A new relationship with animals, nature and each other.

Posts tagged ‘wildlife’

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.

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.

Giant Feral Cats Are Eating Australia

In Northern Australia, feral cats are growing enormous – more than three feet long – and consuming much of the indigenous wildlife.

Now the federal government is taking action to save the wildlife by killing as many cats as possible.

Will it work? Probably not. But neither, frankly, will a trap/neuter/return program. After all, we’re talking about what’s become essentially a new species of wildlife, fully integrated into the “bush”.