Education/Awareness
From The Conversation: People around the world and throughout history have used birds to think about and predict the future. This new research project that compared reports from six continents found that people from diverse communities pay attention to particular birds and what they reveal about the world around us, from approaching weather to illness….
Read More about Ethno-ornithology: What the birds have to tell us
ALTERNATIVES
From Trophic Tales: The focus on the welfare of individual domesticated animals might be an extension of the modernist tendency to simplify and discriminate. The morality of living, eating, and dying is more complex than two-word slogans can prescribe. If we care about animals —wild or domesticated— we’ve to think in terms of entire ecosystems….
Read More about Eating for a better world: Some questions and a guide
CLIMATE CRISIS
The fact is, wild animals do not make sense under capitalism. Capitalism operates according to a quite simple set of rules. Your desires are respected in accordance with the amount of financial resources you have available to you. Every wild animal is poor, thus no wild animal gets a “vote” over how resources are used….
Read More about Nathan J. Robinson: How wild animals became the proletariat
Bookshelf
From The Millions: When human leaders fail us as role models, we should look to animals, says Sy Montgomery. “I can tell you that teachers are all around to help you: with four legs or two or even eight. All you have to do is recognize them as teachers and be ready to hear their truths.”…
Read More about How to Be a Good Creature: A Memoir in Thirteen Animals, by Sy Montgomery
Bookshelf
Peter Wohlleben, author of the best-selling ‘The Hidden Life of Trees’, explores the emotions and intelligence of animals in his new book. New scientific discoveries in this field have big moral implications, he says. A review and an excerpt, plus the video of an eye-opening talk by animal ethologist Jonathan Balcombe on the inner life of animals….
Read More about The Inner Life of Animals: Surprising Observations of a Hidden World
The white rhinoceros, the largest species of rhinoceros, is on the verge of extinction
Conserve/Resist
From Mother Jones: Most scientists now agree that we are experiencing a sixth mass extinction, but unlike before, humans are responsible for this one. Here are some of the highlights from the Red List, the most comprehensive roster of threatened species available, including three that went extinct last year and others to watch out for in 2017….
Read More about We’ll never see these animals again
ALTERNATIVES
Will Falk writes: Just like an owl on a chain is no longer an owl, and an elephant in a zoo is no longer an elephant, humans cut off from the nature are no longer human. We are animals and animals are an ongoing process of relationships. When those relationships become impossible, we lose ourselves….
Read More about Layla and the owl’s eyes: Ecopsychology and being human
Feral dog chasing a wild boar at the Banni grasslands, Gujarat
Chetan Misher / Sanctuary Asia
Education/Awareness
From Hindustan Times: Man’s best friend has become a growing threat to India’s wildlife. As canine numbers rise in cities, towns and villages, entire ecosystems are being affected.They’ve attacked endangered stags in Kashmir and preyed on livestock in the Himalayas. Wild ass, gazelle, nilgai, blackbuck and deer have died of dog attacks in our sanctuaries….
Read More about India’s top predator may just be the dog. And we’re to blame
CLIMATE CRISIS
John Sauven writes in The Guardian: Farm animals that are raised intensively require a staggering amount of animal feed and water. Livestock production occupies the vast majority of agricultural land and is the main reason why nearly 50% of the wildlife we share our planet with has disappeared since the start of the industrial revolution….
Read More about Why meat eaters should think much more about soil
Economy
From Down To Earth: About 70 per cent of India’s livestock is owned by 67 per cent of the small and marginal farmers and the landless, who shifted to livestock in face of uncertain rain and dwindling income. New restrictions on cattle slaughter will severely cripple the livestock economy which is now bigger than crop economy….
Read More about How India is killing the country’s largest economy of the poor
CLIMATE CRISIS
When I wrote about vegetarianism, or more precisely, why I as an Indian environmentalist would not advocate it, I had expected an emotional response. My article was meant to provoke a discussion. Here’s what I learnt from the responses; let’s see if we can find a middle way—not to agree, but to debate and dissent….
Read More about Sunita Narain responds to comments on “Why I would not advocate vegetarianism”
Kalpataru, the divine tree of life, depicted at the 8th century Pawon temple, Java
Indiafacts.info
ALTERNATIVES
Viva Kermani writes: Hinduism is the world’s largest nature based religion that recognises and seeks the Divine in nature and acknowledges everything as sacred. A loss of this understanding that earth is our mother, or rather a deliberate ignorance of this, has resulted in the abuse, and the exploitation of the earth and its resources….
Read More about What modern ecology can learn from ancient Hinduism
CLIMATE CRISIS
Global Environmentalist writes: Your blog post has given every urban Indian a free pass to continue to devour animals as it pleases their taste buds, all in the name of ‘saving the farmers’. The question is, will these people be able to save themselves when we don’t have enough clean water, air and good health?…
Read More about Meat-eating and the environment: An open letter to Sunita NarainConflict/Dispossession
Farmers need options to take care of animals that are not producing milk. Or they will be forced to let them stray, to eat the plastic cities throw away and die. By banning meat we are literally taking away half the potential income the livestock owner possesses. It is stealing from the poor, nothing less….
Read More about Sunita Narain: Why I would not advocate vegetarianism
Elephants raiding a banana plantation near Bannerghatta, Karnataka
Nishanth Srinivasaiah
Conflict/Dispossession
The Centre has endorsed various states’ move to list wild animals – elephants in Bengal, monkeys in Uttarakhand, peacocks in Goa and nilgai in Bihar – as ‘vermin’, allowing them to be culled. With human-animal conflict once again in under the lens, we present a selection of articles that examine both sides of the story….
Read More about Debate: Is the ongoing culling of wild animals necessary?
Bookshelf
Martin Simpson writes: It is impossible to read Farmageddon without coming to the conclusion that the world’s food and agriculture system is screwed. This is a system that produces enormous quantities of food, yet wastes up to a third of it… What it also produces is environmental disaster, ill health in humans and stressful and unhealthy animals….
Read More about Bookshelf: Farmageddon – The True Cost of Cheap MeatCLIMATE CRISIS
Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret is a groundbreaking feature-length environmental documentary produced and directed by Kip Andersen and Keegan Kuhn. It follows the intrepid filmmakers as they uncover the real impact of the livestock industry. The film investigates why the world’s leading environmental organizations, including Greenpeace and Rainforest Action Network, are afraid to talk about it….
Read More about Cowspiracy: ‘The film that environmental organisations don’t want you to see’
The venue of the Art of Living event on the Yamuna floodplains
www.dailymail.co.uk
Culture/Cognition
Wildlife conservationist Neha Sinha writes: In the past, environmentalists have often been blamed as obstructionist and anti-development. Legal environmental clearance processes have been described as green terrorism because questions of sustainable development and conservation do not always go hand in hand with polluting industrial expansion. But many environmentalists feel being called anti-cultural and anti-Hindu is something new….
Read More about When communalists turn on environmentalists
