Sometimes I feel ashamed to be Filipino.

[anatess]

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,496046,00.html

But before you blast Filipinos in general, you kinda have to understand the culture over there. Yes, they eat birds. Yes, some people eat food items that are rare for the thrill of it. Yes, majority of them are not educated in wildlife, let alone its conservation and preservation. So, I'm hoping my kid will stay interested in wild life and take an interest in educating the Filipinos. That's really the key here. EDUCATION.

When you say you are poor in the United States, we get confused because when you say poor in the Philippines - it means living a hand-to-mouth existence where you don't know where your next meal is coming from. And there are A LOT of them there. It is a third world country for a reason. A quail, no matter how rare, is food. A dog is food. An adult reticulated python is a feast. Anything you can get your hands on is food for these poor people. It's been that way for thousands of generations.

I am hoping it will change. Praying. My mom is a dog advocate. She worked to stop the practice of eating dogs in my town and succeeded. She started with my dad! My dad's family got a group of investors to create a small preservation for endangered national wildlife - like the national bird - the Philippine Eagle - and sea turtles and some species of fish. It is not even scratching the surface. And they worked half their lives on it. The government finally instilled a ban on dynamite fishing which wiped out the coral reefs after years and years of debate. So, I don't know. Maybe it will come. But, right now, it is looking really bleak.