Officially, the oil sheiks didn’t use their falcons THARPARKAR, Pakistan––Birding enthusiasts, conservationists, and inquiring minds throughout Pakistan are wondering how endangered houbara bustards really fared this past winter, after––according to the Urdu newspaper Daily Dunya––an alleged falconing camp set up in Tharparkar, Sindh district, by Qatari prince Fahad Abdul Rahman Al Thani was removed […]
How plastic reindeer can feed the world
(at least as well as livestock gift charities) The 2015 holiday giving season is here. Predictably as plastic replicas of Santa Claus’ reindeer appearing on Sunbelt rooftops where no snow ever falls, livestock gift charities including World Vision, Oxfam, and the original, Heifer International, are saturating mass media with appeals to donors to subsidize distributing […]
Super floods in Pakistan: question mark on animal agriculture
Ill-considered food policies aggravate effects of global warming The super floods in Pakistan may be the result of a global ecological shift, but the country is also suffering from misguided domestic food production policies, possibly based on bad advice from donor nations and international charities. Has the world reached its limits on the production capacity […]
Vultures at play keep ghouls away
Loss of vultures haunts the Indian subcontinent CHANDIGARH, NAIROBI, LITTLE ROCK––Vultures darkening the sky, trees, and rooftops in growing numbers near slaughterhouses throughout the U.S. South and Midwest in recent years signify as Halloween 2015 approaches that the U.S. has little to fear from ghouls. Ghouls, in original definition, are grave robbers and scavengers […]
“Xi & Obama: please talk tigers!”
Fourteen leading tiger experts appeal to Chinese and U.S. presidents Discussion of China’s tiger farms and its growing domestic trade in luxury tiger products was unfortunately not on the table for President Xi’s September 24, 2015 visit with U.S. President Barack Obama. Between 5,000 and 6,000 tigers are being farmed today in China for a luxury […]
Snow Leopard: Stories from the Roof of the World
Edited by Don Hunter Univ. Press of Colorado (5589 Arapahoe Ave., Suite 206-C, Boulder, CO 80303), 2012. 216 pages. Hardcover $26.95, e-book $21.95. Reviewed by Merritt Clifton Don Hunter, who assembled Snow Leopard: Stories from the Roof of the World, acknowledges inspiration and help in arranging publication from wildlife ethologist Marc Bekoff, co-editor of the 2008 […]
Did botched pre-Ramadan sheep shipment start an epidemic?
Georgian officials deny disease outbreak ever occurred TBILISI, Georgia––How many sheep were casualties of a botched pre-Ramadan live transport from the nation of Georgia to Saudi Arabia and Jordan in late May 2015? The authentic toll might never be known. Exported for ritual sacrifice, the sheep instead fell ill in transit, were refused at several ports, […]
Pain in my heart: Why the lack of attention to animal welfare in international development?
by Janice Cox The many ways in which the development of industrial animal agriculture harms humans, animals and the environment in developing nations have been subjects of concern to far-sighted thinkers for more than a century. The lineage of intellectual concern about such issues includes Mohandas Gandhi (1869-1948), E.F. Schumacher (1911-1977), Barbara Ward (1914-1981), Lester Brown (1934-), Frances Moore Lappe […]
Food Security & Farm Animal Welfare by Sofia Parente [WSPA] and Heleen van de Weerd [CIWF]
Free 20-page download from ciwf.org/foodsecurity Based on: The Impact of Industrial Grain Fed Livestock Production on Food Security: an extended literature review, by Karl-Heinz Erb, Andreas Mayer, Thomas Kastner, Kristine-Elena Sallet, and Helmut Haberl, Institute of Social Ecology, Vienna; free 90-page download from: http://www.uni-klu.ac.at/socec/inhalt/1818.htm Reviewed by Merritt Clifton Having commissioned a 90-page analysis of The Impact […]