It is time to tackle the biodiversity crisis
The world is facing a biodiversity crisis. In the coming decades, a million of the Earth’s species face the possibility of extinction due to climate change, pollution, and habitat loss. Even species that are not yet on the brink will face huge population declines. This extinction crisis means fewer pollinators for agriculture, depleted fisheries, and […]
In Panama, legal rights given to sea turtles, boosting the ‘rights of nature’ movement
On a Panamanian beach long after dark, a group of undergraduate students dug into the sand to excavate a sea turtle nest, their lamps casting a soft red glow as they studied eggs, inventoried the success of the hatch and checked for any surviving hatchlings stuck at the bottom of the nest. Nearby, armed members […]
Hello kitty, goodbye kittens? Gene therapy spays cats without surgery
Experts call it the holy grail of pet contraception: a single shot or pill that would permanently sterilize cats and dogs without the need for expensive and time-consuming spay/neuter surgery. Scientists have struggled to develop such a product for more than 20 years, but every effort has failed—until now.
Protect the endangered Gulf of Mexico whale from extinction
The Rice’s whale, also known as the Gulf of Mexico whale, can be as big as a railroad boxcar and as heavy as a typical fire truck and is the only large whale species that lives year-round in the waters of the United States. And because of fossil fuel exploration development and other human activities, […]
Alaska’s recent brown bear massacre is a historic disgrace
The state of Alaska’s killing of 94 brown bears (including cubs), five black bears and five wolves last month in Southwest Alaska, shooting them from helicopters, is a historic national and global disgrace. This certainly must be one of, if not the, largest kill of predators by state agents in such a short time in […]
Animals are not “things”: Happy the Elephant and Personhood
Globally, nonhuman animals (animals) are considered to be “things”—objects and property—in the eyes of legal systems with no fundamental rights. Clearly, animals who have complex minds, deep social, intellectual, and emotional lives, and who are able to make choices (have agency) and display self-recognition are not things. Yet, Happy, a clearly smart and sentient elephant, […]
Roger Payne, who found out that whales could sing, dies at 88
Roger Payne, the scientist who spurred a worldwide environmental conservation movement with his discovery that whales could sing, has died. He was 88. Payne made the discovery in 1967 during a research trip to Bermuda in which a Navy engineer provided him with a recording of curious underwater sounds documented while listening for Russian submarines. […]
California has the country’s strongest animal welfare law. Now it just needs to be enforced.
Last month, in a welcome surprise to animal welfare advocates, the US Supreme Court sided with pigs over the pork industry. In a 5-4 decision, the Court upheld Proposition 12, a California law that partially bans the sale of pork from farms that keep pregnant breeding pigs, known as sows, in tiny enclosures called gestation […]
Utah to ban hunting trumpeter swans, North America’s largest bird
In a major change to swan hunting in Utah, state wildlife officials propose banning the taking of trumpeter swans, a rare large-bodied cousin to tundra swans. Tundra swans would remain legal to shoot during Utah’s 73-day fall swan-hunting season. Prompting the move is the unacceptably high number of migrating trumpeters killed each year by Utah […]
Male woolly mammoths had testosterone-fueled aggressive episodes
Once a year, adult male Asian and African elephants go through musth, or a period when their reproductive hormone levels—including testosterone—surge, and they act more aggressive and unpredictable. Paleontologists have long wondered if male woolly mammoths—modern elephants’ extinct relatives—also experienced this condition, which appears to have a breeding purpose.
Ocean temperatures are off the charts right now, and scientists are alarmed
Ocean surface heat is at record-breaking levels. Temperatures began climbing in mid-March and skyrocketed over the course of several weeks, leaving scientists scrambling to figure out exactly why. Temperatures have fallen since their peak in April—as they naturally do in the spring—but they are still higher than they have ever been on record for this […]
Animals are dying in droves. What are they telling us?
From flu-ridden sea lions to elephant die-offs, mass mortality events are becoming more common. We understand very little about their repercussions. Their scale—that of carnage—seems to speak to our modern ecological anxiety, rage, and grief; mass mortality events are material evidence of anthropogenic apocalypse, an unignorable and immediate tally of the ravages we’ve sown.
