On March 24, the Indian government ordered a national 21-day lockdown as part of its response to the global Covid-19 pandemic. The lockdown has been extended several times and is now projected to last until June 30. This precaution has resulted in significant hardship for...
In the last WellBeing News (Issue 2:4), we ran a short item on pets and the coronavirus. We would like to draw readers’ attention to an excellent new review of all the studies to date that have looked at the potential for pets to catch...
In human health management, we generally must know the size of the problem before we can manage it successfully. This is also true of the management of animals such as dogs and cats. This letter will address what we know about global dog populations on...
Over the past few years, news stories describing the global wildlife decline have generally referenced the Living Planet Index (LPI), which is based on methodology developed by the World Wildlife Fund and the Zoological Society of London. The LPI indicates that wildlife populations have declined...
Sustainability has become a popular term encompassing the notion that we need to promote and pursue policies that will allow future generations of humans to live and benefit from the wealth provided by the Earth. In 2015, the United Nations (UN) adopted the 2030 Agenda...
At the beginning of this century, a review paper (Daszak et al, 2000) highlighted the importance of the consumption of wildlife as a major source of a series of dangerous new “emerging” pathogens.The most well-known of these is the AIDS virus that was first recognized...
In February 2019, Wellbeing News carried an article discussing ideas relating to the state of well-being of People, Animals and the Environment. This article was followed by an item on the United Nations’ World Happiness Report in Tales of WellBeing. The World Happiness Report is issued...
[caption id="attachment_7103" align="alignleft" width="500"] Elephant calf drinking in Zakouma, NP, Chad as part of the largest elephant herd in Africa. Photo by Thomas Clode[/caption]The Chadian government established the Zakouma National Park, a 3,000 Km2 area in the south-east of the country, in 1963. At the...
Most of us will have had an occasion to rescue an injured or ill wild animal, whether it be a mouse that the cat has caught, a bird that has flown into a window or something more exotic. I suspect that we then scramble to...
In the search to explain the world around us, there have been occasions where a particular set of observations produces a narrative that appears to provide an elegant explanation of what is happening, even though it might not be entirely accurate. One such story is...
