On December 19, 2022, representatives from 188 countries adopted a new agreement on biodiversity, now known as the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF). The 2022 GBF aims to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by adopting four overarching global goals and 23 targets, including conserving 30%...
Ted Kerasote is an outdoorsman and author who has written three charming and insightful books about the human-dog relationship – Merle's Door (2007), Pukka, The Pup after Merle (2010), and Pukka's Promise (2013). Pukka's Promise relates the story of Kerasote's search for a dog that...
WellBeing International has published four articles on the Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza Virus (HPAIV) in the past fourteen months. Science has published seven news stories on bird flu this year. The most recent story (May 1, 2024) was titled “Scientists Call New Measures to Control...
As a graduate student at Yale University School of Forestry, Thomas Crowther was intrigued by a question his roommate was asked: how many trees were on Earth? While his roommate didn't see the significance of the question, Crowther took up the challenge of using a...
In 1964, a provocative essay was published by British social anthropologist Edmund Leach in the proceedings of the 17th International Congress of Psychology. The organizer of the congress, Eric Lenneberg, commented that he used the occasion to invite outstanding scientists to discuss the phenomenon of...
April 22, 2024, will be the 54th anniversary of the first Earth Day. The 1960s decade in the USA was a time of widespread citizen protests and demonstrations. Citizens used protest marches and sit-ins to campaign for civil rights. Women demanded equality in the labor market...
Introduction WellBeing International continues to explore the potential health benefits of the human-animal bond and return to the benefits of service dogs for veterans in this newsletter. There are now many organizations promoting and providing service dogs for veterans. WBI focuses on two organizations that provide...
Following the release on September 4, 2023, of a report by IPBES on the adverse impact of invasive alien species on global biodiversity, the Australian Government announced that it was again “declaring war” on cats (the Government declared war on cats in 2015, pledging to...
In 1992, Brewster Bartlett, a science teacher at Pinkerton Academy in New Hampshire, started a citizen science project encouraging his students to use email. Driving back to the school one day, he passed a dead skunk on the side of the road. He decided that...
On June 28, 2012, the United Nations General Assembly declared March 20 the International Day of Happiness following a resolution introduced by Bhutan, who famously declared that it would track national progress via a Gross National Happiness metric rather than GDP. The annual World Happiness...
