In March of 2019, the First African Conference on Linear Infrastructure and Ecology (ACLIE) was held in South Africa. Our partner organization, the Center for Large Landscape Conservation (CLLC) produced an excellent and eye-opening report for the conference on investments in linear transportation infrastructure (such...
In 1995, I was a coauthor with Bob Hoage (then a Public Affairs Officer for the National Zoo in Washington) on the changing animal protection movement and on the evolution and role of zoos and aquaria. Bob contributed the section on zoo evolution and he...
From 19-22 March of this year, several hundred conservation biologists, activists, economists, lawyers and political scientists convened in the Sultan Nazrin Shah Centre in Worcester College, Oxford to discuss global-scale challenges to wildlife and how the assembled cornucopia of disciplines could help to address and...
In the last few months, a number of scientific papers have appeared that report declines—including some dramatic declines—in the number of wild animals sharing our planet. Most people familiar with this issue know about the finding that only 4 percent of mammalian terrestrial biomass consists...
Wednesday, March 20, 2019, features the sixth annual celebration of the United Nation’s International Day of Happiness. The 2019 World Happiness Report will be published on that day. In the 2018 report, Finland, Norway, Denmark, Iceland, and Switzerland topped the rankings and all scored well...
WellBeing International’s vision is focused on promoting the well-being of People, Animals, and the Environment (PAE Triad) and achieving optimal outcomes for all. The challenges involved in developing an appropriate measure of well-being for all three elements in the PAE Triad cannot be overstated and our goal to...
The chacma baboon (Papio ursinus) is one of the largest of all monkeys and is a relatively common sight in the Cape Province in South Africa. In fact, the 500 or so baboons living on the mountain slopes of the Cape Peninsula (Cape Town, South...
As the global production of plastic items explodes, plastic debris and waste are accumulating across the planet’s oceans. A 20-fold increase in plastic production occurred between 1964 and 2014, and the rate of production continues to increase (see figure: 407 million tonnes in 2015, 302...
Humane education – teaching children to be kind to animals and not be cruel – is one of the foundations of the global animal protection movement. St. Thomas Aquinas, while holding that Catholics had no direct duties to animals, still argued that humans had indirect...
There are approximately 800 million dogs in the world today. Around 300 million are street dogs, and the others are mostly either pets or household guard dogs. The interactions communities have with street dogs is changing (see Oct 26 blog on a shelter in Costa...
