I take animal ethics very seriously, but I have never made it a goal to work towards a specific change in animal ethics policy.

There's a saying that if you do not work towards something, it is hard to expect it to change.

I would like us to brainstorm. What is an achievable goal we could aim for in 2011 to work towards a better situation for animals? I.e. is there some type of bill for a law change in the US or in another country which we could help to support? Is there some sort of a group who is doing a worthwhile thing - saving the tigers, saving penguins - who we could help promote?

All ads on this site go to charity. We can use those promotional areas as a first step to help people learn about our chosen project. We could also write in to our reps to push for the change, and stay on top of it.

Do you mean an achievable goal for ourselves as individuals, or larger goals for society?

For just me, I am working on only buying local eggs from local people with chicken coops. I want to be able to figure out where to get my meats, milk and cheeses locally too - from organic and free range sources.

Since I do not know where I will be living in the next few months (AZ, CA or Oklahoma), i am having trouble actually pursuing local info on meats, etc. But at least the eggs are a start.

For society, I think local initiatives and grass roots change is the best way to organize, rather than large scale lobbying.

Dear Jilly -

For this thread I was thinking about something the forum as a whole could work towards promoting. So for example promoting saving the tigers. We could run banner ads linking to tiger-saving agencies, talk to local stores about not carrying tiger products, and write our reps to encourage any bills in progress that help that aim (restrictions on imports etc).

Certainly - separately - we could all make separate goals about local changes we can work on! That's a great idea and I'll make a separate thread for it!

You did say the tigers had good funding and people aware of their plight. Did you want to focus on another animal? Or ecosystem of animals?

I like the banner idea a lot. I love Goodwill, for example, but they are not hurting for funding. So I would not mind trading the goodwill banners out for something like the Rainforest Action Network.

Right exactly Jilly that is what I was thinking. I already support the American Red Cross and Goodwill on my other sites. And they are large organizations, so they get good funding in general.

What if we all did research and discovered there's a Dodo Bird in Uganda (just to make something up) that is near extinction and we all fell in love with it? We could help spread the word, write updates about it, do a fundraiser, and help to make a real difference.

We could choose one specific animal, a specific ecosystem, there are all sorts of ideas.

We could research current bills that are pending and see if there's a really helpful one that most people don't know about. We could help people learn about it and all write in, to help it pass.

I think the banner thing is still a good idea. Maybe a bird-related organization? the people coming here might like that.