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 […]
Can plant-based “meat” be made to satisfy the Yellow Vests?
Demand for more & cheaper meat underlies strikes over high fuel cost PARIS, SAN FRANCISCO–– The “yellow vest” riots ripping apart France, bringing at least 412 arrests on December 1, 2018 alone, more than 260 injuries, half of them in Paris, and two reported deaths, are behind the scenes adding a social peace-and-justice imperative […]
Aussie prof’s video challenges “invasion biologists” on their own turf
Feminist Ferals by Arian D. Wallach Produced by Tommy Lin https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpx-ZHHWN5s&t=2s This video explores how conservation remains tethered to chauvinistic ideologies. It explores how archaic beliefs about animals, wildlife, and nature, has erased one of the Earth’s most significant rewilding events in recent history. Feminism would radically reshape conservation and our view of nature. It […]
Pit bull impounded, drifter kills police chief
Stabs chief in sidewalk ambush RODEZ, France––Furious that his pit bull had been impounded a week earlier, on September 18, 2018, homeless drifter Alexandre Dainotti, 39, on September 27, 2018 reportedly drank two cups of coffee at a sidewalk café while waiting in ambush for Rodez police chief Pascal Filoé, then fatally stabbed Filoé from behind […]