It’s been a few weeks since I have reached out to the full DawnWatch list as I have been spending time on other animal advocacy projects and am also in the process of evaluating how I can best serve animals in this fast-changing world – all of which has kept me fully occupied. However, I have been posting regularly to social media (while working towards increasing the breadth of platforms DawnWatch uses). I will share those articles below so that DawnWatch email readers can catch up on animal media via that review.

First, I want to focus briefly on some profoundly significant coverage, on Science.org, looking at the battle between the White Coat Waste Project and Nicole Kleinstreuer, an NIH official. She has long been viewed as a friend of our movement working to help phase out animal testing under unsupportive administrations. She did, however, follow up extraordinarily encouraging comments made by the new NIH head Jay Bhattacharya on Newsmax (at 46 mins) on the agency’s move away from animal testing with a strong backpedal:

“We have no intention of just phasing out animal studies overnight,” she said in a June interview with WBUR. “We know that animal studies are still very important and often scientifically justified. There are lots of areas where validated human-relevant models are not yet available.”

I hope you will check out the Science.org article and also follow the work of the White Coat Waste Project if you aren’t already.

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Also, the Ethicist, in the New York Times Magazine this Sunday (August 31), examined the question, “Should I report my neighbor’s animal abuse?” I share this gift link in the hope that you will weigh in via the comments section or with a letter sent to the Magazine sent to magazine@nytimes.com .

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Canadians received DawnWatch media alerts this long weekend – one alert about a superb Toronto Star op-ed titled, “Animal Testing is cruel and unneeded,” and one alert about today’s Toronto Star front-page story titled, “Animal Instincts: Pioneering Course Trains Veterinary Students to Recognize Signs of Abuse.”

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Here are stories shared since my last email update, on the DawnWatch X Feed and/or DawnWatch Facebook page

• The Los Angeles Times put the fight to save Tahoe bears, Hope and Bounce, on Friday’s front page (August 30). Public awareness and outcry are their best hope. Here’s the AI article summary:

“For the last few days, bear activists have been staging a round-the-clock bodyguard operation, including sleeping out in the woods, to protect a cub and a home-raiding bear that the state has targeted for ‘lethal removal.’

A state official said the bear was creating ‘a dangerous situation.’ ‘This is not normal bear behavior.’”

It’s definitely not too late to weigh in.

• The Guardian ran its view on the Carnivore Diet: “Red Meat for influencers but bad for health.”

 

• ABC World News Tonight ran a lovely segment on Robin Roberts’ visit to Rwanda to meet the wild mountain gorillas.

 

• A big game hunter gored by a buffalo he was stalking made news everywhere, with the Daily Mail bringing us the sad news that the animal was killed by the hunting guide just seconds after killing the hunter.

 

• CBS and other outlets shared that a carriage horse named Lady collapsed and died on a New York Street, reigniting the debate about the future of that industry.

 

• The New York Times shared (here’s a gift link) that Chimp Crazy star Tonia Haddix was sentenced to four years for perjuring herself in order to avoid giving up custody of Tonka. Sadly, she is unlikely to spend that time in the solitary confinement in which she kept the poor chimp while hiding him.

 

• A syndicated cartoon by Harry Bliss reminded us how much harm pesticides do to wildlife. (Thanks to Elaine Livesey-Fassel for sharing that one.)

 

• MSN covered PETA’s call for Nintendo to remove a nose ring from a cow in one of its games.

 

• Euronews shared “Spain’s octopus industry faces collapse amid overfishing, climate shifts and global demand.”

 

• The Denver Post ran a superb op-ed by the folks at Friends of Animals examining the shocking numbers behind the push for wild horse roundups, which are taxpayer funded animal cruelty. It also pushes back against the misguided calls for fertility control:

“The federal government authorizes ranchers to graze an exorbitant amount of cattle in wild horse herd management areas. It is this industrial use of our public land that degrades it.

Instead of confronting the outsized influence of private industry on public lands, the state of Colorado looks the other way.”

 

• Outnumbered, on Fox News, shared “The owners of P’Nut the Squirrel are suing the state of NY and seeking $10M for the death of their beloved pet. The state euthanized P’Nut and their pet raccoon Fred last year over a claimed rabies risk. Tests came back negative but both animals had already been put down.”

 

• NPR reported on a study that found that “the amount of livestock saved by killing a single wolf, roughly equaled 7% of a single cow. In other words, you’d have to kill roughly 14 wolves to save a single cow.”

 

• Many outlets including the New York Times shared the good news (here’s NY Times gift link) that the Wyoming man who paraded a wolf through a crowded bar before killing her has finally been charged with animal cruelty.

 

• The Guardian ran a piece, by George Monbiot, on tuna sportfishing which declared, “It’s the UK equivalent of bullfighting. .. it’s a festival of cruelty and destruction, waging war on a magnificent giant ..Where’s the sport in this sportfishing”?

 

• WJLA (ABC Virginia) reports that 1200 monkeys held in Maryland have been released from quarantine – for animal testing – and tells us “PETA which had requested the monkeys be taken to a primate sanctuary in Texas run by Born USA and pledged one million dollars to pay for their care, said primate importation needs to stop now for the sake of the animals, public health and good science.”

 

• A piece in the London Standard asked, “Are we about to experience a golden age of lab-grown meat?”

 

• The Washington Post has run, online, a beautiful story about Courtney Proctor Cross’s efforts at the Huntington Cabell Wayne Animal Shelter! Here’s a gift link.

 

• Canadians will be glad to know that the Toronto Star is publicizing the 40th anniversary of VegTo Fest, Canada’s largest free vegan food festival, wisely catering to vegans and plant-curious folks, and coming this September 21-22 to Nathan Phillips Square!

 

• And finally, the amazing Margaret Renkl has penned a beautiful New York Times piece on bird migration, which includes: “These birds are proof of what is yet possible when many people seek a way to compensate for the wide-scale environmental destruction that our species is responsible for.”

That one will be in print this week but you can read it via this gift link now.

Yours and all animals’,

Karen Dawn of DawnWatch