Good news?

Vikky has tonight, posted the following statement on the UKPR forum...

Why do we do it?

Well long and short of it all is we arent!!!

Failure or success?? make up your own minds

Im sure some of you will be pleased to hear we will no longer be taking in birds!!!!

why??

because deal with parrots we can do,deal with people anymore,we wont!!

(present events with barney aside )

the whole team is sick and tired of being ground down all the time by those that are sick and twisted enough to continually snipe,pick and generally be nasty,(not directed at presentently posting members)we are sick of those who think that being a member entitles them to know everything about the ins and outs of the rescue,from who farted last to who's going to fart next,we are sick of people that have nothing better to do than criticise what they cant be bothered to get of their Arses and do themselves,we are sick of people that assume a lot but actually know nothing,we are sick of spending money to be told we are making money,we are sick of being told we arent good enough,when we are trying our best,we are sick of having to homecheck numpties for the sake of fairness,even though we all know they wont get a bird,we are sick of,we are sick of having to put up with all the crap we get just because people think they have the right to as "they are volunteers/fosterers,contributing forum members",we have put up with this for the last 2 years,and we kept plodding on for the sake of the birds

so what to do??? well

As UKPR despite what people think,is determined to help birds across the UK but are sick of people ruining the pleasure we used to get from doing this,we shall be cutting out those that mean we are constantly interrupted from the hard work we put in,so how do we do that

cut out the people

what we will be doing,is creating a huge database of rescues across the UK and leaving members to attach their personal experiences as to how it went,like for instance,the NPS we shall atach GG report for all to see,so that anyone that may be interested in homing a bird there,will be able to view this information to make a better informed desicion about whether to or not,we shall also be increasing the amount of general welfare information on the boards,and its obvious that the best information comes from you lot,i know i dont just speak for myself when i say,i fel very very releived about making this desicion,and it was one made by the committee,this in due course will be abolished,the constitution will be no more and both will be put in the bin,and we will be back to having good ole me in charge,arent you all glad that vikky the despot is back
we will still carry a lifelong responsibilty to the birds we have fostered,and all those currently in EC will be offered to their EC's before being found homes
so......all that is left to say is a huge great big thank you to all those that have helped past and present,with a special thank you to all the team,there shall be 4 admins

myself,linda alan and trish,with the addition of 2 or 3 mods

and if any of you are having secret liitle giggle because you are under the impression you won,or we have failed,go and have a look in the gallery on the website,i wouldnt call that a failure,and maybe you should consider the hate you feel so desparately is actually jealousy because you will just never be as good as we are,and we can sleep at night knowing we helped so many,you sleep at night dreaming that you could....

Hmmmm??

Yet another of the tried and tested tactics, to batten down the hatches and lie low until the storm blows over?

Not forgetting that we have seen it before, after the JJ and Mylo debacle, when the forum closed down (presumably to have a good clear out of any incriminating posts) for a while, before reappearing and continuing on as if nothing had happened with all mention of JJ and Mylo strictly banned.

Has to be said that the ranks of faithful disciples have rapidly dwindled over the past few days, following the emergence of the tragic story of poor little Barney. Little wonder really, when Vikky refers to her forum members so contemptuously, as "numpties" "who everyone knows won't [be given] a bird"

That will be those "numpties" that have kept her little empire afloat for the past two years!

Nice.

It would be great if this was to be the final ever post on this blog...

Somehow I doubt it will be.

Sadly, it was only a matter of time...

Updates below

Yesterday, I received a series of anonymous emails, asking if I could offer any help to someone wishing to expose yet another latest incident of truly gross ineptitude inflicted on one of the poor birds trustingly placed into UKPR care.

I was sceptical at first of the authenticity of the email, but have tonight learned that the horrific details that I was given, were, almost unbelievably, true. A former member of UKPR staff, Adele, telephoned me this evening to relay the very same, sickening story and to tell me that she had been sacked for disclosing the information to another staff member.

We all know how UKPR like to brush these things under the carpet and hope no one will speak up, which is the exact reason this blog was started over six months ago!

I would like to offer my sincere apologies to 'bradley' for my doubts regarding the information provided in the email.

The story I have been given is not a nice one but here goes...

UKPR had in their care two rescue male Cockatoos, an LSC named 'Barney' and U2 named 'Coco'. These birds had presumably been handed over for rehoming and their former owners no doubt, trusted that UKPR would provide the best possible safe and happy homes for their pets.

As I am banned from the forum and unwilling to expose my computer to the Trojan threats that are rife on their site, I am unaware of the day to day goings on at UKPR but apparently, a 'behaviourist expert' named Wesley Flowers has been recently recruited, to offer advice on the boards to members.

For one reason or another, Coco and Barney were recently handed into the care of Wesley Flowers (allegedly, no homecheck or similar was carried out on this person and it would seem his credentials as an 'expert' were simply taken on his word perhaps?)

Wesley, in his infinite wisdom apparently decided to cage the two birds together (one of which had known aggression issues) A situation that Vikky tonight, defends on her forum, thus...

firstly with regards to barney we are all totally devastated to hear of barneys death,it was vey sad and a very avoidable situation,and there were certainly things that none of us knew anything about!!!!!!!!! like them sharing a cage,if we had of known,we would have told wes to seperate them!!

Well that's alright then!!

UKPR are responsible for the duty of care owed to birds given over to them for rehoming... ANYONE putting themselves up as a potential fosterer should be thoroughly vetted and their circumstances, experience, knowledge scrutinised BEFORE a bird is handed over, particularly in the case of notoriously, 'difficult' birds like Cockatoos.

What happened next was perhaps inevitable to anyone with any knowledge or experience of Cockatoos... The birds fought resulting in Barney receiving serious bite injury to his foot.

From what I have been told, a vet visit, ensued but Barney then self mutilated, chewing off his own foot and consequently, very tragically died, presumably from blood loss.

What a horribly painful, tragic, needless and premature end to a beautiful bird's life.

I can't begin to say how sickened and saddened I am by this latest news.

I just hope that poor Barney's death will not go unheeded and that this sham of a 'rescue' will be now be closed down for good and it's organisers recognised for the pack of greedy, ignorant, charlatans they are.

RIP Barney, Good night and God bless little one xxx



Update 28th September, 2009

The following statement from Wesley Flowers has been posted on the UKPR forum today...

Hi everyone

I would like to clear a few things up. I have an introduction to me in the behaviour section of the forum. As for hands on experience I have 13 years with a wide range of psittacids. My experience range from breeding, hand rearing, positive reinforcement training, bird training for educational displays, and training out ‘problem behaviours’. On the academia side, as you can read in the introduction to the behaviour section, I am studying towards a degree in animal behaviour of which I have already done the animal training module and achieved an ‘A’ grade (this isn’t bad considering I have been out of education for a number of years), for this my course work was done on parrots.

In the unfortunate event regarding the Cacatua alba and the Cacatua sulphurea (Coco and Barney), I can only offer the sincerest of apologies to those concerned, mainly Dave and his family. I would like to state from the start some of the UKPR staff and Dave knew of the intention of introducing the two aforementioned birds together, and I would like to state that no concerns were raised regarding this, (I did have some PM’s with this in but now they have been removed). The injuries sustained in the squabble were minor regarding both birds (basically bites to digits, and Barney sustained a bite to ankle), it was not until Barney was caught and placed in a darkened box to recuperate the real damage was done. On inspection to ascertain the severity of the injuries sustained by Barney the shock of finding him with a self mutilated foot spurred me to get him to a vet for emergence treatment. At the vets, he and I alike were hopeful of a full recovery after an operation to remove the remains of his foot. Unfortunately over night before the operation Barney had tried to mutilate his foot again subsequently sustaining a huge blood loss, and Coco now only a few days on has fully recovered.

As for administration and communication, I can say that I have kept Dave and my contacts in UKPR up to date regarding all the birds progress that I have here belonging to them. Dave has been kept up to date regarding this matter if not by me by Vikky.

I would like to put this unfortunate sequence of events down to miss judgement on my part, this happens from time to time when dealing with animals as they can have very unpredictable and surprising natures. I can say that I have learnt from the costly mistake. I would like to state that the two aforementioned birds were cohabiting for three weeks before the squabble of which I witnessed them mutual preening a number of times. They were not just chucked into the same cage, their behaviours and displays were observed post introduction. I would not have introduced them if at any time I had seen any defence displays from either bird. Observations were made on introduction, this was very interesting because no aggression or even territorial display was noted from the original cage proprietor. A pecking order was established quickly of which the Cacatua sulphurea was the more dominant, what could this suggest?

Kindest regards
Wes


WORDS FAIL ME........