Angel Rolon told police that he lost control of his sports utility vehicle after the baby reptiles distracted him by slithering over the throttle and brake pedals. Eyewitnesses then report seeing the 20-year-old’s vehicle swerving as he made a desperate bid to catch the creatures.
Alas, his efforts were to no avail, and the SUV crashed into some nearby parked cars before overturning in a street in Hartford, Connecticut.
Police agencies raided a Connecticut home on Sunday, just in the nick of time. 19 people were arrested in connection with a bird-fighting operation that was about to take place that very morning. While many people are familiar with cock-fighting and dog-fighting, this particular raid turned up something quite different.
The abuse, caught on tape by an undercover PETA investigator, allegedly occurred in seven different states across America over several months. The footage shows handlers allegedly whipping and beating 11 circus elephants in the face, chest, ears and legs with bullhooks.
Sealers wielding clubs for the purpose of killing seals attacked two journalists, one from the UK and one from South Africa, who were filming the brutal Namibian seal cull last week.
The journalists were then arrested and jailed at the Henties Bay Police Station in Namibia, and their camera and video was confiscated by authorities. The British and South Africa Embassies are demanding their immediate release.
Nine shark attack survivors will lobby the Senate to put new restrictions on fishing for sharks. The current legislation, Shark Fisheries Management Plan, implemented in the late 1990s, and the Shark Finning Prohibition Act of 2000 has failed to prevent thirty-two percent of the sharks and rays that live in the open ocean from being classified as “threatened” this year by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.
A tourist from Calgary found a lone seal pup while in British Columbia. She thought the pup needed rescuing, so she put it in her car wrapped in a blanket then called the police. Most likely, the pup was not abandoned. Canada.com explains:
According to the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, mother seals will often leave their pups shortly after birth. They will often return to their pups within 24 hours provided conditions are right, one of those being that humans aren’t nearby.
Dr. Susan Lieberman, director of the species program at WWF, welcomes the World Bank’s support: “Stopping all trade in tiger parts, and phasing out these tiger farms, is of the utmost urgency if the tiger is to survive in the wild.”
World Bank Director, Keshav Varma added: “Commercial trading in tiger parts and its derivatives is not in the interest of wild tiger conservation.”
For years and years parents have taken their children to zoos to see exotic animals, animals that they don’t get to see everyday. They want to see lions and tigers and bears. Oh my! High on the the list of animals to be seen are elephants, nature’s gentle giants. These cute, (hardly) cuddly animals are the largest of the land mammals. But all of that could change. Elephants could be removed from zoos forever if In Defense of Animals (IDA) [...]
The romantic imagery painted of Spanish bullfighting in Ernest Hemingway’s famous book The Sun Also Rises might soon be the stuff of history. Spain is edging ever closer to banning the sport.
Thanks to a petition with 180,000 signatures, the regional government of Spain’s northeastern Catalonia area will soon debate banning the sport tied so closely to Spain’s image. Recent polling indicates that less than 30% of Spanish citizens like bullfighting, reflecting an overall trend that animals should be treated more humanely.
Members of European parliament voted this morning to ban seal products, further tightening the noose on Canada’s archaic and cruel commercial seal hunt. With members voting 550 to 49 in favor of the ban, Europe has sent Canada a clear message: Europeans do not support the hunt.
The International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) welcomed the EU decision. The ban represents a welcome victory in the IFAW’s forty year campaign to end the hunt.
Fishermen in the Philippines accidentally caught and later ate one of the rarest sharks in the world - the megamouth shark.
Only 40 others have been encountered, the World Wildlife Fund said Tuesday. The 1,100-pound, 13-foot megamouth died while struggling in the fishermen’s net on March 30 off Burias island in the central Philippines.
