Established in 1973, Chitwan (950 Sq. Km) is Nepal’s first National Park. This World Heritage Site is currently home to 600 Greater One-Horned Asian Rhinoceros (Rhinoceros unicornis). This is a six-fold increase in rhino numbers since 1968 when a helicopter-cum-ground count estimated that there were...
On 16 May (2019), the Sanger Institute outside Cambridge in the UK announced it would be closing its laboratory animal facility in the next few years. It came to this decision “following a rigorous review” of its scientific strategy and after consulting with the Wellcome...
WellBeing International is reaching out to engage with and support organizations that are implementing humane dog management projects around the globe. One of these is the Kabul Dog Project in Afghanistan that is run by Mayhew Afghanistan, a division of the Mayhew Home for Animals...
In 2009, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Bosnia performed a nationwide survey asking people about the threats in their local communities. Unexpectedly, the results highlighted concerns about roaming dogs (rather than mine fields, crime or some other social ill). More specifically, the complaints...
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...
This issue of “Tales of WellBeing” is focused on elephants. Kwatile’s story describes some incidents in the life of an old elephant matriarch in South Africa as well as her role in a project that demonstrated a humane and effective way to manage elephant populations...
The human population of Africa is projected to climb from a little more than 1.29 billion in 2018 to over 2.5 billion in 2050. Unlike the rest of the world, where the population has leveled off or is even decreasing, Africa’s population is projected to...
By any account, these are not good times for wild animals. Global climate change threatens many species (such as polar bears) with rapid habitat changes to which they might not be able to adapt. Poaching threatens many others, including the culturally significant rhinoceros and elephant...
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...
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...
