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Determining Historical Baselines in Ocean Ecosystems
Get PDFAn earlier issue of WellBeing News explored the shifting historical baselines phenomenon. This phenomenon illustrates the tendency of ecologists to use recent wildlife population numbers as the baseline for their studies, even though the recent wildlife population may be much lower than the population 50 or 100 years earlier. The lack of historical records on specific ecosystems or of lengthy and reliable time-series data contributes to the shifting baselines syndrome. One usually has to find indirect measures to infer what was happening in ecosystems prior to 1950. The Monterey Bay Aquarium established the Ocean Memory Laboratory in 2018 as an antidote to this data lack and has been promoting the search for historical markers of ocean ecology and health. The Laboratory is the brainchild of the aquarium science director, Dr. Kyle van Houtan who lists historical ecology as one of his research interests
The US Meat Supply Crisis
Get PDFThe US meat supply chain is in disarray. At least 205 US slaughterhouses have had COVID-19 outbreaks, infecting at least 18,500 workers — about one in five of the industry’s workers. Over 7,000 workers at Tyson Foods alone have been infected, including over 1,000 at just one Iowa slaughterhouse. Meat is in short supply, with Walmart, Kroger, and Costco all limiting meat purchases. This has attracted huge media attention — the most slaughterhouses have received in a decade. In the last week, both USA Today and the Washington Post have printed long-form articles on the plight of slaughterhouse workers and the negligence of their employers. Even the industry’s euphemistically titled “depopulations” are now attracting mass media attention, including from ABC, CBS, Fox, CNN, and CNBC. Some are starting to connect these problems with factory farming — or even meat eating itself. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) recently endorsed Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ)’s bill to ban the largest factory farms. Last week alone, CNN ran four pieces on how to eat less meat in response to meat shortages, while Jonathan Safran-Foer’s NYT op-ed on “the end of meat” trended on Twitter. This has led some to argue this is a unique opportunity to reform factory farming, or even to end it. Is it
Response to Wolf et al.: Furthering Debate over the Suitability of Trap-Neuter-Return for Stray Cat Management
Get PDFTo continue dialogue over proposed Australian trials of Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR), we applied a framework requiring identification of areas of agreement, areas of disagreement, and identification of empirical data collection required to resolve disagreements. There is agreement that Australia has a problem with stray cats, causing problems of impacts on wildlife, nuisance,disease transmission (including public health issues and exchange of diseases between stray cat and pet cat populations), poor welfare outcomes for stray cats, and an emotional burden on staff euthanising healthy stray cats. There is disagreement on whether (i) current measures are failing, leading to unacceptably high euthanasia levels, (ii) some contributors to the debate misunderstand TNR, (iii) TNR trials will reduce urban cat populations and associated problems, (iv) TNR is an ethical solution to cat overpopulation, and (v) some contributors to the debate promulgated misinformation. Although not everyone agrees that TNR trials should proceed, as a hypothetical exploration, we propose an experimental approach explicitly comparing TNR to alternatives. Trials could only be considered if other detailed and well-funded attempts at stray cat control focusing across an entire Local Government Area (LGA) prove ineffective
Subsidised by junk foods: factors influencing body condition in stray cats (Felis catus)
Get PDFDomestic cats (Felis catus) are one of the most widely distributed and successful carnivores globally. While cats are popular pets, many unowned, ‘stray’ cats live freely in anthropogenic environments at high densities where they make use of anthropogenic resources. These stray cats present a management challenge due to concerns about wildlife predation, pathogen transmission, public nuisance and threats to cat welfare (e.g. vehicle collisions). In Australia, there are few studies
of strays compared with pet cats or feral cats (free-roaming cats in rural areas that are independent of resources provided
by humans). To contribute original data about stray cat biology, the carcasses of 188 euthanised stray cats were collected from Perth, Western Australia. Cats were assessed for general health, age, reproduction, diet and gastrointestinal parasite
biomass. The influence of cat demographics, collection location, season, parasite biomass, diet and history of supplemental feeding by people were tested against body condition. Overall, strays were physically healthy and reproductive, with few
life-threatening injuries or macroscopic evidence of disease; however, helminths were extremely common (95% of cats) and pose a threat. Nearly 40% of strays consumed wildlife, including two species of endemic marsupial. Alarmingly, 57.5%
of strays were scavenging vast amounts of refuse, including life-threatening items in volumes that blocked their gastrointestinal tracts. These findings illustrate that strays need to be removed from anthropogenic environments for their own
health and welfare and to prevent continued breeding. Targeted control programmes should prioritise removal of cats from areas where refuse is common and where valued native fauna exist
Why Has the “Pet Effect” Meme Spread So Rapidly?
Get PDFBelief in the benefits of pets on owner\u27s health is widespread. Media reports on pet therapy mostly (70%) extol the benefits while only 10% reported the negative effects of pets. Only 17% of media reports were balanced analyses of benefits and risks
The Odd Demography of Loving Pets: Sex, Money, and Race
Get PDFThe biennial General Social Survey of 2018 asked a question on pet ownership that allowed a detailed examination of pet ownership according to different demographic characteristics. For example, households with children have higher pet ownership rates than single households. Pet ownership is highest in white households and lowest in African-American households
The State Of Animal Advocacy In The U.S. & Canada: Experiences & Turnover
No full textIn this study, Faunalytics investigated the important question of why some animal advocates stay engaged with the movement long-term while others leave the movement or move from one organization to another. This question is complex and multi-faceted, but very important. Some of the key factors measured in this survey were satisfaction with leadership, burnout, satisfaction with job resources, harassment, and discrimination
World Happiness Report 2020
Get PDFThis year the World Happiness Report focuses especially on the environment – social, urban, and natural. After presenting our usual country rankings and explanations of life evaluations in Chapter 2, we turn to these three categories of environment, and how they affect happiness. The social environment is dealt with in detail in the later parts of Chapter 2. It is also a main focus of Chapter 7, which looks at happiness in the Nordic countries and finds that higher personal and institutional trust are key factors in explaining why life evaluations are so high in those countries. Urban life is the focus of Chapter 3, which examines the happiness ranking of cities, and of Chapter 4, which compares happiness in cities and rural areas across the world. An Annex considers recent international efforts to develop common definitions of urban, peri-urban, and rural communities. The natural environment is the focus of Chapter 5, which examines how the local environment affects happiness. Chapter 6 takes a longer and broader focus on the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The wide range of the SDGs links them to all three of the environmental themes considered in other chapters
Humphreys
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