No, it is not “shoot the victims”! SEATTLE––Perhaps the most startling statistic pertaining to the global spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus is the statistic almost nobody mentions: the ratio of compensatory versus additive mortality. What’s that? It is not that as of March 10, 2020 there are still only about 140,000 COVID-19 cases of […]
Science races law to end culling seven billion male chicks a year
No more fingers up chicks’ anal vents PARIS, France; BERLIN, Germany––Racing to appear to be ahead of egg industry science, French agriculture minister Didier Guillaume on January 28, 2020 announced that his administration would ban mass culling of male chicks and castration of piglets without anesthetic. “From the end of 2021, nothing will be […]
Pit bull suspected of killing Elisa Pilarski struck twice more in five days
French fatality, still under investigation, echoes & contrasts with U.S. cases BEAUVAIS, OISE, France; CLEARCREEK TOWNSHIP, Ohio; PORTSMOUTH, Virginia; ASHEVILLE, North Carolina––Curtis, the pit bull suspected of killing Elisa Pilarski in the Retz Forest near Soissons, France, on November 16, 2019, also injured her fiancé Christopher Ellul at the police station on the evening of […]
Pit bull or hunting hounds? Who killed Elisa Pilarski & unborn child Enzo?
DNA data may decide which dog did the killing, but maybe not who was at fault SOISSONS, France––Pack hunters and pit bull enthusiasts are pitted against each other in a melodrama gripping French media since November 16, 2019, when someone’s dog or dogs killed Elisa Pilarski, 29, six months pregnant. Anxiously awaited DNA test results […]
Bird bloodbath over Britain & Scotland: regulatory failures, royal hypocrisy
“General licenses” mean open season on 22 non-game species LONDON, Edinburgh––Birds are in steep decline over Europe, as they are over the U.S. and Canada, reports the British-based organization BirdLife International, monitoring bird populations since 1922––but the chief cause of the European bird crash appears to be simply that hunters, including the British royal family, […]
Why vultures are not circling over the drought-parched world
It isn’t that vultures don’t feel the threat from global warming GABORONE, Botswana––Scarce over much of drought-parched India, Central Asia, and Africa, vultures still converge over dead livestock and wildlife in Botswana, stripping the corpses of even elephants and hippos down to the bones within hours––but for how much longer? The Botswana Department of […]
Noted in passing: Tresz, Muliro, Ndou, Hanson, Broecker, Lagerfeld
Six people with little in common except influencing how humans see animals Hilda Tresz, Freddy Mahamba Muliro, and Joel Celestine Mambou Ndou, none of them ever famous, in various ways devoted their lives to great apes. Wade Hanson spent the last 24 years of his life as a humane officer. Wallace Broecker for more than 50 […]
Mercury Toxicity as a Cause for Stranded Marine Mammals is not a Mystery
by Bill McGraw (Ph.D. in aquaculture, Boquete, Panama; www.newaquatechpanama.com) Approximately 37% of marine mammal species are in danger of extinction, according to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. Among the most often reported concerns regarding deaths of whales and dolphins are the phenomena of these animals beaching or “stranding” themselves en masse. Episodic […]
Spanish Supreme Court ends 566-year-old bull-spearing rite
Judges rule against hearing further appeals against order to stop MADRID––A March 18, 2019 decision by the Spanish Supreme Court to hear no further appeals of a Castilla y León provincial order banning the traditional Toro de la Vega bullfight appears to have finally ended one of the oldest annual celebrations of cruelty persisting into […]
Drove out the snakes? What did St. Patrick do with the Irish wolves?
He made friends with them! DUBLIN, TEL AVIV, ROME––As of St. Patrick’s Day 2019, there are still no wild snakes in Ireland, more than 1,660 years after the patron saint of Ireland allegedly drove them all out. Paleontologists say there were never any wild snakes in Ireland in the first place. But there were […]