cannot use their echolocation abilities, which enable them to determine the shape, density, distance and location of objects by the way they bounce off sonar waves," Concepcion said. As a result, she said they bang their heads on hard surfaces and, in extreme cases, commit suicide by holding their breath.

Concepcion said their fight against animal rights violators, like marine parks, "becomes frustrating whenever the government and other responsible agencies ignore (our) advocacies."

°This is apart from the ridicule I get even from my friends and family who tease me about my serious dedication to animals," she added.

She said that she often has to explain her lifestyle to those interested enough to listen to her.

°People ask why I am a vegetarian, for example, and I have to explain the reason why without being preachy," Concepcion said. She added that, despite the obvious disadvantages, people's growing respect for their cause was more than enough reward.

°Who knows, maybe 50 years from now, a strict consideration of animal rights would not be what many consider a silly idea anymore," Concepcion said with a smile.

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