22 people killed by one rampaging elephant in Jharkand RANCHI, Jharkhand, India; GABORONE, Botswana––“Rogue elephant kills two more in Jharkhand, toll reaches 22 in nine days,” bannered Mukesh Ranjan for the New Indian Express on January 9, 2025. This came just 48 hours after Shashi Singh of The Statesman, an Indian national newspaper published since […]
Big wins for elephants, rhinos, giraffes, sharks & falcons in Uzbekistan desert
The big loser at CITES Conference of the Parties 20 was the saiga antelope, native to host nation Uzbekistan SAMARKAND, Uzbekistan––Elephants, rhinos, giraffes, white-tipped sharks, peregrine falcons, and the Vantara captive wildlife sanctuary in Gujarat state, India, were among the big winners at the twentieth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the […]
Christine Townend, 81, founded the animal rights movement in Australia
Animal Liberation was only the second explicitly “animal rights” organization in the world Christine Townend, 81, remembered by Animal Justice Party member of the New South Wales legislative council Emma Hurst, 44, as “essentially the founder of the entire animal rights movement in Australia,” died from Parkinson’s disease in Leura, New South Wales, on August […]
Why is Vantara hiring flacks & lawyers instead of just explaining itself?
Vantara founder Anant Ambani may have good reasons for doing things differently from the international conservation establishment, but he has not done a good job of explaining why JAMNAGAR, India––Somewhere between 5,000 and 7,500 years ago, Biblical tradition and Mesopotamian texts have it, a man named Noah built a huge ark, he claimed under orders […]
Robots to the rescue of Indian temple elephants!
Technology challenges a cruel pre-technology custom that originated with the Buddhist prescription for kindness to retired working animals CHENNAI, India––Thirty-five years after U.S. inventor Douglas Malewicki in 1989 built the 40-foot-tall flame-spewing Robosaurus, thrilling and terrifying exhibition crowds as an apparent real-life Godzilla ever since, Nanditha Krishna, author of The Sacred Animals of India, on […]
Elephant release marks 75th anniversary of Indian independence
(Adapted, with some explanatory text added and legal details deleted specific only to India, from a much longer version by Norma Alvares, president, People for Animals, Goa, and Alok Hiswarwala Gupta, Centre for Research on Animal Rights, published by Herald Goa on August 14, 2022.) While the people of India prepared to celebrate 75 […]
Floods: Yellowstone animals don’t need Noah, but animals might in Assam, India
High water raises hell in both the Rocky Mountains & below the Himalayas YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, U.S.A.; GUWAHATI, Assam, India––While unprecedentedly catastrophic flooding closed Yellowstone National Park for a week in mid-June 2022, also unprecedentedly severe monsoon flooding closed Manas National Park in Assam state, India, earlier and for longer. Both Yellowstone National Park, […]
Save Animals Initiative cofounder Anil Malhotra, 80
Anil & Pamela Gale Malhotra created reputedly the largest non-governmentally managed wildlife sanctuary in India Anil Malhotra, 80, died on November 22, 2021 at the SAI (Save Animals Initiative) Sanctuary he and his wife Pamela Gale Malhotra cofounded in 1991 at Theralu Village & Post, South Kodagu, Karnataka state, India. Posted Pamela Gale Malhotra to […]
Former child star chimp Cobby, 63, had troubling hidden past
“Golden age of television” survivor had caregivers influential in the rise of animal rights opposition to zoos and circuses SAN FRANCISCO––The San Francisco Zoo chimpanzee Cobby, 63, who died on June 5, 2021, was remembered by mass media as “the oldest male chimp living in an accredited North American zoo.” But that may have been the […]
Last acts for animal circuses in Russia, India, New Jersey, & Hawaii
Russian law protects Moscow State Circus monopoly MOSCOW, NEW DELHI––New legislation in Russia, whose circuses have for almost a century been the most attended worldwide, and in India, where the circus tradition started, appear to be among the final acts in several thousand years of traveling exhibitions of performing animals. The new Russian “Law […]