Three-quarters of new and emerging infectious diseases in humans originate in wildlife. COVID-19, SARS and Ebola all started this way. The COVID-19 global pandemic has drawn new attention to how people think about wild animals, consume them and interact with them, and how those interactions can affect public health. Any activity that puts people in […]
Tag: hunters
Last chance for the Persian leopard: the fight to save Iraqi Kurdistan’s forests
In the spring, the Pirmagrun mountain, one of the world’s last refuges for the endangered Persian leopard, towers over the surrounding countryside in Iraqi Kurdistan, its rocky snow-capped peaks fading into an ancient oak forest that starts out sparsely before running into narrow, densely-wooded valleys. As recently as the 1980s, the forest covered the slopes […]
Lions bred in South Africa for their bones to be used in Far East for traditional medicine
Thousands of lions are being bred in captivity and slaughtered to sell their bones to the far East where they are ground down for traditional medicine. Due to South Africa’s barbaric but lucrative big cat industry, there are currently four times the amount of lions in captivity than in the wild. The lions who are […]
National Park Service to allow brutal hunting methods on Alaska’s national preserves
Just as America embraces the reopening of National Park Service (NPS) lands, including both national parks and preserves, the Administration is dealing a devastating blow to native wildlife populations across some of our country’s most pristine and ecologically significant wildlands. ANPS policy that was finalized last week will allow for the killing of iconic animals […]
Oregon Wildlife Commission Keeps Cruel Trapping Practices in Place
PORTLAND,Ore.— After a contentious 12-hour meeting, the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission rejected conservation proposals to adopt a uniform 24-hour trap check time for all wildlife and to ban beaver trapping on federally managed public lands. The commission also voted 6-1 last Friday to continue the state’s existing furbearer trapping and hunting regulations for the […]
Sick trophy hunters share Tripadvisor-style reviews after killing lions and hippos
A distressing image of a sick trophy hunter posing with a dead lioness was shared on a Tripadvisor-style site for big game hunting. Discount African Hunts, popular with Brits, operates in Namibia, Mozambique, South Africa and Zimbabwe – offering hunters the chance to kill animals – some endangered – for thousands of pounds. Some of […]
Māori push for pandemic stimulus spend to save Raukūmara Forest
Two Māoriiwi, or tribal groups, are campaigning for a portion of the New Zealand government’s new COVID-19 economic stimulus package to help save their treasured, ancestral Raukūmara Forest from being overrun by introduced pests. The Raukūmaras stretch across around 200,000 hectares (494,000 acres) of national park and private land along the North Island’s East Cape. […]
Red-billed Oxpeckers Protect Black Rhinos From Poachers (but Also Drink Their Blood)
There’s long been a debate over whether Red-billed Oxpeckers earn their keep. As their name suggests, these common birds of Africa’s open lands like to hang around with domestic cattle and many large, wild mammal species. They eat ticks and other pesky parasites clinging to their hosts. Less helpfully, they also sometimes peck at wounds […]
