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...
As I sit here tapping out this essay, one thing on my mind is how best to respond to the latest proposal on cats being promoted here in Hawaii by the conservation community. Here in Hawaii, on the island of Kauai, conservationists are pushing the...
[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...
Dr. Hemanta Mishra is a Nepalese conservation biologist who has become interested in the plight of street dogs in South Asia. The following blog provides an anecdote from his visit to Mumbai to meet with the Tata Trusts in 2011. - One mid-morning in 2011...
Thirty years ago, the Kruger National Park in South Africa was managing its elephant population at a population of around 7,500 elephants via an annual culling program. This stopped in the mid-1990s and Kruger then began to translocate elephants to private conservancies and other provincial...
Outdoor cats can be a challenge for people and wildlife, especially on islands and in areas with sensitive wildlife, such as the Florida Keys. Solutions are often elusive due to varied community interests, lack of resources and conflicts between wildlife biologists and animal activists. But the...
A longtime animal welfare colleague, Robert Blizard, started a blog, Animal Matters, last October. As of today, he has posted fifteen articles or a little more than four per month to the site. As part of a team trying to maintain a schedule of two...
The world over, wild animals pose a challenge to humans, from elephants in the savannah to coyotes in suburbia. Greyton, a community of 11,000 people about 80 miles from Cape Town, is not exempt. Here we have our own set of problems shared by many...
Reviewed by Andrew Rowan - There are many celebrations involving animals around the world. Many will be familiar with the story of Peter and the Wolf and the version put to music by Prokofiev (his most frequently performed work) where each animal is represented by...
