The Letter from the President for September 2021 addressed climate change. This Letter is a follow-up to the previous Letter in September, but we revisit the topic because its importance and gravity to humanity cannot be overstated. We hope to provide a brief primer on...
After 15 months of looking at the four walls of our house and now fully vaccinated, we were eager to be anywhere but there. So, for our first foray, we travelled 2 hours to Slaughter Beach, a small Delaware community on the shores of the...
Last year, WBI ran a story about the South African documentary, My Octopus Teacher and recommended it to our readers. Many then watched the documentary (on Netflix) and sang its praises to their friends and contacts. This year, My Octopus Teacher, was nominated for numerous...
Sea turtles have been shown to have the remarkable ability to find their way across thousands of kilometers of open ocean back to a specific beach where they lay their eggs or to a specific feeding ground. Early in this century, the American scientists Kenneth...
The total global catch of wild fish increased from 31 million metric tons in 1950 to a high of 130 million metric tons in 1996 before falling back to 109 million metric tons in 2010. However, from 1950 onwards, 366 of 1,519 fisheries collapsed (defined...
Over the past few years, news stories describing the global wildlife decline have generally referenced the Living Planet Index (LPI), which is based on methodology developed by the World Wildlife Fund and the Zoological Society of London. The LPI indicates that wildlife populations have declined...
Since 2015, the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have served as a framework for a holistic approach to development that recognizes the need to incorporate non-economic measures of growth and human well-being. The SDG guidelines are a bold attempt to accomplish some of the most...
The theme of the Third African Animal Welfare conference was the connection between the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and Animal Welfare. Dr. Andrew Rowan was asked to give a presentation that addressed how the SDGs intersected with global animal welfare. There are seventeen SDGs...
In May of this year, the EU adopted new rules on single-use plastic items and plastic fishing gear to reduce marine plastic waste. According to the press release, there is a growing sense of urgency among EU citizens about the need to stop plastic pollution...
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...
