Originally aired November 30, 2021. In this webinar, Kathleen Rowan reviewed WBI’s Global Dog Campaign, Dr. Andrew Rowan discussed an international perspective of global dog homelessness and Dr. S. Chinny Krishna talked about the history of sterilization as a humane dog management tool. The webinar also featured Consortium Implementation Partners, including Dr. Jalil Mohammadzai of Mayhew Afghanistan, Lilian Schnog of AHPPA (Costa Rica), Dr. S. Chinny Krishna of Blue Cross of India, and the expert Global Team members supporting the campaign, including Dr. John Boone, Dr. Tyler Flockhart, Josh Coefer and Laura Gosse.
Moderators
Kathleen Rowan, WellBeing International CEO, has over 40 years of experience in the nonprofit arena, serving on nonprofit boards and in executive positions. She has extensive experience in international relief and development and has traveled extensively, including to some of the most troubled countries in the world.
Eric “Rick” Bernthal, JD, WellBeing International Board member, served as a member of the Humane Society of the United States board for twelve years, seven as Chair of the Board. He was the Managing Partner of Latham & Watkins’ DC law office for more than a decade. He has written and spoken widely on animal advocacy and dog protection issues.
Panelists
Dr. S. Chinny Krishna is a co-founder of the Blue Cross of India and founder and Managing Director of Aspick Engineering in Chennai India. In 1964, Dr. Krishna was the first person in the world to promote dog sterilization (“Animal Birth Control” or ABC) to improve the welfare of roaming dogs. He has served three terms as the Vice-Chair of the Animal Welfare Board of India and was a founding Board member of the Federation of Indian Animal Protection Organizations, established in 2010.
Dr. Jalil Mohammadzai (Dr. Mo) grew up in Afghanistan and graduated from the Kabul University Veterinary School. In 1997 he volunteered at Mayhew in the United Kingdom and was offered a position there in 2003. In 2017, he was appointed Country Director for Mayhew Afghanistan where he developed a rabies control program for Kabul and persuaded the municipality to stop culling street dogs and embrace vaccination instead. He is the recipient of many international awards for his dog welfare work.
Dr. Andrew Rowan, WellBeing International President, has more than 40 years of experience in animal welfare science and advocacy. He has served on numerous boards of national and international NGOs and most recently served as the CEO of Humane Society International. Dr. Rowan was a professor at Tufts Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine, where he established the Tufts Center for Animals & Public Policy, launched an academic journal on human-animal relations, and researched companion animal demographics and management.
Lilian Schnog moved to Costa Rica in 1986 and immediately began volunteering at the AHPPA shelter in San Rafael close to her new home. In 1991, she took over the management of the AHPPA, which now has a fully equipped veterinary clinic, an education facility, a pet store, and onsite housing for interns. The shelter is now providing care and rehabilitation for animals rescued from hoarding and cruelty situations and running sterilization clinics across Costa Rica.
John Boone, PhD, is a global survey and analysis expert. In 2012, he began conducting surveys for animal welfare and rabies control organizations to support their dog and cat management programs. To date, he has contributed to 40+ such programs around the world.
Josh Coefer is an expert in geospatial analysis and database construction and operation.
Tyler Flockhart, PhD, is a Population Ecology & Conservation expert. He analyzed the 2020 WBI survey data for dog populations in Costa Rica and is an expert in developing animal population models.
Originally aired October 20 & 27, 2021. Watch our webinar series on invertebrate animal sentience, moderated by Dr. Stevan Harnad, founding editor of Behavioral and Brain Sciences and current Editor-in-Chief of Animal Sentience. Dr. Harnad was joined by a multidisciplinary panel of experts including Jonathan Birch (ethicist), Robert Elwood (neurologist), Helen Lambert (animal welfare consultant), Jennifer Mather (comparative psychologist), Giorgio Vallortigara (neurobiologist), Lars Chittka (behavioral ecologist), Irina Mikhalevich (philosopher) – for wide-ranging conversations on the sentience of crabs, lobsters, bees, octopi and other invertebrate animals long considered too simple to experience feelings of distress, pain and pleasure. Each webinar is 90-120 minutes long.
This webinar series was presented by Animal Sentience Journal and WellBeing International and made possible through a grant from Effective Altruism.
Moderator
Stevan Harnad, PhD, is Professor of Cognitive Science at Université du Québec à Montréal in Canada and Professor Emeritus of Cognitive Science at the University of Southampton in the UK. He is the founder and former editor of Behavioral and Brain Sciences and is the current Editor-in-Chief of Animal Sentience, the first academic journal to focus on nonhuman animals and their capacity for feeling pain distress and pleasure. A vegan, Dr. Harnad is increasingly active in animal welfare, animal rights and animal law.
Panelists
Jonathan Birch, PhD, is Associate Professor of Philosophy and the Principal Investigator on the Foundations of Animal Sentience project at the London School of Economics and Political Science in London, UK. Author of numerous articles and books, he was the author of a major review on sentience “Animal Sentience and the Precautionary Principle” in Animal Sentience. Currently, he is an advisor to the British government as it develops plans to recognize animal sentience in law.
Lars Chittka, PhD, is Professor of Sensory and Behavioral Ecology at Queen Mary University of London, UK. He is a world expert in explaining the behavior of bees and how they shape our lives. He has been an Editor of PLoS Biology, biology’s leading open access journal and is a Fellow of the Linnean Society, the Royal Entomological Society and the Royal Society of Biology. His work examines the intersection between sensory physiology and learning psychology on the one hand with evolutionary ecology on the other.
Robert Elwood, PhD, is Professor Emeritus in the School of Biological Sciences at the Queen’s University in Belfast, Northern Ireland. He has tested the idea that crustaceans (shrimp, crab, lobster) retain memories of noxious experiences, countering the belief that these animals respond purely by reflex. Building on these earlier studies, Dr. Elwood recently (April 2021) published a review of studies on fish and decapods that examined the possibility of pain in Frontiers in Veterinary Science in the article “Potential Pain in Fish and Decapods: Similar Experimental Approaches and Similar Results.” In 2018, he was honored by the British Society of Animal Science and the Royal Society for the Protection of Cruelty to Animals for his work in animal sentience and animal welfare, the first time in 30 years that the award was conferred on a scientist for research involving invertebrates.
Helen Lambert, PhD, (nee Proctor) was the Sentience Manager at the World Society for Animal Protection (now World Animal Protection – WAP) from 2010 to 2017. She has been researching animal sentience in various species over the past 10 years. She authored an early (2012) review paper of animal sentience (including both vertebrate and invertebrate species) during her time at WAP, and has since performed several reviews of sentience research, including her most recent review on insect sentience and cognition. She graduated with a PhD (2018) from the University of Portsmouth in the United Kingdom on measuring positive and negative emotional states in cows. Her findings are published in several academic journals, and more details can be found on her website. She is currently a freelance consultant specializing in animal sentience issues, working with organisations, governments and universities all over the world.
Jennifer Mather, PhD, is Professor of Psychology at the University of Lethbridge in Canada. Dr. Mather has written extensively on octopi sentience and cognition, most recently the 2020 article “Why Are Octopuses Going to Be the ‘Poster Child’ for Invertebrate Welfare?” for the Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science. She also authored a 2019 article on “What is in the octopus’ mind?” in Animal Sentience and was a consultant on the Oscar-winning documentary, My Octopus Teacher.
Irina Mikhalevich, PhD, is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Rochester Institute of Technology in New York. Her work focuses on the intersection of the philosophy of science, ethics, and the philosophy of cognitive science with an emphasis on conceptual and methodological problems in animal cognition science. Dr. Mikhalevich is presently involved in research concerning, among many things, the complex cognitive and affective worlds of invertebrate animals such as insects, spiders and mollusks, long regarded as too simple to merit serious policy consideration. She coauthored a 2020 article in Animal Sentience (“Minds without spines: Evolutionarily inclusive animal ethics”).
Giorgio Vallortigara, PhD, is Professor at the Center for Mind/Brain Sciences at University of Trento in Italy. Dr. Vallortigara serves as the Principal Investigator of the Animal Brain & Cognition research group, a part of the Center for Mind/Brain Sciences. Under his leadership, the group’s main goal is the investigation of cognition and sentience across different species, including bees and flies. Dr. Vallortigara has published numerous papers on insect and cuttlefish cognition.