Animal Instinct

On this week's episode of Animal Instinct, host Celia Kutcher is joined in the studio by Mark Michaels, an author and relationship and sexuality educator. He and his wife Patricia Johnson have written five books, most recently Designer Relationships (Cleis Press, 2015). He has been interested in nature and especially birds since elementary school, when he was captivated by the legendary Ivory-billed Woodpecker. He has been actively searching for the bird in the southeast since 2007.

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On this week's episode of Animal Instinct, host Celia Kutcher speaks with Karrie Hovey and Charles Merrill about their involvement with Project Thorn.

Project Thorn is an organization formed to find and fund tangible projects to help protect rhinos in South Africa. Hornucopia is one of Project Thorn’s initiatives to fund an anti-poaching horse patrol in South Africa’s iMfolozi Wildlife Reserve.

Karrie Hovey is a visual artist and activist. Her installations and artworks are inspired by the symbiotic relationship between the human landscape and the natural environment. She became involved with rhino conservation after her first trip to South Africa in 2012. Karrie's work can be viewed on www.karriehovey.com

Charles Merrill is a technologist, cyclist and wildlife advocate who lives in Northern California. He is a former professional sailor who has transited the mid-pacific multiple times since the 1980s seeing first hand the impact humans have on the ocean. Charles became involved with Project Thorn through his participation in JoBerg2C, a 9 day/900 km mountain bike race in South Africa. The race is chronicled on www.3ringcircus.us and www.joberg2c.co.za.

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On this week's episode of Animal Instinct, Celia is joined in the studio by Lorelei Tibbetts to talk all about hedgehogs!

Lorelei earned her first bachelor's degree (in broadcast journalism) from Boston University. Realizing that this would not fulfill her dream of working with animals, she earned her second degree in veterinary technology. Since then, she has worked in New York City, where she currently is the manager of The Center for Avian and Exotic Medicine. She has worked exclusively with exotic pets since 2004, and is the chair of her veterinary technician specialty academy, The Academy for Veterinary Technicians in Clinical Practice, where she was a founding member of the Exotic Companion Animal specialty. She is passionate about exotic pet education, and enjoys lecturing at veterinary symposiums, as well as teaching students at her practice.

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On this week’s episode of Animal Instinct, Celia is joined by Julia Szabo, a journalist, blogger, and author of seven books about animals. Szabo also produces the vegan style website Get Dressed Change The World, all about cruelty-free fashion and lifestyle, and soon to be a book. Follow the project on Instagram @getdressedchangetheworld.

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On this week’s episode of Animal Instinct, Celia welcomes Ian Urbina of The New York Times. Urbina was the winner of the Polk award for Foreign Reporting for “The Outlaw Ocean,” an ongoing series about lawlessness on the high seas. During the year and a half reporting the stories, Urbina traveled through Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East, much of that time spent on fishing ships, chronicling a diversity of crimes offshore, including murder of stowaways, intentional dumping, illegal fishing, stealing of ships, stranding of crews, and murder with impunity. Talking his way onto fishing ships at considerable risk, he also related firsthand stories of the plight of indentured Cambodian boys, a deckhand shackled by the neck, and Filipinos living in squalor who endured beatings, lost fingers to infection, and were forced to swallow amphetamines to work longer hours. Urbina secured and investigated a video of four men shot to death at sea before dozens of witnesses, including some who then celebrated and posed on camera. The reporting also took readers aboard a ship operated by environmental activists in the culmination of a 10,000-mile chase leading to the sinking of a notorious pirate trawler that had eluded Interpol and other authorities for a decade. The series spurred Congressional hearings and testimony, class-action litigation against the seafood industry, and, abroad, several criminal investigations and convictions.

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Patricia Johnson is certified in reptile monitoring by the Smithsonian-Mason School of Conservation and a New York State Licensed Wildlife Rehabilitator. She specializes in native turtles, with a particular interest in Eastern Box Turtles. In 2015 she was selected to be the NEPARC Fellow – Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science PARC/SSAR workshop. Patricia produces Turtle Intensives, semi-annual meetings to spark conversations and the sharing of ideas among those working in turtle conservation.  She has co-authored five award-winning books with her husband ( www.MichaelsandJohnson.com) and lives in Yorktown Heights. They share their home with three parrots, four cats, and dozens of turtle patients at any given time. 

If you would like to give a turtle a forever home, or if you would like to help wild turtles (or any animal for that matter) contact Patricia at [email protected], and she’ll talk you through the licensing process (very easy and you only need to be 16). Feel free to write her if you’re interested in having her present a workshop, or have any additional questions about turtles.

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On today’s episode of Animal Instinct, guest Dr. Patricia C. Wright talks about her work studying wild lemurs in Madagascar. Dr. Wright is a Distinguished Professor at Stony Brook University, NY, and a founder of the Centre ValBio Research Station in Madagascar, a “green” sustainable hub of research, environmental arts, village community health, education and economics. She has discovered a new species of lemur, spearheaded a national park World Heritage Site, won three medals of honor from the Malagasy government, been awarded the Indianapolis Prize for Animal Conservation (“Nobel Prize” for conservation), received a MacArthur Genius Award. Her work is featured in the IMAX film “Island of Lemurs: Madagascar” and Anthony Bourdain’s CCN TV show Parts Unknown. Her most recent books are “High Moon Over the Amazon” and “For the Love of Lemurs: my life in the wilds of Madagascar. As the first animals to arrive in Madagascar, lemurs play an important role in dispersing seeds and pollinating flowers, making them indispensable to the evolution of that ecosystem.

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Tune in for a fascinating episode about everyone’s favorite bivalves!  Talking clams and oysters, Animal Instinct host Celia Kutcher welcomes the Oyster Baron von Clam Man himself, Nolan Meredith to the studio.  Between the typical lifespan, breeding patterns, environmental impact, and details on Nolan’s oyster farm, Celia gets to the bottom of how he got into the business plus his thoughts on oyster “merroir” and more!  Heritage Radio’s Patrick Martins and Alexes McLaughlin join in the fun too, taste some oysters, and learn all about the clam and oyster industry.

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This week on a brand new Animal Instinct , host Celia Kutcher is on the line with author and animal communicator Marta Williams and Veterinarian Sue Chan.  Discussing the hot topic of the California Veterinary Medical Board (CVMB) imposing increasingly strict regulations on how they define veterinary medicine and who can work on animals, several years ago, the board made it illegal for acupuncturists, chiropractors and equine dentists to work on animals without direct supervision of a licensed veterinarian.  Those that continue to provide services face fines into thousands of dollars and legal action.   Recently the CVMB proposed to do the same with animal massage and physical rehabilitation with the rationale that animal owners need to be protected from incompetent service providers who are not overseen by the CVMB.  However, even veterinarians will acknowledge that this is an attempt to eliminate competition for economic reasons.  Tune in for this important show and click here to learn more!

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This week on Animal Instinct host Celia Kutcher is in studio with Danielle Hlatky, who recently returned from a month volunteering at the Moria refugee camp in Lesbos, Greece.  While there, she helped people from Syria, Iraq and elsewhere who are seeking safety in Europe via Turkey and also observed the various family cats and dogs making the journeys as well.  Tune in to hear more about this situation and learn how to help and contribute to an important Go Fund Me Account.

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