E.O. Wilson sidekick Thomas Lovejoy contributed to rationales for massacring some animals to save others Thomas Eugene Lovejoy III, 80, on December 25, 2021 quietly died from pancreatic cancer in McLean, Virginia, just 24 hours before the death of E.O. Wilson, 92, in Burlington, Massachusetts. (See E.O. Wilson, counter-evolutionary “evolutionary biologist,” dies at 92.) […]
E.O. Wilson, counter-evolutionary “evolutionary biologist,” dies at 92
E.O. Wilson considered himself the Charles Darwin of our time, but contradicted many basic Darwinian precepts Edward Osborne Wilson, 92, better known as E.O. Wilson, died on December 26, 2021 in Burlington, Massachusetts, 16 miles north of Cambridge, where he was for 46 years a star member of the Harvard University biology faculty. Wilson was perhaps […]
An Unnatural Order: The Roots of Our Destruction of Nature by Jim Mason
Reviewed by Merritt Clifton 193 pages, paperback. $20.00. Lantern Publishing & Media, www.lanternpm.org The slimmed-and-trimmed 2021 edition of An Unnatural Order: The Roots of Our Destruction of Nature, published 28 years after the first edition, is dated only by author Jim Mason’s new introduction, in which he acknowledges the many changes in the world occurring […]
Cat studies shortchange disabled U.S. veterans & vanishing Aussie wildlife
White Coat Waste Project challenges Veterans’ Administration studies, while Aussie scientists question value of their own cat-killing experiment WASHINGTON D.C., PERTH, Australia––Cat experiments conducted by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs in Cleveland, Louisville, and Los Angeles, and by Australian researchers at the Charles Darwin Reserve, 225 miles north of Perth, might be said […]
Don’t know pigeons from bowling balls? Among pigeon rollers, you’ll fit right in
Local humane society says nothing ESSEX, Ontario––Why has the Harrow Fair, the official fair of Essex County, Ontario, elected to become internationally notorious for promoting so-called “parlor pigeons” as “the bowling balls of the avian world?” Why has the county allowed it? Why did the Windsor/Essex County Humane Society say and do nothing about it […]
TNR protects African wildcats from “genetic pollution” & ferals from cruelty
Alley Cat Rescue begins project at Kruger National Park KRUGER NATIONAL PARK, South Africa––Alley Cat Rescue, of Mount Ranier, Maryland, is now “working to implement trap-neuter-return programs for stray/feral cats around Kruger National Park,” according to founder Louise Holton, to keep African wildcats from hybridizing with their domestic descendants. Having “advocated for the humane […]
Naming Nature: The clash between instinct & science
by Carol Kaesuk Yoon W.W. Norton & Co. (500 5th Ave., New York, NY 10110), 2009. 344 pages, hardcover. $27.95. Reviewed by Merritt Clifton Though you may never have heard of either “taxonomy” or “cladistics,” the two central concepts in Carol Kaesuk Yoon’s 2009 opus Naming Nature, it remains a fascinating read for […]
Leaving The Wild: The Unnatural History of Dogs, Cats, Cows & Horses
by Gavin Ehringer Pegasus Books, distributed by W.W. Norton & Co. 364 pages. $27.95 hardcover. In stores December 5, 2017. Reviewed by Merritt Clifton Remember the most gripping and informative few books you ever read about dogs, cats, cows, and/or horses, by authors as thorough as the multi-time best sellers Desmond Morris, Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, […]
Eight hundred years of zoos in London
New book and 2004 volume detail the origins of zoos as we know them LONDON, U.K.––Scheduled for official publication by Viking/Pegasus on April 4, 2017, The Zoo: The Wild And Wonderful Tale Of The Founding Of London Zoo, by British television producer Isobel Charman, has drawn pre-publication raves from reviewers fortunate enough to receive […]
The animal issue that made Donald Trump a presidential candidate
Or, what is bio-xenophobia? (Part I of a four-part series. See also How an ant doctor came to be driving public policy; How the Twin Towers fell on animals too; and Questioning the claims of “crisis.”) With just six weeks left of the 2016 U.S. presidential election campaign season, xenophobia, the fear of foreigners, has thus far […]