A new relationship with animals, nature and each other.

Archive for ‘June, 2013’

  • Introducing the Whale Sanctuary Project

    This blog is taking a break for the next few months so that I can devote my energies to the Whale Sanctuary Project. Here's why.

  • Is the Sloth Sanctuary a Zoo?

    The Sloth Sanctuary in Costa Rica was the first of its kind for these wonderfully engaging animals, and it was a model for others that followed. But questions have arisen. And…

  • Tafi Atome Monkey Sanctuary

    Tafi Atome looks like a typical forest in Ghana. The monkeys have been revered in this village for two centuries. But being “sacred” is no guarantee of survival.

  • The Great Irony of Animal “Rights”

    The great irony of the animal rights movement is there is still only one species that has any rights at all: humans. But the Nonhuman Rights Project is setting out to change that.

  • Why Mass Extinction Is Part of Human Nature

    Why would a supposedly “intelligent” species behave in a way that’s bringing about a mass extinction – one that will likely take us down along with so many other animals?

    Enough Already!

    One of the gorillas at the Dallas Zoo has finally had enough of a bunch of out-of-control kids yelling abuse at him through the glass. This…

    Fires Seen from Space Station

    The Indonesian fire that’s burning down forests for palm oil plantations, killing more of the remaining orangutans, and choking nearby Singapore. [readon] The West Fork Complex…

    ABC Nightline Takes On SeaWorld

    Unfortunately your browser does not support IFrames. With the movie Blackfish currently playing at the American Film Institute festival in Washington DC, ABC’s Nightline looks into…

    Colbert on Chicken Cages

    Stephen Colbert takes the side of (and you know what that means!) Iowa Rep. Steve King, who’s pro-dogfighting, against evacuating pets in natural disasters, and angry…

    The Other Stone Henge

    The Avebury henge, by Gregg Parker. This is the Avebury Stone Circle, which surrounds the village of Avebury, near Stonehenge in southwest England. Built nearly 3,000…

    Otterly Fun

    Aussies in Borneo get a wannabe hitchhiker. “After we got him out, he proceeded to chase the car up the dirt track like a dog.”

    On Banning Bestiality

    What exactly makes it a crime, punishable by potentially many years in prison, to have sex with a goat, a sheep or a cow, while, for example, it’s perfectly OK to kill that same animal and eat her? Or, indeed, to be entertained by her in any number of other ways?

    Elephant ‘Stud’ Shipped Around the World

    The Denver Post calls Billy the elephant a “pachyderm heartthrob”. We’d call him a cardiac patient in the making.

    Billy is on his way to the Denver Zoo from Europe in hopes that he’ll father a new baby to put on display there.

    Elephants at zoos are dying faster than replacements can be born, and there’s talk of zoo elephants needing to be classified as “endangered”.

    So it’s no surprise that zoos are racing to keep their populations from dwindling – and that rather than address the cause of the problem (major diseases stemming from obesity), they’re shipping more elephants from one zoo to another as part of an emergency breeding program.

    Latest case in point: Billy, who was born in Ireland, then shipped to Belgium, and is now being prepared for the 5,000-mile flight from Brussels to Denver.

    Ladybug Playtime

    A student leaves some sprinkles lying around in her dorm room. A ladybug flies in. The student posts what happens next. Is it play? Does the…

    An Elephantine Obesity Epidemic

    We already know that most of the major health problems for humans – heart disease, many cancers, diabetes, arthritis, etc. – are the product of an unhealthy lifestyle. The same is true for elephants at zoos.

    And a new study, commissioned by a zoo, concludes that unless radical action is taken, the situation is so dire that elephants will be extinct at zoos within a few decades.

    The study flies in the face of what zoos keep telling us about zoos being the last refuge of elephants, protecting them from the ever-increasing dangers of living in the wild.