Advocacy For Animals

Each week the National Anti-Vivisection Society (NAVS) sends out an email alert called “Take Action Thursday,” which tells subscribers about current actions they can take to help animals. NAVS is a national, not-for-profit educational organization incorporated in the State of Illinois. NAVS promotes greater compassion, respect and justice for animals through educational programs based on respected ethical and scientific theory and supported by extensive documentation of the cruelty and waste of vivisection. You can register to receive these action alerts and more at the NAVS Web site. This week’s “Take Action Thursday” focuses on some excellent and varied bills introduced in New York State. continue reading…

by Stephanie Ulmer for the ALDF Blog

The Los Angeles Times recently reported that the alleged “sport” of greyhound dog racing is in steep decline in America. Animal activists have long fought for the end of such racing, citing the horrendous conditions in which most of the dogs are kept.

The article discusses how “the dogs are kept muzzled in small cages, fed inferior food, injected with steroids and frequently injured at the track.” It is well-known that greyhounds love to run and exercise, and breeding and keeping the dogs for racing does not usually allow them to do what they love most.

There have also been numerous instances of blatant animal cruelty and unnecessary killing of these majestic animals. continue reading…

by Gregory McNamee

And now it’s crinoid time again…

Crinoids are marine animals that flourished some 350 million years ago—and flourished is exactly the word, for so abundant were those echinoderms that whole reefs of limestone are made of their fossilized bodies.

They were also quite staggeringly various, a puzzle for paleontologists. The solution, it seems, has emerged: According to a paper published in a recent issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the key to the crinoids’ success was the absence of creatures that ate them, so much so that crinoids crowded out other species low on the food chain. And why were those hungry creatures absent? At the end of the Devonian Period came a wave of mass extinctions.

Remove a predator, then, and the prey goes to town. But only briefly, perhaps—consider what happens to deer populations when mountain lions leave the scene, to take just one instance. continue reading…

by Gregory McNamee

It had been nearly a century since condors last flew over the Grand Canyon of the Colorado River. Hunted out almost to extinction in the early 1920s, the giant birds, once common throughout the Southwest and along the nearly unbroken chain of mountains extending from Canada deep into South America, had existed only in captivity for many years.

Thanks to an ambitious reintroduction program spearheaded by the Peregrine Fund in concert with state and federal wildlife agencies, Gymnogyps californianus now graces the skies of northern Arizona again. continue reading…

by Will Sheehan for Animal Blawg

Public perception has always played a significant role in the battle for animal rights. Newspapers, publishing houses and television have traditionally served as facilitators–and occasionally unwitting allies–of the movement.Due to the persuasiveness of visual aids, it is clear that the future battleground for the public relations struggle will take place on Youtube and other online media sources. These websites have revolutionized anti-cruelty documentation through the distribution of inexpensive, visceral and uncensored viral videos depicting the inhumane treatment of animals. This has elevated animal advocacy to an unprecedented level.

One particularly graphic video (Warning: contains graphic footage, not for the faint of heart) depicting a goring of a rodeo horse by a bull at a high school rodeo has generated over 8 million views. It is clear from the accompanying discussion amongst the Youtube “commentariat” that distaste for the sport of bull riding is far from unanimous, however ,it is difficult to recall any instance when a public debate over the sport has taken place at such on such a grand scale. continue reading…