About 100 animals transport visitors along kilometre-long cobbled path to the city’s iconic Amber Fort
Animal rights protesters took to the streets on bicycles in the Indian city of Jaipur on Sunday, demanding an end to elephants being used to carry tourists to one of the country’s top attractions, the iconic Amber Fort.
Related: Celebrity elephant Ramu opens Kerala festival after ban lifted
Continue reading...Most of the animals at the Santa Cruz Foundation in San Antonio, Colombia, have been rescued from traffickers and circuses. The multimillion-dollar illegal wildlife trade is the fourth-largest in the country after drugs, guns and human trafficking
More police on duty as tourists descend on Spanish town to watch bulls and party
One man was gored and two sustained head injuries during the first run of the week-long San Fermín running of the bulls festival in Pamplona, northern Spain, on Saturday. The injuries were not life-threatening.
During the festival the population of the small city in Navarra swells tenfold as more than a million people come from around the world. Only about 20,000 over the course of the week dress up in the traditional red and white to pursue and be pursued by the bulls along Pamplona’s cobbled streets.
Continue reading...All eight of the circus’s tigers were impounded by police after tamer Ettore Weber was mauled to death
Four tigers have mauled to death their tamer in southern Italy, fuelling calls for a ban on the use of animals in circuses as parliament debates the issue.
Police said the 61-year-old tamer, Ettore Weber, was attacked by the tigers on Thursday during a training session in Triggiano, a small town in the Puglia region.
Continue reading...Humane killing practices are virtually unknown in the majority of Thailand’s abattoirs, say campaigners, with millions of pigs dying in pain
All photographs by Jo-Anne McArthur/We Animals
Warning: this article includes some graphic images that some readers may find distressing
Photos of shirtless workers clubbing pigs with bats in a Thai slaughterhouse have prompted campaigners to call for wider training and monitoring of humane welfare practices.
Undercover images taken in the central Thailand abattoir and shared with the Guardian also shows workers stunning the animals on their eyes with what appear to be homemade stunning machines, contrary to equipment recommendations.
Continue reading...A man and a woman have been convicted of animal cruelty after activists secretly filmed him apparently preparing to throw fox cubs to hounds at a hunting kennel in Herefordshire. Undercover footage obtained by Hunt Investigation Team was used as evidence in court
Researchers still fearful as approximately 10,000 to 15,000 are killed every year
Elephant poaching rates in Africa are declining, according to a study published in the journal Nature Communications.
The annual poaching mortality rate fell from a high of more than 10% in 2011 to less than 4% in 2017, but the researchers warned that current levels were still unsustainable and could spell trouble for the future of the animals on the continent.
Continue reading...Taiji resident will testify in attempt to ban activity as part of charity’s legal challenge
A man from Taiji, the Japanese fishing town whose annual slaughter of dolphins has drawn widespread condemnation, will appear in court on Friday in an unprecedented legal challenge to the hunts.
In an exclusive interview with the Guardian, the plaintiff, who has asked not to be named until the hearing has concluded, said he had been been ostracised in Taiji, where he was born and raised but decided to speak out against the hunts.
Continue reading...The star of a string of successful film musicals was also known for her work as an animal welfare activist
Doris Day, the actor, singer and animal welfare activist, has died at the age of 97. The Doris Day Animal Foundation confirmed the news.
Born Doris Mary Ann Kappelhoff in Cincinnati, Ohio, Day was known for a string of successful musicals and romantic comedies, including Pillow Talk, as well as a singing career that encompassed 29 studio albums.
Continue reading...As the right enlists bullfighters as candidates, animal welfare champions are polling well
If the polls and pundits are correct, Spain’s Vox party will achieve its much-prophesied breakthrough in Sunday’s general election, becoming the first far-right grouping to win more than a single seat in parliament since the country embarked on its post-Franco return to democracy.
Although Vox’s chances of attracting about 11% of the vote have hogged the headlines, another small party – and one with a markedly different worldview – is also gearing up for a historic day at the ballot box.
Continue reading...David Gill abandons Lake District retreat application after flood of complaints
The founder of a zoo where nearly 500 animals died in less than three years, many in cruel conditions, has abandoned plans to open a horse-riding ranch, following a flood of complaints.
David Gill, the former owner of South Lakes Safari zoo in Cumbria, angered animal welfare groups when he applied to open an American-style ranch in the hills of the Lake District.
Continue reading...Police at Indonesian airport also found two live geckos and five lizards in suitcase
A Russian tourist attempting to smuggle a drugged orangutan out of Indonesia in his suitcase to bring home and keep as a pet has been arrested in Bali, police said on Saturday.
Andrei Zhestkov was detained in Denpasar airport late on Friday while passing through a security screening before a planned flight back to Russia.
Continue reading...Mikołaj Golachowski describes plan as ‘evil’ and warns of environmental consequences
Conservationists have branded plans by the Polish government to cull almost the entire wild boar population of the country as “pointless, counterproductive and evil”.
In a move to tackle an epidemic of African swine fever, the Polish government has ordered a series of hunts, beginning this weekend, with the aim of killing the vast majority of the country’s population of around 200,000 wild boar.
Continue reading...Proposal is intended to protect African elephants from being poached for their tusks
The long-extinct woolly mammoth could gain protected status in an unprecedented attempt to save the African elephant from the global ivory trade.
If approved, the protection of the mammoth under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (Cites) could prove vital in saving its modern relatives. The proposal by Israel would close a loophole that enables the trafficking of illegal elephant ivory under the guise of legal mammoth ivory, which is almost identical in appearance.
Continue reading...Animal welfare charity appeals for information after dozens of birds found dead or injured
Dozens of birds in New Zealand have been found dead or injured with Christmas decorations tied around them, prompting calls for anyone with information on who is behind the cruel attacks to come forward.
The Royal New Zealand Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) said a number of sparrows and pigeons have been reported with “decorative trinkets” tied to them in the capital, Wellington.
Continue reading...On a dank, dreary winter afternoon, I have come to a farmyard in Essex, just outside the M25, to meet – among others – Karine, Anna, Tommy Lee and Eskimo Joe. Tommy Lee and Eskimo Joe are from Romania, and are dogs. Rescue animals, hoping (if dogs can hope) to be adopted. Tommy Lee is missing a front leg – most probably from a traffic accident in Brasov, Transylvania – but is cheerful, inquisitive and friendly. Eskimo Joe is older, a little overweight, obstinate, camera-shy, resigned. I worry that potential adopters might not fall in love with Eskimo Joe.
Karine and Anna Hauser are Swiss-Finnish sisters (human) and run the charity Love Underdogs. Animal lovers, they were originally visiting a sanctuary in Romania for abused bears from all over the world. But they couldn’t ignore the dogs, and started to work with a shelter in Brasov, 100 miles north of Bucharest, and to bring to the UK for rehoming some of the most unwanted, abused and neglected ones. Love Underdogs is just one of dozens of charities in Britain importing rescue dogs from abroad – from Greece, Cyprus, Bosnia, and particularly from Romania, which has one of the biggest street-dog problems in Europe.
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