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Updates via emailFrom Fighters to Friends
Our thanks to Michael Markarian, president of the Humane Society Legislative Fund, for permission to republish this piece from the blog Animals and Politics.
HSLF and HSUS have been focused on upgrading the penalties for staged animal combat, and in the last couple years we have helped pass 29 new laws to crack down on illegal animal fighting. But deterring bad behavior through law enforcement actions is just one piece of the puzzle. We also need to reach out to young men who are at risk for getting involved in animal fighting, and help to show them a better way before they head down this dead-end path. […]
An Accident Waiting to Happen
Our thanks to the Born Free USA Blog for permission to reprint this piece by Maggie Graham, a Research Assistant at Born Free, on one zoo’s bizarre practice of allowing visitors to interact closely with big cats and bears. The zoo, it should be noted, claims that the animals are tame.
Imagine a zoo allowing its visitors to routinely hug their big cats. As mind-blowing as that may sound, it actually occurs on regular basis at a well-known zoo in Argentina. The Lujan Zoo, located just outside the capital city of Buenos Aires, boasts of amazing encounters with iconic species such as lions, tigers, and bears. Pictures are displayed of people sitting on top of a lion, wrapping their arms around fully-grown tigers, and swinging bear cubs by their back legs! It is inconceivable that a zoo would place visitors in such peril. […]
Animals in the News
Considerable controversy has surrounded the reintroduction of the gray wolf to the Yellowstone region of the northern Rocky Mountains corridor since plans to do so were first formulated a quarter-century ago. One source of friction between livestock producers and biologists—and a source of cheer for conservationists—was that wolves do not recognize map lines and will go where necessity takes them, spreading out to, with luck, reinhabit their old domains. So they have done; wolves have fanned out, in small number, from Yellowstone, and one day they may connect with their cousins down in Arizona and up in Canada, a moment that for them may be akin to Russian and American troops meeting on the banks of the Elbe River in World War II. […]
Wildlife Alliance: Helping the People of Cambodia Save Their Natural Heritage
Wildlife Alliance is an international, not-for-profit conservation organization based in Washington, D.C. Among its many efforts to help animals and people coexist peacefully are its programs in Cambodia, where the organization works with the government and citizens to protect wildlife and wildlife habitats. Wildlife Alliance also has field programs in Russia and Thailand. A hallmark of the organization is its commitment to balancing the needs of wildlife and human communities, and it does so through involving local governments, law enforcement agencies, and community organizations and other non-governmental entities. […]
Read more of Wildlife Alliance: Helping the People of Cambodia Save Their Natural Heritage