WEBVTT

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My story begins in Zimbabwe, with a brave park ranger named Orpheus and an injured buffalo.

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And Orpheus looked at the buffalo on the ground, and he looked at me,

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and as our eyes met there was an unspoken grief between the three of us.

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She was a beautifully wild and innocent creature and Orpheus lifted the muzzle of his rifle to her ear [gunshot].

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And at that moment, she started to give birth.

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As life slipped from the premature calf, we examined the injuries.

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Her back leg had been caught in an 8-strand wire snare.

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She had fought for freedom so hard and for so long that she had ripped her pelvis in half.

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Well, she was finally free.

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Ladies and gentlemen, today I feel a great sense of responsibility in speaking to you

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on behalf of those who never could.

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Their suffering is my grief. Is my motivation.

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Martin Luther King best summarizes my call to arms here today. He said:

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'There comes a time when one must take a position that's neither safe, nor politic, nor popular.

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But he must take that position because his conscience tells him that it's right.'

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Because his conscience tells him it is right.

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At the end of this talk I'm going to ask you all a question.

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That question is the only reason I travelled here today all the way from the African savannah.

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That question for me has cleansed my soul.

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How you answer that question will always be yours.

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I remember watching the movie The Wizard of Oz as a young kid,

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and I was never scared of the witch or the flying monkeys.

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My greatest fear was that I'd grow up like the lion, without courage.

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And I grew up always asking myself if I thought I'd be brave?

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Well, years after Dorothy had made her way back to Kansas, and the lion had found his courage,

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I walked into a tattoo parlour and had the words

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'Seek and Destroy' tattooed across my chest.

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And I thought that'd make me big and brave.

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But it would take me almost a decade to grow into those words.

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By the age of 20 I'd become a clearance diver in the navy.

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By 25, as a special operations sniper, I knew exactly how many clicks of elevation I needed on the scope of my rifle

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to take a headshot on a moving target from 700 metres away.

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I knew exactly how many grams of high explosives it takes to blast through a steel plate door

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from only a few metres away without blowing myself, or my team up behind me.

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and I knew that Baghdad was a shitty place, and when things go bang,

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well, people die.

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Back then, I had no idea what a conservationist did,

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other than hug trees and piss off large corporations. [audience laughter]

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I knew they had dreadlocks.

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I knew they smoked dope.

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I didn't really give a shit about the environment. And why should I?

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I was the idiot who used to speed up in his car just trying to hit birds on the road.

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My life was a world away from conservation.

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I'd just spent nine years doing things in real life

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most people wouldn't dream of trying on a playstation.

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Well, after 12 tours to Iraq as a so-called 'mercenary', the skills I had were good for one thing:

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I was programmed to destroy.

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Looking back now, on everything I've done and the places I've been,

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in my heart I've only ever performed one true act of bravery.

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And that was a simple choice of deciding 'Yes' or deciding 'No'. But it was that one act

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which defines me completely and ensures there'll

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never be separation between who I am, and what I do.

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When I finally left Iraq behind me I was lost.

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Yeah, I felt...ahh...I just had no idea where I was going

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in life or where I was meant to be and I arrived in Africa at the beginning of 2009. I was aged 29 at the time.

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Somehow, I always knew I'd find a purpose amongst chaos, and that's exactly what happened.

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I'd no idea though, I'd find it in a remote part of the Zimbabwe bush.

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And we were patrolling along, and the vultures circled in the air

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and as we got closer the stench of death hung there, in the air like a thick, dark veil

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and sucked the oxygen out of your lungs.

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And as we got closer there was a great bull elephant, resting on its side, with its face cut away.

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And the world around me stopped.

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I was consumed by a deep and overwhelming sadness.

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Seeing innocent creatures killed like this hit me in a way like nothing before.

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I'd actually poached as a teenager and they're memories I'll take to the grave.

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Time had changed me though;

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something inside wasn't the same.

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And it's never gonna be again.

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I asked myself: 'Does that elephant need its face

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more than some guy in Asia needs a tusk on his desk?'

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Well of course it bloody does, that was irrelevant.

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All that mattered there and then was:

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'Would I be brave enough to give up everything in my life to try and stop the suffering of animals?'

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This was the one true defining moment of my life.

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Yes? Or No?

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I contacted my family the next day and began selling all my houses.

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These are assets a well-advised mercenary quickly acquires with the proceeds of war.

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My life savings have since been used to found and grow the International Anti-Poaching Foundation.

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The IAPF is a direct-action, law-enforcement organisation.

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From drone technology to an international qualification for rangers,

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we're battling each and every day to bring military solutions

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to conservation's thin green line.

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Now my story may be slightly unique,

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but I'm not going to use it to talk to you today about the organisation I run.

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In what probably could have been a pretty good fund-raiser. [audience laughter]

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Remember, today is about the question I'm going to ask you at the end.

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Because it's impossible for me to get up here and talk about just saving wildlife when I know

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the problem of animal welfare is much broader throughout society.

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A few years after I saw that elephant I woke up very early one morning.

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I already knew the answer to the question I was about to ask myself,

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but it was the first time I had put it into words:

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Does a cow value its life more than I enjoy a barbecue?

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See, I'd been guilty all this time of what is termed 'speciesism'.

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Speciesism is very much the same as racism or sexism.

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It involves the allocation of a different set of values, rights or special considerations to individuals,

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based solely on who or what they are.

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The realisation of the flexible morality I'd used

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to suit my everyday conveniences made me sick in the stomach.

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See, I'd loved blaming parts of Asia for their insatiable demand for ivory and rhino horn,

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and the way the region's booming economic growth

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is dramatically increasing the illegal wildlife trade.

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When I woke up that morning though I realised

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even though I'd dedicated my life to saving animals,

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in my mind I was no better than a poacher,

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or the guy in Asia with a tusk on his desk.

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As this 'over-consumptive meat-eater' I'd referred to some animals as 'beasts'.

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When in reality I'd been the beast. Destructively obedient,

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a slave to my habits, a cold shoulder to my conscience.

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We've all had contact with pets or other animals in our lives.

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We can't deny our understanding of the feelings that each animal has.

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The ability to suffer pain or loneliness.

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And to fear.

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Like us also, each animal has the ability to express contentment,

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to build family structures, and want of satisfying basic instincts and desires.

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For many of us though,

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that's as far as we allow our imagination to explore

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before the truth inconveniences our habits.

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The disconnect that exists between consuming a product

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and the reality it takes to bring that product to market is a phenomenon to itself.

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Animals are treated like commodities and referred to as property.

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We call it murder to kill a human being yet create legal

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and illegal industries out of what would be regarded as torture

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if humans were involved.

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And we pay people to do things to animals

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that none of us would engage in personally.

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Just because we don't see it up close

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does not mean we are not responsible.

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Peter Singer, the man who popularised the term 'speciesism' wrote:

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'Although there may be differences between animals and humans

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they each share the ability to suffer.

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And we must give equal consideration to that suffering.

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Any position that allows similar cases to be treated in a dissimilar fashion

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fails to qualify as an acceptable moral theory.'

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Around the world this year 65 billion animals will be killed in factory farms.

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How many animals' lives is one human's life worth?

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A meat-eater in this room will consume, on average, 8000 animals in their lifetime.

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Ocean pollution, global warming and deforestation

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are driving us towards the next great mass-extinction

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and the meat industry is the greatest negative factor in all of these phenomenon.

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The illegal trafficking of wildlife now ranks as one of the largest criminal industries in the world.

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It's up there with drugs, guns and human trafficking.

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The ability to stop this devastation

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lies in the willingness of an international community

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to step in and preserve a dying global treasure.

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Experimentation on animals:

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If animals are so like us that we can substitute using them instead of humans

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then surely they have the very same attributes that mean they deserve to be protected from harm?

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Whether we're talking about factory farming, live export, poaching, the fur trade,

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logically it's all on the same playing field to me.

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Suffering is suffering,

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and murder is murder.

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And the more helpless the victim,

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the more horrific the crime.

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Now next time you think an animal lover is too emotional,

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too passionate, or even a little crazy, please remember

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we see things through a different lens.

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So in a few days, my son is going to be born.

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I find myself wondering: 'What kind of a world is he entering?'

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Are we going to be the generation that defines our failure as a species?

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I believe our generation will be judged

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by our moral courage to protect what's right.

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And that every worthwhile action requires a level of sacrifice.

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Well I now offer myself, without reservation, to animals.

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And when I strip away all the material belongings around me,

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I see that I too, am an animal.

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We're family. Together on one planet.

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And of the five million species on that planet,

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only one has the power to determine what level of suffering is acceptable

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for all other sentient beings to endure.

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Whether it's eating less meat,

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contributing to the fight against poaching,

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or speaking up for the voiceless,

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we all have choices.

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And small changes in our lives

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mean big changes in others.

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So now back to the beginning.

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My reason for being here is my question for you:

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Next time you have an opportunity to make a difference for animals,

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will you be brave enough?

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Yes or no?

NOTE Paragraph

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Thank you very much