Please send a quick email to the addresses below today between 3:30 and 4:30, but if you can’t just send it whenever! Every email counts!
From adirondackmuseum.org:
“The grounds of the Adirondack Museum will become a lively 19th century tent city with an encampment of American Mountain Men interpreting the fur trade and a variety of survival skills. Discover the equipment and techniques mountain men used for backwoods cooking while out on the wilderness.
The group will interpret the lives and times of traditional mountain men with colorful demonstrations and displays of shooting, tomahawk and knife throwing, furs, fire starting and cooking, clothing of both eastern and western mountain styles, period firearms, and more. This year’s encampment may include blacksmithing as well as a beaver skinning and fleshing demonstration.
Participants in the museum encampment are from the Brothers of the New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts segment of the national American Mountain Men organization. Participation in the encampment is by invitation only.
All of the American Mountain Men activities and demonstrations are included in the price of regular Adirondack Museum admission. There is no charge for museum members.”
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Many have emailed the Museum asking them to remove the horrible beaver skinning and fleshing demonstration from their program and received this generic response:
“The Adirondack Museum fully understands and appreciates the concern for animals expressed by the many people who have written in protest about the beaver-skinning demonstration that may be included in the American Mountain Men Encampment.
It is important to understand that a beaver is not killed for this
interpretive program. The animal used has died from natural causes, is the victim of a highway accident (road kill) or has met an untimely end in some other manner. The deceased beaver is used for teaching purposes and the members of the encampment are themselves educators.
The American Mountain Men interpret the fur trade. The extent of the fur trade and the near decimation of the beaver population in North America are a shameful part of our history. Millions of beavers were killed to meet the whims of fashion – primarily for beaver top hats. For many people, “the fur trade” is a phrase found in high school history textbooks. Words on a page, far removed from living animals.
The beaver-skinning demonstration, accompanied by a sound description of what the fur trade actually meant to beaver populations, is a reality check. It is offered by the American Mountain Men and the museum as an educational opportunity so that this sort of disregard for animal life will not happen again.
Thank you very much for your concern.”
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Well this response just isn’t good enough for us, as we’re sure it isn’t for you.
Please send an email to the following addresses and tell them that their generic email isn’t good enough for you. Elaborate as much or as little as you want. Tell them that you still will not be visiting the museum as long as they are planning on perpetuating barbaric acts on our fellow animals. Tell them that it doesn’t matter how the beaver died, it’s still a bogus event. I, personally, don’t see how showing people how to skin and flesh a beaver teaches respect for life and not a disregard for it. Say whatever you think!:
cwelsh@adkmuseum.org,
lrice@adkmuseum.org,
csage@adkmuseum.org,
sdineen@adkmuseum.org,
adkonmain@adelphia.net,
acarroll@adkmuseum.org,
adkmuseumstore@adkmuseum.org,
education@adkmuseum.org,
jpepper@adkmuseum.org,
kmoore@adkmuseum.org,
INFO@ADIRONDACKMUSEUM.ORG
You can also call them at (518) 352-7311
and comment on their FB page.
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Thank you all so much! Please share this info with your friends so we can have the maximum impact and stop this atrocity from happening!
Adirondack Animal Rights
sarahxvx
sheila
