Species Unite

Species Unite will be back next week, June 2nd, with a brand new season. Until then, we are re-sharing some of our favorite episodes. Today's is a conversation with Jo-Anne McArthur. Jo-Anne McArthur is an award winning photojournalist and the founder of We Animals Media. For 20 years she has been photographing and bearing witness to our complex relationship with animals. She's worked in over 60 countries in just about every industry one can imagine - including: fur farms, factory farms, bear bile farms, zoos, rodeos, circuses, and marine parks with the mission to make the lives of these invisible animals visible. Her images tell the stories of unseen suffering, the stories of what happens when we stop paying attention, of what hopelessness looks like, and of thousands of little lives that would have otherwise gone unnoticed. She is also co-founder of the Unbound Project and the author of two books, We Animals and Captive. And, she was the subject of Liz Marshall's acclaimed documentary, The Ghosts in Our Machine. I have been a super-fan of Jo-Anne's for years, so it felt like a real honor to be able to spend this time with her. I learned a lot in this conversation, about suffering, about empathy, and mostly, about grace. I hope that you will be as moved by Jo-Anne and her work as I am. Learn More About We Animals Media Learn More About The Unbound Project Jo Anne's Books: We Animals Captive Liz Marshall's Documentary, The Ghosts in Our Machine

Species Unite will be back on June 2nd with a brand new season. Until then, we are re-sharing some of our favorite episodes. This week's is a conversation with Lori Marino. "In a natural setting, these animals would be swimming maybe a hundred miles a day, diving deep. They have their social lives, their social networks, roles to play in very tightly-knit family groups. They raise their children. They have cultures, different ways of doing things in different populations. They can explore and play and come together. None of that is available in the concrete tank. None of it. They don't have any place to go. They don't have any place to dive… what you see is a lot of mortality, a lot of sickness, a lot of behavioral abnormalities. Everything that makes life worth living for a dolphin or whale is absent in marine parks and concrete tanks. None of it is available." – Lori Marino Lori Marino is a neuroscientist and an expert in animal behavior and intelligence. Much of her work is focused on whales and dolphins. She's currently the president of the Whale Sanctuary Project, which will be a seaside sanctuary for former performing orcas and belugas that have spent their entire lives in concrete tanks. Lori is also the founder and Executive Director of the Kimmela Center for Animal Advocacy, an organization that bridges the gap between academic research and on the ground animal advocacy efforts. She has appeared in several films and television programs, including the documentaries Blackfish, Unlocking the Cage, and Long Gone Wild, which is a 2019 documentary that picks up where Black Fish left off, and is also where the Whale Sanctuary Project begins. The Whale Sanctuary Project is going to change the world for the lucky orcas and belugas that will end up there. They will also be a model for future sanctuaries for cetaceans – as we need a ton of them, there are way too many of these animals living in captivity. It stuns me that even after documentaries like Blackfish, people all over the world (including many in the US) still visit marine mammal parks. Mostly, people go because they don't know. They don't know how miserable life is for the whales and dolphins and they don't know how intelligent and emotionally complex these animals are. Keeping them in tanks is cruel, inhumane, unjust, and it needs to stop. Lori has made it her life's work to not only study their intelligence but to advocate and fight for their lives. This conversation is an important one, after listening to Lori, I think it'd be very difficult for anyone to give another dollar to a marine park anywhere on Earth. I hope that you learn as much as I did. Learn More About The Whale Sanctuary Project Like The Whale Sanctuary Project on Facebook Follow The Whale Sanctuary Project on Twitter Learn More About The Kimmela Center for Animal Advocacy

Species Unite will be back on June 2nd with a new season. Until then, we are re-sharing some of our favorite episodes. This week's is a conversation with Aaron Gross. We all have a food story; the story that we tell ourselves about what we eat and why we eat it. It's that story that runs the show when it comes to how we shop, cook, and feed our children. It was most often taught to us by our parents and their parents, most who thought they were passing on good values and deep traditions and were only doing what was best for their kids. But our food story is more than that. It was also passed on to our parents and to us from advertisers, marketers and a food industry that uses words like values and traditions to get us to buy into a narrative that has damaged our health, destroyed the planet, and caused endless suffering to billions of animals. But once we come to terms with the fact that it's just a story and not something that we can't change, there's a whole new world waiting. And, like in so many other industries that are inherently broken in America and around the globe, the pandemic has exposed the gaping holes in our food system. But it's also given us the opportunity to take a deeper look into what and how we eat and decide that we can change the story. Aaron Gross is a professor of theology and religious studies at the University of San Diego, and he's the CEO and founder of Farm Forward. Farm Forward was founded as the nation's first nonprofit devoted exclusively to ending factory farming. Recently, Aaron and the writer, Jonathan Safran Foer published a piece in the Guardian called, We Have to Wake Up: Factory Farms are Breeding Grounds for Pandemics. There's a paragraph in there that says, "The link between factory farming and increasing pandemic risk is well established scientifically, but the political will to curtail that risk has, in the past, been absent. Now is the time to build that will. It really does matter if we talk about this, share our concerns with our friends, explain these issues to our children, wonder together about how we should eat differently, call on our political leaders, and support advocacy organizations fighting factory farming. Leaders are listening. Changing the most powerful industrial complex in the world – the factory farm – could not possibly be easy, but in this moment with these stakes it is, maybe for the first time in our lifetimes, possible." Aaron graciously joined me from his quarantine in San Diego to talk about how we do this; how we change the story around how and what we eat and ultimately, how we change our food system. Aaron is one of the smartest guys out there and it was beyond a privilege to hear his thoughts and ideas on how we forge ahead. This conversation was enlightening, inspiring, and incredibly informative. I hope that you learn as much as I did. We can change our food industry. As bad as most things across the planet are right now, there's real opportunity in front of us. Let's not waste it. Visit FarmForward.com Like Farm Forward on Facebook Follow Farm Forward on Twitter

Species Unite will return in a few weeks with Season 8. Until then, we are re-sharing some of our favorite episodes. Today's is a conversation with Melanie Joy. Melanie Joy is a Harvard-educated psychologist, specializing in the psychology of eating animals, social transformation, and relationships. She is the award-winning author of six books, including the best-selling, Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows. She is the founder of the non-profit, Beyond Carnism, dedicated to exposing and transforming carnism, the invisible belief system that conditions people to eat certain animals. Melanie is a recipient of the Ahimsa award for her work on global nonviolence. This award was previously given to the Dalai Lama and Nelson Mandela. She also received both the Peter Singer Prize and the Empty Cages Prize for her work developing strategies to reduce the suffering of animals. Melanie's TEDx talk called, Toward Rational Authentic Food Choices has received over 800,000 views. No matter what your diet consists of, I hope that this conversation will inspire you to delve a little deeper into the systems and beliefs that quietly run the show when it comes to the psychology of what (and who) we eat. Learn More About Melanie Joy Learn More About Beyond Carnism Follow Beyond Carnism of Facebook Follow Beyond Carnism on Instagram

"It's funny because with art, with literature, with music, we are all connected. It's emotion. You know, like if I say, "have you read this or that," or… "do you know Alice Coltrane? Do you know John Coltrane?" Whatever it is you've got a language and there's a connection going on. And, we should have that with the world. We should have that feeling of like an artistic sensibility to the world. We do have that with other things. People can talk about movies and they feel connected in a way. Religions connect people… we should be all connected by the Earth." – Warren Ellis Musician and composer, Warren Ellis of the Dirty Three and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds had an extremely productive pandemic. Not only did he release two albums, two film scores and a book, but he also opened a wildlife sanctuary in Indonesia. Last spring, Warren co-founded Ellis Park, a forever home for disabled wildlife in South Sumatra. It's a haven for animals who have been rescued from wildlife trafficking who are either too traumatized or too handicapped to be returned to the wild. ​ Ellis Park will also be used as a hub to educate the public, locals and visitors to the park about the negative impacts on wildlife used in the tourism industry and those saved from the illegal pet trade and wildlife smuggling. Last fall, Warren published his first book, Nina Simone's Gum. It's about a piece of gum that Nina Simone was chewing during her final concert in London. As she left the stage, she placed the chewed gum on her piano. Warren noticed and quickly snatched the gum. He kept it for over two decades… until a few years ago, when the gum took on a life of its own. The book is about meaning and connection and trusting intuition when it calls on you to follow a thread, and it's about the love and the magic that we humans are capable of. In many ways Ellis Park has a very similar story. ​ Links: Ellis Park: https://www.ellispark.org/ Ellis Park Instagram https://www.instagram.com/ellisparksumatra/ Ellis Park facebook: https://www.facebook.com/EllisParkWildlifeSanctuary/ Ellis Park Twitter: https://twitter.com/EllisPark2021 Warren Ellis Twitter: https://twitter.com/warrenellis13?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor Warren Ellis Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thewarrenellis/

Damien Mander is the founder and CEO of the International Anti-Poaching Foundation (IAPF). He is a former Australian Royal Navy clearance diver and a special operations military sniper who became an anti-poaching crusader and an environmental and animal welfare activist. In 2009, while traveling through Africa, he was inspired by the work of rangers and the plight of wildlife. He liquidated his life savings and established the International Anti-Poaching Foundation. Over the past decade, the IAPF has scaled to train and support rangers which now help protect over 20 million acres of African wilderness. In 2017 Damien founded 'Akashinga - Nature Protected by Women,' an IAPF program that has already grown to over 240 employees with 7 nature reserves in the portfolio. They are the only group of nature reserves in the world to be protected by women. And, these women are changing the game in terms of what it means to fight poaching. Damien was featured in the James Cameron documentary The Game Changers and has now released another documentary with James Cameron and National Geographic about his work with the women of Akashinga – "The Brave One's." He is a resident of the National Geographic Speakers Bureau, has spoken at the United Nations, is featured in June 2019's National Geographic Magazine, and has been featured three times on 60 Minutes. And, if you haven't seen it, watch his TEDx Talk at the Sidney Oprah House, it's just awesome. It was an honor to spend time with Damien. He is a warrior, a hero, and a man who understands what it means to never stop evolving.

"This is their second chance. They were rendered extinct in the wild. And so now this is our second chance to get it right. We killed them off and hopefully they have enough of what they need that they can take the second chance and run with it." – Maggie Howell This is the last episode in a series that we are doing on wolves. It's probably not the final episode because I'm not going to shut up about wolves until they're all back on the endangered species list. But for the moment, it's the last. It's a conversation with Maggie Howell. Maggie is the executive director of the Wolf Conservation Center, an organization that is working to protect and preserve wolves in North America. And they do it through science-based education, advocacy, and they participate in the federal recovery and release program for two critically endangered wolf species, the Mexican gray wolf and red wolves. Maggie is also a founding member of Relist Wolves, a campaign to put all wolves back on the endangered species list. Please listen and share and quickly go to Relist Wolves to help get ALL of these remarkable animals back on the endangered species list. Wolf Conservation Center https://nywolf.org/ Relist Wolves https://www.relistwolves.org/

"Packs that are continuously trapped and snared and hunted, the packs are smaller and things are a lot more chaotic in the pack because you're killing uncle, you're killing dad, you're killing mom. The pups may get good leadership training and learn how to hunt or the family could be broken up and the puppies never fully learn how to hunt. And so all this hunting and trapping lowers the pack size, fragments them often and might cause a pack to break up, and those broken packs can actually send out more wolves in more places. So, all this intense wolf killing, in my opinion, it's not justified and it's unnecessary because what it's creating now, instead of biological carrying capacity, they're managed politically on social carrying capacity. How many wolves will people tolerate?" - Carter Niemeyer Carter Niemeyer is a wildlife biologist who has been working with wolves since the 1980s. Afetr decades as a trapper of wolves (and many other predators) he transformed into one of their biggest champions. He worked as a state trapper and conducted wildlife studies for the US Fish and Wildlife Service and by 1990, he was a full-time wolf specialist, negotiating situations where wolves were in conflict with people. In the mid 90s, he became a core member of the Wolf Capture Team in Canada. They were there to capture and bring wolves back to the US for the Federal Wolf Reintroduction Program. Carter's stories are seriously astonishing stories and span more than five decades of work with large predators. He's been a naturalist since he could walk and his love of nature and the outdoors are at the core of his very being. I spent the afternoon with him at his house in Idaho. I wanted to better understand the wolf hatred and hysteria that's been going in Idaho, Wyoming and Montana for centuries - but currently seems to be at an all-time high. I wanted to hear Carters perspective, the thoughts of a former trapper on the wolf massacre that's taking place today in the Northern Rockies and, also to ask him if there's anything that we can do to stop it. LINKS: www.carterniemeyer.com

"The alpha female dug a den and had puppies. And we got there as they were squealing in the pack. And what was just amazing is to see how the pack reacted to this. They were so excited. Even when she started digging the den, the other wolves start digging other holes… they weren't helping at all, they were just caught up in it." – Jim Dutcher I've talked about this before and I'm going to talk about it a whole lot more, there is a mass slaughter of wolves taking place in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming. This is the first episode in a series that will hopefully get a whole lot more of us to care and then do something to stop this madness before it's too late. And, as you will hear in this conversation, there are real things that we can do. But first, wolves need as many of us as they can get on their team, and they need us to fight like crazy for them, or in the very near future, they'll be gone. This conversation is with the two people that have made humans care about wolves more than anyone that I know of. Jim and Jamie Dutcher spent six years in the nineties living with and filming a pack of wolves called the Sawtooth. And since then, they've focused their lives on the study and documentation of wolf social behavior, their photographs, books, and Emmy Award winning films Documenting the lives of these remarkable animals have changed the way that many people see these deeply social and family oriented animals. Links: https://www.livingwithwolves.org/ https://www.livingwithwolves.org/wolf-issues/how-you-can-help/ https://www.instagram.com/living_w_wolves/ https://www.facebook.com/LwWolves/ https://twitter.com/LWWolves

Today we are re-sharing one of our favorite episodes, a conversation with Alexandra Horowitz. "I can drive my car off a cliff and just leave it where it lay, the most I'll get is a littering fine, and if you throw your dog off the cliff the punishment is actually pretty similar. That's because they're the same type of thing to the law. So, unless you change that status, and you have people of course, who are thinking that there should be a status of kind of living property that might give them more attributes than my car has or my chair has; and then there are individuals who think they should be given the status of legal persons, which isn't to say being people, but having rights of some sort. I think both of those are pretty intriguing offers. I think we're a little way off from doing that, but boy, either of those would be a massive improvement in our societal treatment of these creatures. "And of course, I don't think it's just restricted to dogs… It's been terrific to work with dogs for all these years, but I think this way about lots of non-human animals that we interact with, where we kind of get to use them sort of, for our sake. I would love to see some kind of sea change in thinking such that we don't get to use animals in the ways we do now, which are really abuses of animals." – Alexandra Horowitz If you have any questions for your dog, Alexandra Horowitz is a pretty good place to start. She's spent much of her life researching and writing about what it's like to be a dog. She is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know; Our Dogs, Ourselves; Being a Dog: Following the Dog Into a World of Smell; and On Looking. She is a professor at Barnard College, Columbia University, where she teaches seminars in canine cognition, creative nonfiction writing, and audio storytelling. As Senior Research Fellow, she heads the Dog Cognition Lab at Barnard. I wish this conversation had lasted all day long as I had about five thousand more questions for Alexandra - mostly, everything I've ever wanted to ask my dog. The time that we did have together was pretty amazing and felt like an absolute gift. Visit Alexandra's Website Learn More About The Dog Cognition Lab at Barnard College Alexandra's Books: Inside of A Dog Our Dogs, Ourselves Being A Dog On Looking