Species Unite

“India has done more than any other country for recovering its tigers. Nobody can deny that. But still, we could do so much more than being satisfied with what we have done. There's so much complacency and crowing about these 3000 tigers we have, and I find it very sad.” Ullas Karanth   Dr. K. Ullas Karanth is emeritus scientist at the Centre for Wildlife Studies in Bangalore. Previously he led one of the longest-running (1986–2017) tiger conservation programs in the world for the Wildlife Conservation Society.   Along the way has conducted cutting-edge research, which gained crucial new knowledge for bringing tigers back. He was the first wildlife biologist in India to catch and radio collar tigers and the first to use camera traps to identify individuals.   He has also engaged deeply with researchers, wildlife managers, social leaders, and local communities that live next to tigers. His efforts have effectively stopped poachers, mitigated human-tiger conflicts and helped forest families to happily resettle away from tiger habitats.   Dr. Karanth’s latest book, Among Tigers: Fighting to Bring Back Asia's Big Cats was released on November 1st.  It’s the story of his 50-year journey to becoming one of the world’s most important tiger biologists. His quest to save India’s tigers was not an easy one and the book takes us through all of it: the adventures, the hardships, the politics and the successes. It’s also an education in tiger biology. I read it in a day, because it is that good.   Please listen, share and then go read Among Tigers.   Links   Centre for Wildlife Studies   Among Tigers 

“The resource allocation of global attention on China is not commiserate with the size and scale of the problem that China represents.” Albert Tseng   Albert Tseng is co-founder of Dao Foods, an impact-oriented investment firm that invests in plant-based and alternative protein companies based in mainland China and focused on the Chinese market.   With rapidly rising incomes and increasing meat consumption in China, Dao Foods’ aim is to introduce alternative products into the China market to reduce the consumer demand for animal products which has had growing negative climate, environmental, food safety and health impact.   “The average American eats about 120 kilograms of meat per year. Back in 1990, that number was about 20 kilograms per capita in China. In 2017 that has gone up to 60 kilograms. Still only half as much of an average North American. But you can see the trend that we went from 20 kilograms to 60 kilograms, and just that tracks to income growth. So, if we start to reach parity of animal protein consumption in China with a population of 1.4 billion people, then then we're going to have all sorts of acceleration of all the global problems that we have.” - Albert Tseng   Links:  https://www.daofoods.com/ albert@daofoods.com

“One of the things that we've noticed is when these animals repeatedly show up, that's when people really get frustrated, up to a point where they may leave loose electrical wires in their field. And when the herd or the animal comes back the next day, they get electrocuted. So you want to keep people from flipping out and doing something crazy, right?” - Krithi Karanth     Dr. Krithi Karanth is Chief Conservation Scientist and Director at the Centre for Wildlife Studies, in Bangalore, India and is Adjunct Faculty at Duke University and National Centre for Biological Sciences.   She has spent the past 24 years doing research in India and Asia, much of which has focused on the many issues in the surrounding the human side of wildlife conservation.   Krithi has served as editor for Conservation Biology, Conservation Letters and currently Chief Editor for Frontiers in Ecology and Environment- Conservation Section. Her conservation and research work has been featured in 3 award-winning BBC Series - The Hunt, Big Cats and Dynasties, and documentaries by CBC and PBS. I have co-produced 4 documentaries Wild Seve, Humane Highways, Wild Shaale and Flying Elephants. In 2020 I co-starred in Save This Rhino: India by Disney Hotstar and National Geographic.   The work that Krithi and her colleagues at the Centre for Wildlife Studies are doing is changing everything for the animals and the humans with whom they share land throughout rural India. We in the US could (and should) learn a thing or two from their work, especially when it comes to building tolerance for wild animals like wolves and creating solutions for sharing the land.   Please listen and share.   Links: https://cwsindia.org/ https://www.instagram.com/cwsindia/ https://www.facebook.com/cwsindia/ https://twitter.com/cwsindia

“We sat down and we ordered omakase, which is essentially the chef's specialties, and they just keep bringing food out until you say I'm done. So we ate and ate and ate everything you can imagine for the better part of 3 hours before we even dared to do order whale” – Heather Rally     Dr. Heather Rally spent the last decade at the PETA Foundation as a supervising veterinarian for captive animal law enforcement. What that means is she's led investigative and enforcement actions in cases of abuse of animals in roadside zoos, circuses and pretty much anywhere captive animal are on exhibit in the US. And, sadly, there are a lot of these places.   Heather’s training is in marine mammals. For seven years, she worked with the Oceanic Preservation Society to document and expose environmental crimes and animal welfare violations across the world by doing undercover investigations for the documentary film, Racing Extinction.   In that time, she helped expose and put an end to the illegal sale of endangered species and brought global attention to the exponential rate of extinction that’s happening all over the planet.   Heather truly is a superhero. Listen to her episode and I think you’ll agree.   Links: PETA Prime:  https://prime.peta.org/news/dr-heather-rally-my-adventures-as-petas-chief-veterinarian/   Whale Sanctuary Project: https://whalesanctuaryproject.org/people/heather-rally/   Racing Extinction: https://www.opsociety.org/our-work/films/racing-extinction/?gclid=Cj0KCQjwkt6aBhDKARIsAAyeLJ3Q4AjM5RfUfeNdHMiYvKyiquwzOk-lW0LceMku-O5H6ChjT03tmjgaArrMEALw_wcB

“We talk very badly nowadays about fashion, right? Because of the environmental impact and so on. But at the same time, there is also value in fashion. If not, we wouldn't be so obsessed. It’s inspirational, it makes you dream… Let's keep the good thing, the positive thing that gives you a good feeling and toss away and eliminate the bad things. It can be done.” Claudia Pievani     Claudia Pievani is the founder of Miomojo, the cruelty-free and sustainable Italian fashion brand that is making some of the most beautiful bags I’ve ever seen. They are recycled and up-cycled and – use the entire range of incredibly innovative, next-generation materials – derived from plant-based resources, including apples, corn, cactus and pineapple.     “Over time, we have proved that a beautiful object doesn’t have to come at the expenses of other living beings or our planet. With creativity and compassion, we have proved that it is possible to have fashion without fashion victims.” – Claudia Pievani     https://www.miomojo.com/en/

“And I'm just having this urban, agrarian, techie renaissance thing with my hipster neighbors and it's just so rich. And I think to myself, ‘wow, we've have to share this experience. How do we spread this?’ – Josh Whiton   Josh Whiton is an eco tech entrepreneur and a social innovator who is helping to repair the Earth.   When Josh was 23, he founded the transit tech company, TransLoc., for which he was named a champion of change by the White House and Trans Loc was later acquired by Ford.   His latest innovation is called Make Soil. Make Soil matches people who compost with people who want to learn how to compost, kind of like a Tinder for composters. It's already being used in 53 countries and growing really fast.   Please listen and share and then, go make some soil.   Makesoil.org

“One day I was leaving the animal shelter and I would always go and have lunch at this restaurant down the street and I'd get this pork barbecue sandwich. I remember it so vividly. I can remember the booth I was sitting in. I can picture the place. And I just remember thinking, I spent all day helping this one animal and now I'm eating another animal.” - Stephanie Downs on the moment everything changed   Stephanie Downs is the CEO and co-founder of Uncaged Innovations. Uncaged is a biomaterials company that combines nature and technology to reimagine leather. After two years in stealth mode, they have launched a bio leather (made from many plants) that will transform the fashion, automotive and home goods industries. It has the same quality and durability of leather without the use of any animals. It’s sustainable, scalable and it’s stunning (I’ve seen it in person).   Stephanie has been working to get animals out of the food and materials system for decades. She’s worked with animal welfare organizations to create enormous change in the food, fashion and automotive industries and she is a co-founder of the Material Innovation Initiative and a co-founder of Good Dot, the largest plant-based meat company in India.   Solutions are what is going to change the world for animals. We can (and should) scream about the horrors of the meat, dairy, leather and wool industries all day long but we need solutions. Uncaged is a big one.   https://www.uncagedinnovations.com/

“The pets tend to be the most behaviorally disturbed, I would say. They have the hardest transition most of the time into kind of sanctuary life, because with the pet trade, infants are usually taken from their mothers within a few days or a few weeks after they're born. And most primate species in the wild will stay with their mothers for at least a couple of years, if not for most of their life. So that's incredibly damaging right off the bat, because that separation is very traumatizing.” – Devan Schowe   Devan Schowe is the Campaigns Associate for Born Free USA, a nonprofit wildlife organization with the largest primate sanctuary in the country. Born Free recently release and report on the extensive suffering of giraffe in zoos. I read the report and wanted to talk to Devan about giraffes but also to get her expert perspective on captivity and why it’s so harmful to all animals, particularly in zoos.   It completely baffles me that in 2022, most people have no issue with zoos. Maybe they don’t know that no matter how “nice” the zoo is, it’s still a prison for animals.   Born Free USA https://www.bornfreeusa.org/

“We have to look at those structures. If we don't look at those structures, if we don't look at the economic structures and we don't look at the instrumentalization of animals, the use of animals, the devaluation, the lack of dignity that's given to animals, we're just going to perpetuate our sort of grotesque use of these creatures.” – Lori Gruen     Philosophers, Alice Crary and Laurie Gruen co-wrote the recently released book, Animal Crisis: A New Critical Theory. The book is a deep dive into the many systems that are failing both animals and humans and makes the case that there can be no animal liberation without human emancipation.     “What we're doing is bringing out the possibility, making it possible to recognize that some of the structures that harm human beings also harm animals… and to show that that these ties aren't accidental.” – Alice Crary     Alice Crary is University Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the New School, where she's a co-founder and steering committee member of the Collaborative for Climate Futures.   Laurie Gruen is the William Griffin professor of Philosophy at Wesleyan University, where she coordinates Wesleyan Animal Studies. Lori has been on the podcast before, and I am very happy and honored to have her back.   Links: Animal Crisis: https://www.amazon.com/Animal-Crisis-New-Critical-Theory/dp/1509549684    Lori Gruen: https://www.lorigruen.com/   Alice Crary https://alicecrary.com/

“We have this this sort of human exceptionalism or human supremacy that that is used as the kind of baseline foundational justification for exploiting animals, that humans are just more important and we're more special in some way.” – Dr. Syd Johnson     Dr. Hope Ferdowsian and Dr. Syd Johnson  recently published an essay in the Hastings Center Bioethics Forum called, Primates and Medical Research A Matter of Convenience, Not Sound Science. I read the essay and quickly realized how much there was that I didn’t know about animal testing and research (and I thought I knew a lot).   The essay begins with one rhesus macaque who will spend her life in a cage as part of an Alzheimer's disease experiment. They tell the story not only of this individual primate, but of animal research as whole, how and when it started all the way up to where we are now, and also what an enormous failure most of it has been.   Around 90 percent of drugs that pass in animal testing fail on humans. With numbers like that, in any other industry I’m pretty sure that we’d have given up by now. Not only is animal testing insanely cruel, but it's incredibly ineffective.  So, why are we still testing on tens of millions of animals and spending billions of dollars on mostly bad research year after year? Money and because we’ve “always done it this way,” (and we have, since 6 BCE).   All systems that exploit, torture and abuse animals desperately need to change and the thing is, all of these systems can change. We have solutions. They exist and are getting bigger and better by the day. There are solutions to replace animals in the food system, in fashion, in entertainment and in medical research.   But the money train that goes into using animals in research isn’t slowing down, and not enough of us are demanding otherwise (and we are who is paying for it). I think in part, because not enough of us are aware of the cruelty and the inefficiency that is animal testing. We are paying the bill simply because this is how it’s always been done.   But it’s not how it should be done.