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MEFES meeting
Apr. 22nd, 2007 09:00 pmI want to post a brief report about the MEFES meeting I attended in Ohio this weekend.
This meeting was originally scheduled in Ohio primarily out of a desire to see if there was any interest among owners of exotic animals other than felines in working together against legislative efforts to get rid of animals. Unfortunately, while there was a good roundtable discussion about the efforts within the cat community in Ohio, nobody attended whose primary interest was other kinds of exotics.
Since the meeting was scheduled, it has come to light that the new FCF board of directors has decided that they want to get rid of branch organizations. (Since MEFES is the only currently existing branch, this is in effect specifically getting rid of MEFES, even though it is presented as a general policy.) The stated reason for the change in policy is that there is some kind of a conflict between the notion of the old style branch organizations and the new program of having regional and state directors. As a member of both FCF and MEFES, I don't understand what the problem is, but the politics of the FCF board are such that the members of MEFES who are also on the FCF board all believed that FCF would dissociate itself from MEFES soon. The MEFES membership present unanimously agreed with the idea of telling FCF "you can't fire us, we quit".
It continues to frustrate me that the exotic cat people (in all the various organizations) continue to be more interested in fighting each other than in fighting against the people who want to see the animals we love extinct.
( Background and explanation )
This meeting was originally scheduled in Ohio primarily out of a desire to see if there was any interest among owners of exotic animals other than felines in working together against legislative efforts to get rid of animals. Unfortunately, while there was a good roundtable discussion about the efforts within the cat community in Ohio, nobody attended whose primary interest was other kinds of exotics.
Since the meeting was scheduled, it has come to light that the new FCF board of directors has decided that they want to get rid of branch organizations. (Since MEFES is the only currently existing branch, this is in effect specifically getting rid of MEFES, even though it is presented as a general policy.) The stated reason for the change in policy is that there is some kind of a conflict between the notion of the old style branch organizations and the new program of having regional and state directors. As a member of both FCF and MEFES, I don't understand what the problem is, but the politics of the FCF board are such that the members of MEFES who are also on the FCF board all believed that FCF would dissociate itself from MEFES soon. The MEFES membership present unanimously agreed with the idea of telling FCF "you can't fire us, we quit".
It continues to frustrate me that the exotic cat people (in all the various organizations) continue to be more interested in fighting each other than in fighting against the people who want to see the animals we love extinct.
( Background and explanation )