From 19-22 March of this year, several hundred conservation biologists, activists, economists, lawyers and political scientists convened in the Sultan Nazrin Shah Centre in Worcester College, Oxford to discuss global-scale challenges to wildlife and how the assembled cornucopia of disciplines could help to address and...
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...
WellBeing International’s vision is focused on promoting the well-being of People, Animals, and the Environment (PAE Triad) and achieving optimal outcomes for all. The challenges involved in developing an appropriate measure of well-being for all three elements in the PAE Triad cannot be overstated and our goal to...
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...
As the global production of plastic items explodes, plastic debris and waste are accumulating across the planet’s oceans. A 20-fold increase in plastic production occurred between 1964 and 2014, and the rate of production continues to increase (see figure: 407 million tonnes in 2015, 302...
Wildlife conservation had its beginning in the United States in the mid-nineteenth century, largely in response to the widespread destruction of wildlife through market hunting. Notable among its early supporters was our 26th president, Theodore Roosevelt (TR), who was almost solely responsible for setting aside...
Humane education – teaching children to be kind to animals and not be cruel – is one of the foundations of the global animal protection movement. St. Thomas Aquinas, while holding that Catholics had no direct duties to animals, still argued that humans had indirect...
There are approximately 800 million dogs in the world today. Around 300 million are street dogs, and the others are mostly either pets or household guard dogs. The interactions communities have with street dogs is changing (see Oct 26 blog on a shelter in Costa...
Many readers are likely already aware of the threat of plastic pollution to the environment, especially plastic in the world’s oceans. This issue has built rapidly in the last few years and there are several new NGOs launched in the last few years that focus...
