In March 2014, the Humane Society Institute for Science and Policy organized a conference in Washington on animal sentience. Following the meeting, several participants asked whether any follow-up was planned. Their queries prompted the establishment of a new, open-peer-commentary journal, Animal Sentience, with cognitive scientist...
My grandfather, Bernard Sax, emigrated from Russia to the United States in 1914. With his wife, Bluma, he purchased some abandoned farmland so inexpensively that it was almost free. The land was for a little community of Russian Jews, largely Communist, as a buffer between...
Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose (The more things change, the more they stay the same)Historical Context. On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik I into space. I remember, as a boy looking for the moving light spot that was the satellite...
On May 19, 2023, a consortium of 98 organizations and individuals sent a letter to Dr. Hoesung Lee, the current chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), expressing their deep concern at "the potential influence of the meat industry's years-long campaign of interference...
Wild birds are important for their contributions to ecosystem health and human well-being. Critical ecological roles provided by birds include insect and rodent control, plant pollination, and seed dispersal. Wild birds have also captivated humans for millennia, and today, the avid birder or “twitcher” is...
Much controversy surrounds the management of outdoor cats. Developing an agreement on the most appropriate and effective way to reduce the number of outdoor cats—by sterilization or eradication—is at the center of this longstanding dispute. Members of the wildlife conservation community argue that killing outdoor...
Some of the earliest surveys of pet ownership in the United States were carried out in the 1970s by Robert Schneider and his colleagues at the University of California in Davis. They were interested in developing a One Health solution to human cancer by studying...
It has been a year since my neighborhood journey into “standing up” for trees began. It started as so many things do for me these days, on a dog walk.My rescue companion, Duke, and I were walking across the woods and farmland when we came...
In the last few years, a highly pathogenic H5N1 avian influenza (HPAI) virus has caused the deaths of millions of seabirds and waterfowl worldwide, and many more millions of factory-farmed poultry being culled to halt the spread of the virus. WBI wrote about the emergence...
In most countries, wildlife is owned by the state. However, there are exceptions. In Southern Africa (e.g., Namibia, South Africa, and Zimbabwe), laws passed thirty or more years ago have given private landowners property rights over all the wildlife on their land. These property rights...
