In our September 2020 Tales of WellBeing, we wrote about the increased funding for domestic abuse shelters to expand their programs to include the pets of individuals seeking to escape from domestic abuse. Each year Domestic Violence Awareness Month is recognized in October. This October,...
On November 12, 2014, Oliver, an Asian Brown Bear, died in the Animals Asia bear rescue center in Chengdu, China. Animals Asia, who rescued Oliver from a desperate situation in a bear bile “farm” in Shandong, China in 2010, was around 37 years old when...
Data on dog numbers and dog well-being will be an important part of evaluating impact of different approaches to dog and human well-being in particular communities. The world currently has somewhere between 800 million and one billion domestic dogs. As such, they are the most...
The stars of the new Netflix documentary, My Octopus Teacher, are Craig Foster, a film maker, and a small boneless creature, Octopus vulgaris or the Common Octopus. For most humans, the only view of an octopus will be in an aquarium. However, Craig Foster visited...
Pets provide constant companionship, emotional support and security for individuals who are homeless. It is estimated that approximately 10% of the homeless have one or more pets. Thirty or more years ago, it was commonly argued by animal advocates that, if a person cannot take...
Editor's foreward: October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month. As part of its mission, WBI advocates for the safety and care of the human and animal victims of domestic violenceIt is now widely recognized that the COVID-19 pandemic has had a ripple effect with unintended consequences...
During the last half of the 20th century, animal welfare moved from being a marginal issue to one that began to claim the attention of policy makers. From 1960 to 1985, laboratory animal issues were the main focus of animal advocacy in Europe and North...
Mostly, the news featuring orangutans is very depressing. In just sixteen years (1999-2015), wild Bornean orangutan populations have declined by over 100,000 according to a recent estimate. CITES reports that the Bornean orangutan population (changed to “critically endangered” in 2016) has declined by 86% since...
When Hurricane Katrina devastated the states of Louisiana and Mississippi, forcing the evacuation of tens of thousands of citizens from New Orleans and other coastal communities, many people with pets chose to stay behind because they could not find anywhere that would allow them to...
The UN World Tourism Agency published a report in 2015 on the importance of wildlife tourism to national economies in Africa. About half of global wildlife tourism involves a visit to an African country, resulting in 6 million tourists a year visiting Sub-Saharan Africa (about...
