Critter News

OCTOBER 31, 2009

Issue 2 in Ohio would create 13-member state board to oversee the care of farm animals in the State. The Humane Society and other groups oppose it as a power grab by big agriculture to prevent another Proposition 2 (the initiative passed last year in California to improve standards for farm animal care.)

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Farm Animal Farmed Animals Animal Welfare Ohio 100

10,000 Birds

MAY 17, 2020

Kroodsma waited for years for the right opportunity to record its different songs, a “cascade of sweet and liquid notes,” one naturalist said, “like the spray of a waterfall and sunshine.”. He had long wondered, Kroodsma says, how many songs, exactly, the Canyon wren has in his repertoire. It’s a good life!

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Critter News

FEBRUARY 23, 2012

Outcry is growing against one of California’s top wildlife officials after a photo of him holding a dead mountain lion surfaced online last week. Hunting mountain lion is legal in Idaho, but illegal in California. KCRA 3 could not reach Richards for comment.

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Animal Ethics

NOVEMBER 5, 2008

Here is a Los Angeles Times story about California's Proposition 2, which passed yesterday. On the one hand, it improves the lives of many farm animals. In the long run, measures such as this may make things worse for farm animals. I'm ambivalent about the proposition.

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Critter News

NOVEMBER 19, 2009

So here is a nice story and video about a HSUS rescue of a California feral colony. It makes me want to get back into animal rescue, which is where my animal rights activism started. Tags: HSUS california animal rescue feral cats. I've been way overworked and stressed lately.

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Critter News

AUGUST 15, 2010

Last week there was a slew of articles about the agreement in Ohio between the farm industry and animal welfare activists to expand cage sizes for calves (veal), hens and pigs. This concession was to avoid a November ballot vote a la California's Proposition 2.

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10,000 Birds

JUNE 24, 2013

The one thing I really wanted to do on this most recent trip to southern California was visit Santa Cruz Island again. First off, Felonious Jive ‘s brother-in-ornithology, Seagull Steve , who you will remember from my trip to southern California back in December , came aboard the boat after a two-week stint doing field work.

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Critter News

NOVEMBER 1, 2011

For some bizarre reason (hopefully just ignorance), Reese Witherspoon has pissed off animal rights activists by purchasing and carrying around a purse made out of python skin. And it's illegal for her to have it at least in the State of California. Python skinning is horrible, brutal and repulsive. And she paid $4,000 for it.

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Pythons illegal California Animal Rights 100

Animal Ethics

AUGUST 24, 2012

With regard to wild animals, the general policy recommended by the rights view is: let them be! Tom Regan , The Case for Animal Rights , updated with a new preface [Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2004], 361 [italics in original] [first edition published in 1983])

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Critter News

JANUARY 11, 2012

I don't support the destruction of property or any physical threats against people who harm animals whether through medical testing or through conventional agriculture. And, this happened in Fresno County which is in the San Joaquin Valley of California. I grew up there. Believe me, they are NOT helping their cause at all.

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Animal Ethics

SEPTEMBER 6, 2012

All that the rights view prohibits is science that violates individual rights. There are also some things we cannot learn by using humans, if we respect their rights. The rights view merely requires moral consistency in this regard. ( If that means that there are some things we cannot learn, then so be it.

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Critter News

DECEMBER 19, 2011

I hope, when I reach their age, I'm as active and effective as Bob Barker and Betty White are in the animal rights movement. Legendary game show host Bob Barker says it will cost $200,000 to move three elephants from the Toronto Zoo to a California sanctuary, and he doesn't mind paying for it himself. Excerpted from CBC News.

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10,000 Birds

MARCH 24, 2014

Some people think it’s just plain fun to kill enormous numbers of animals and pile up their bodies, and when there’s no “bag limit” it’s legal to do so. It also brings to mind the uncontested link between animal abuse and violent behavior toward fellow humans. Plain old fashioned Fun.”.

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Critter News

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

I used to support the bloodless bullfights held in California. But within the last year, an animal cruelty investigation almost shut one down because spikes were being used to antagonize the bull. This was a clear violation of animal law. Next time, though, I might want to hook up with an animal rights group to protest.

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Critter News

FEBRUARY 6, 2012

A federal judge for the first time in US history has heard arguments in a case that could determine whether animals enjoy the same constitutional protection against slavery as human beings. Advertisement: Story continues below "This case is on the next frontier of civil rights," said PETA lawyer Jeffrey Kerr, representing the five orcas.

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Critter News

NOVEMBER 21, 2011

An animal rights group has called for a federal investigation into the death of an elephant at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park. The Northern California-based In Defense of Animals called for the Department of Agriculture, which does inspections of zoos, to investigate Umoya's death.

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Animal Ethics

OCTOBER 9, 2008

Here is a New York Times editorial opinion about California's Proposition 2. Here is a column by Gary Francione, who opposes the proposition.

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Critter News

OCTOBER 10, 2010

Researchers say the animals appear to be following abundant swarms of krill - the tiny, shrimp-like creatures that make up whales' favorite food group - right into the path of ship traffic. Tags: california san francisco marine life marine animals whales krill.

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Whales Whaling San Francisco Marine Life 100

Animal Ethics

OCTOBER 24, 2008

Here is a New York Times story about California's Proposition 2.

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Critter News

NOVEMBER 3, 2011

War has erupted between Toronto Zoo elephant keepers and the animal rights group helping to co-ordinate a move of three aging elephants to a California sanctuary. Excepted from the Toronto News. That’s insubordination — city staff can’t go above their managers’ head and do those kinds of things,” Woodyer said.

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Critter News

JANUARY 25, 2012

To offset yesterday's crappy news about California, here's good news from the EU! Emeritus Chair in Animal Welfare at the University of Guelph in Ontario and the President of the Animal Welfare Foundation of Canada. Full article on Food Safety News. As of Jan. Duncan, Ph.D.,

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Battery Cages Battery Animal Welfare Welfare 100

Animal Ethics

JUNE 27, 2012

Unlike [John] Rawls, whose considered views on our duties regarding animals are unclear at best, [Immanuel] Kant provides us with an explicit statement of an indirect duty view. To treat moral agents in this way is to treat them as if they had no value in their own right or, alternatively, as if they were things.

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10,000 Birds

MAY 8, 2013

The unrivaled aerial champions of the Americas have to be the two species of Condor, the one-time almost nearly extinct California Condor and the truly massive Andean Condor. The California Condor has a story well-known by anyone with an interest in birds. California Condor , photo by Sheridan Woodley. Old Wold Vultures.

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Animal Ethics

JUNE 12, 2012

That individuals can be harmed without knowing it has important implications for the proper assessment of the treatment of animals. Modern farms (so-called factory farms), for example, raise animals in unnatural conditions. Those animals who are raised intensively, then, let us assume, do not know what they're missing.

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10,000 Birds

MAY 31, 2017

A consistent source of water is always a great attraction, drawing birds and animals alike. The California Quail used a similar hoof print for their needs as well. This Common Ground Dove was the boldest of all, landing right at waters edge, and getting a hardy drink. The sun did finally show up, and so did the birds.

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10,000 Birds

MARCH 8, 2013

And so, when Salvador Ramirez left, there were feral goats on the island of San Clemente, the southernmost of the Channel Islands off the coast of California. And so the Friends of Animals took them to court, demanding an injunction and a return to live-trapping. And so, the U.S.

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10,000 Birds

AUGUST 2, 2013

I wondered, last August, how animals endure it — the tiny ever-pumping lungs of hummingbirds, the lungs of bighorn sheep shouldering their way up mountains, they must get filled with smoke too, right? And I think this is a good move, the right move, even though part of me still welcomes the rain.

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Critter News

SEPTEMBER 28, 2011

Animal rights group Compassion Over Killing was the first to uncover the alleged systematic slaughter of healthy dairy cows in California. A Seattle law firm is taking on dairies, claiming that a price-fixing scheme has consumers paying too much for milk.

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Cows Killing Seattle Slaughter 100

10,000 Birds

JULY 11, 2012

In responding to Suzie’s post defending wildlife rehabilitation I began to think again about the areas in which animal rights and animal welfare overlap with the field of conservation, and the ways in which they don’t. Not from an environmental perspective but from a “don’t you like animals?”

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Animal Person

NOVEMBER 21, 2010

Here's the good news: This is a very readable explanation of how animals in the Hundred Heartbeat Club (there are 100 or fewer individuals in the wild today) got to be in the club. This is irksome, as the premise is that we need to save the animals (and which ones is an interesting discussion) because we will suffer if they are gone.

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Polar Bears California Condor Bald Eagle Lions 100

10,000 Birds

SEPTEMBER 20, 2013

The trap had been set in the woods right next to my house. The states which have essentially banned leghold traps are Florida, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Arizona, Colorado, Massachusetts, California, and Washington. The name and town of the owner were engraved on a metal tag. I’d released birds there. I knew the wildlife.

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Wildlife Rehabilitation Rhode Island New Jersey Wildlife 228

Animal Ethics

JULY 24, 2012

The initial attractiveness of utilitarianism as a moral theory on which to rest the call for the better treatment of animals was noted in an earlier context. Because animals are sentient (i.e., Because animals are sentient (i.e., To secure the philosophical foundation for animal rights requires abandoning utilitarianism. (

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Los Angeles Animal Rights Movement Factory Farm Factory Farming 40

Animal Ethics

AUGUST 15, 2012

The rights view is not opposed to efforts to save endangered species. If people are encouraged to believe that the harm done to animals matters morally only when these animals belong to endangered species, then these same people will be encouraged to regard the harm done to other animals as morally acceptable.

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Endangered Species Species Los Angeles Morals 40

Critter News

DECEMBER 20, 2008

The temple says the money goes toward caring for the tigers (each animal eats 13 pounds of meat a day) and construction of "Tiger Island," where it is hoped the tigers will soon move to live in larger enclosures.A recent report by wildlife organization, Care for the Wild (CWI).

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Tigers Illegal Trafficking Thailand Trafficking 100

4 The Love Of Animals

AUGUST 10, 2012

“Frankenweenie” follows in the footsteps of Tim Burton’s other stop-motion animated films “Corpse Bride” and “The Nightmare Before Christmas”—both of which were nominated for Academy Awards®. Stop-motion animation is one of the oldest animation styles. On average, one animator can only produce 5 seconds of animation per week.

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Apes Animal Dogs California 100

10,000 Birds

OCTOBER 24, 2014

“I’ve really been wracking my brain because for me releasing is very traumatic,” said Cara Petricca, with Bluebird Farm Animal Sanctuary in Cheshire, MA. I still think about and worry about so many of the animals I’ve worked with. When I release an animal I immediately want to pull them back to me. . So gorgeous!

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Wildlife Rehabilitation Ohio Tulsa West Virginia 220

10,000 Birds

JULY 23, 2014

People have moved useful plants and animals around with them as long as they had the wit to do so. So that New Zealand would end up with quite a few species of animal not originally found here is hardly surprising of itself. California Quail are familiar birds to West Coast birders of North America, and Kiwis too now.

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