Animal Protectors under threat: How speaking up for animals and the environment has become increasingly dangerous.

During this presentation we will look at three people who have to deal with threats on a regular basis because they speak up for animals and the environment.

While the problems of “climate change” reach a bigger audience every day, the fact that an increasingly high number of conservationists are getting killed each year is not attracting much attention. Some of those killings were “ordered”.

What are the specific threats these people face? Can we do something to counter the threats or to make the targets less vulnerable? Can we see similarities between the cases even when they are on different continents in a completely different culture?

We will look at the contribution of different factors that include (social) media, monetary gain, big companies, unemployment, government and the tourist industry

Biography:

Alain De Preter is co-founder of ASMA vzw, a Belgian centre for violence prevention that advises victims of violence and stalking. For the past eight years he has been hired by the Belgian Justice Department to teach and advise about violence and threats towards judges and prosecutors.

He wrote two books about the prevention of violence and is a board member at AETAP.

Currently he spends a lot of time in South-East Asia and helps projects that protect wildlife and the environment.