Animal advocates have been fighting for years to free Lolita, a lone orca at the Miami Seaquarium, and now they’re getting some additional support from city officials. Lolita was once a wild and free member of the southern resident killer whales who live in the Pacific Northwest, but she was taken for public display in […]
Tag: wildlife crime
POLL: Should the use of bears as living tourist attractions be banned?
Rescuers are stepping in to help brown bears who are being kept in deplorable conditions and used as living attractions by their captors across Armenia. These brown bears have been poached from the wild and confined to barren enclosures at restaurants, factories and bus depots, among other places, so they can be used to draw […]
POLL: Should the Rare Spirit Bear Be Protected From Hunters?
KLEMTU, GREAT BEAR RAINFOREST, BRITISH COLUMBIA – There are stories about the white bears that hide in the deep forest of British Columbia’s coast. Old stories, handed down from one generation to the next for thousands of years, since the last Ice Age gripped the world, and glaciers licked the edge of the rain forest. […]
POLL: Should the tradition of throwing wild turkeys from a plane be allowed?
For over 50 years, it’s been a tradition at the annual Yellville Turkey Trot festival in Arkansas for a plane flown by someone only known as the “Phantom Pilot” to fly about 1,000 feet over the crowd and drop live turkeys to the ground. Festival-goers then chase and catch the turkeys – the ones that […]
Rhino poacher sentenced to 18 years in prison
A court in Malawi has convicted and sentenced a rhino poacher to 18 years in prison for killing an adult female black rhinoceros. Two of his accomplices were also handed sentences of ten and eight years each. The recent 18-year sentence might serve as a deterrent to would-be poachers, some experts say. In July this […]
POLL: Should performing elephants in circuses be banned?
Animal advocates are celebrating another major victory for animals: New York state has officially banned performing elephants. Even though we celebrated when Ringling Bros. announced it would be retiring its elephants, and later closing down, there are still many other circuses and companies dragging them around the U.S. for entertainment. Fortunately, the public is turning […]
POLL: Should Trump be allowed to “roll back” the Clean Water Act?
October is the month for scary stories, so here goes. Once upon a time, there were no federal standards to protect water quality in our rivers, streams, bays, and lakes. The result? Rivers like Ohio’s Cuyahoga River caught fire multiple times before the infamous fire in 1969. The average loss of wetlands in the United […]
POLL: Should the Alaska Refuge be opened up for drilling?
When Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge was established in the 1960s, the U.S. government had several goals in mind—chief among them protecting the region’s unique wildlife and wilderness. But the region has one extremely contentious asset that has sparked controversy for decades—nearly 10.3 billion barrels of petroleum under the ground. Now, Congress is proposing legislation […]