Species Unite

"Why do we need large carnivores? Obviously as a scientist, I like talk about the biological roles that they play and the ecological roles, but I will drift and say that I think they're important for spirit and sort of human health more broadly, whether that be mental health, spiritual health, whatever, that sense of wildness that they bring to a landscape, that they force you to listen when you're in the woods, that you hear sticks break around you, that you hear what the birds are doing so that you know whether there's something coming around the next bend. These are all, in my opinion, truly enriching moments and necessary for human spirit and really for human health." - Mark Elbroch 

Mark: [00:12:23] These are all, in my opinion, truly enriching moments and necessary for human spirit and [00:12:30] really for human health

Mark Elbroch is an ecologist and author, storyteller and the director of the Puma Program for Panthera, the global wild cat conservation organization.

Mark has been on the podcast before to talk about cougars, but something has changed since the last time he was on. For years, many people in the scientific community, and this is backed by research, have claimed that cougars would return to their historic range in the eastern US in the next 10 to 20 years.

But there's a new study from Panthera that says that this is not true, that they won’t make it to the East Coast even by 2100, which means, if we want cougars in the east we're going to have to help them.

This is a big deal because we do want cougars in the east. Large predators make fragile ecosystems strong. Mountain lions interact with nearly 500 other species and their reintroduction could lead to healthier forests, less zoonotic disease, and many other benefits. 

Let’s bring cougars home!

“And so I've been doing this for about 40 years, and I still don’t get tired of seeing parrots. I see a parrot or I see a bird and I go, I belong. There is such beauty in the world. Oh my gosh. It's like everything is okay for a minute you're intrigued, you're curious, you're seeing beauty, you're seeing flight. But at the same time, you've trained yourself to hold the tragedy because there aren't nearly as many as there used to be and there's all kinds of complex threats against them, and there's little we can do. So you see a wild parrot that is also the internal conversation, they're in trouble, it's not like it was or it should be or could be. So that's what it's like to see a parrot is to see the beautiful and the tragic.” – Rev. Dr. LoraKim Joyner

I only learned recently that parrots are the most endangered group of birds on the planet. As with so many other species, our tendency to take and take is what is driving parrots toward extinction. We've been stealing them from the wild for 60 years to live these pitiful lives in cages, in people's kitchens. That, combined with habitat loss and climate change is pushing these spectacular birds to the brink of extinction.

This conversation is with Rev. Dr. LoraKim Joyner, a wildlife veterinarian, a conservationist, a Unitarian minister, and co-founder of One Earth Conservation. LoraKim has spent the last 40 years in Latin and South America, working with communities to save their parrots – by building their capacity to transform poachers into protectors. 

One Earth Conservation grows conservationists of all ages by empowering and standing in solidarity and resistance with the people of the Americas. They have projects in Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Guyana, Paraguay, and Suriname.

To learn more: https://www.oneearthconservation.org/

“In terms of specialized AI within these industries. They're years and years ahead of where the animal movement currently is. Factory farms are increasingly using AI as well to do things like predicting the growth rate of chickens so that they can set the environmental variables up perfectly to exploit these animals as efficiently as possible.” – Sam Tucker

Sam Tucker is the founder of Open Paws, a nonprofit aimed at creating ethically aligned AI systems and he’s the creator of Veg 3, an AI chatbot promoting animal rights.

Sam’s expertise in AI development and animal protection provides both a practical and theoretical understanding of how to create technologies that benefit all species.

I asked Sam to come on the show because I want to understand how we, Species Unite and other organizations like us can be using AI to be way more effective.

“We enacted what's called the Beagle Freedom Project Bill. Basically, what it said was, if you're a facility that tests on dogs and cats, when the testing is over, you are mandated to release those animals to give them a second chance at life to a 501C3 charity like Beagle Freedom Project or any other type of facility like that, like a rescue facility. You wouldn't believe how hard that was to pass.” – Shannon Keith

The story sounds like a dream: hundreds of animals used for research and testing are now free and the former prison that they were forced to call home has been torn down to become a safe and loving animal sanctuary. 

This conversation was done as a live interview a few weeks ago. It's with me and Shannon Keith, the president and founder of the Beagle Freedom Project. I invited her on to discuss the shutdown of a massive dog and cat testing laboratory in Nowata, Oklahoma. Not only did the Beagle Freedom Project and Shannon shut down this laboratory, but they rescued all of the dogs and cats that were being tested on there, and they took over the laboratory and it's grounds and are in the process of transforming it into a 30-acre sanctuary called Freedom Fields.  

The closure of this laboratory ends one-third of the toxic flea and tick testing industry in the United States, sparing the lives of thousands of dogs and cats.

Beagle Freedom Project is the world’s leading organization for rescuing and rehoming animals used in experimental research. Since 2010, they have liberated thousands of animals while working to end their abuse through education, advocacy, and legislation.

We talk about the shutdown, the rescue of hundreds of animals that were being tested on, and the magic of transforming a dark and terrifying animal research lab into a beautiful sanctuary. And, we discuss not only how to help these former research animals, but also the more than one hundred million still being used for testing and research in the United States.

"And the thing that really makes me sad is that we humanize them when they're little, by putting them in diapers and feeding them bottles and dressing them in clothes. And then we demonize them when they grow up and act like the wild animal that they are, because people think if they neuter them, if they get their teeth removed - not my chimp, my chimp is not going to act like that." - Angela Scott 

Last week we released an episode with Brittany Peet, PETA's general counsel for captive animal law enforcement, who is featured in the HBO docuseries, Chimp Crazy. If you haven't seen it, please see it. It's made by Eric Goode, the guy who made Tiger King, and it is equally shocking.  It also shines a light on the need to pass the Captive Primate Safety Act and there are many high hopes that that act could get passed this year because of Chimp Crazy. 

Chimp Crazy focuses on chimpanzee owners, private owners that buy cute baby chimps, dress them up and treat them like human children until they are 5 or 6 years old, when the chimps become large, and very strong wild animals. This part usually ends badly. Well, it always ends badly for the chimps but quite often it does for the humans too.

This conversation is with Angela Scott, the whistleblower in Chimp Crazy, and for this entire case.

A little background: Angela volunteered at a place called Chimp Party for a woman named Connie Casey. Connie and her husband Mike bred and sold chimpanzees and other primates for decades.

PETA got involved because of the horrific conditions these chimps were living in. Angela was the whistleblower who worked with PETA. But before the case could fully go through, Connie gave her chimps to a woman named Tonya Haddix. And the chimps were in Tanya’s care when they were rescued, all except for one, a chimp named Tonka. Tanya tried to keep Tonka for herself and she hid him from PETA for months in a cage in her basement.

All of the chimps, including Tonka, were eventually saved because of Angela’s willingness to go back to Connies and film what she saw. Angela’s stories of what these chimps went through are astonishing and I am so grateful to her for sharing them with us. 

“I mean, it's an addiction, an obsession, a sickness that these people seem to have that they don't think that it could happen to them. And even when it does, they are still in denial about it.” - Brittany Peet

There's a new docuseries on HBO called, Chimp Crazy. If you haven't seen it, see it. It's made by Eric Goode, the guy who made Tiger King, and it is equally shocking .  

Chimp Crazy focuses on chimpanzee owners, private owners that buy cute baby chimps, dress them up and treat them like human children until they are 5 or 6 years old, when the chimps become large, and very strong wild animals. This part usually ends badly. Well, it always ends badly for the chimps but quite often it does for the humans too.

This conversation is with Brittany Peet, PETA's general counsel for captive animal law enforcement. Brittany makes quite a few appearances in Chimp Crazy - she is one of the PETA lawyers who freed the captive chimps in the show, and has spent her career working to free many other captive, chimps, primates and other wild animals throughout the US.

Please listen, share and if you haven’t seen it, please watch Chimp Crazy.

"So this relationship to ourselves, to other people, to other animals - whether farm animals or wild animals, it's very bizarre how we have gotten it so twisted in what we expect and what we feel entitled to over here in the the Global North." - Katherine Baxter 

Katherine Baxter is the CEO of the Africa Network for Animal Welfare-USA (ANAW). ANAW-USA works to advance the welfare of animals, humans and the environment by facilitating mutually beneficial and reciprocal exchanges between the United States and Africa.

Their mission is to work with their sister organization in Kenya, ANAW, and other partners, to advance the inseparable welfare of animals, humans, and the environment by facilitating mutually beneficial exchanges of resources and knowledge between the United States and Africa. I asked Katherine to come on the show to talk about ANAW and some of ANAW's coexistence programs in Kenya, including an incredible sunflower project has solved huge problems with human-elephant conflict.

It makes me crazy that we in the US are incredibly resistant to many (or most) coexistence programs yet our stakes are pretty low. In the US, if a wolf kills a sheep, the rancher is reimbursed and except for the poor sheep, life goes on. Whereas in villages close to Tsavo National Park in Kenya, people lose entire crops to elephant herds, are financially ruined, and some even lose their lives - yet they are much more willing to explore and try coexistence programs that benefit all - the crops, the people and the elephants. 

If we want to live in a country where wildlife and predators still roam, then we need to put the guns down and start paying attention to ideas and initiatives like the ones that Katherine talks about here. We have much to learn. 

“There are more native crocodiles living in cages and concrete pens that are owned by Hermes or supplying Louis Vuitton than live in their natural habitat. So, that is so clearly not conservation. And we're talking like hundreds of thousands of crocodiles.” – Emma Hakansson

We are destroying the planet, killing billions of animals and making life insufferable for humans all over the world, all in the name of fashion. But, Emma Hakansson is on a mission to change all of it. She is the founding director of Collective Fashion Justice, an organization dedicated to creating a total ethics fashion system which prioritizes the wellbeing of people, our fellow animals and the planet, before profit.

And some of the bags are even like Nile crocodile and crocodiles from different parts of the world and the level of exclusivity is based on like how rare that skin is. And it seems to not even connect in their mind that, like, maybe if an animal is rare, it means that they should be being protected rather than made into a bag that you think is special. And I think that's where a disconnect from nature comes into play. Like if we really connected with nature and saw the beauty of it, we would want to protect it more in its natural state, and we would see higher value in fashion that appreciates nature and takes inspiration from nature, but that doesn't take from it and destroy it or kill it.  – Emma Hakansson

Emma has consulted on passed progressive fashion legislation in New York City, spoken at the European Parliament, been invited to provide expertise in Parliament inquiries in Australia, and offered her expertise to global brands and fashion councils seeking to improve their ethics and sustainability. Her latest book, Total Ethics Fashion, explores the namesake term that she coined to guide the fashion industry forward.

Please listen and share and if you do purchase something this week, please shop consciously. 

"I cannot put enough emphasis on this. I have seen so many things that are so weird that even when I would show it to law enforcement at first, before there were like a lot of these cases coming out, law enforcement would look and they'd be like, “what? Why would someone do this?” Right? As if what I'm showing them wasn't real. And what I learned to say to get past that is, I would say to cops, “how many times have you seen someone do something for reasons they can't even explain to themselves?" - Pete Paxton 

For the past 23 years, Pete Paxton has been working undercover in puppy mills, factory farms, slaughterhouses, pet stores, and on-board commercial fishing boats to document horrific cruelty. Some of these high-stress, horror show jobs last for weeks while others go on for months at a time - months of ten-hour days, doing hard, heavy labor, witnessing animals being abused or killed and watching your co-workers hurt the already abused animals even more. 

Pete does it because he is good at it, because he loves animals and because his work has often resulted in big change for animals.

 What perplexes me the most about Pete, is that after 23 years of working in hellish places like slaughterhouses and factory farms, he hasn’t become dark and dour. Instead, he is the opposite. He's extremely funny, super engaging and seriously joyful. He doesn’t allow this work to take him down. Most people I know, me included, would be a shell of a human being after a couple of hours in his world.

Pete is also the author of Rescue Dogs and has had two HBO documentaries made about him and his work, Dealing Dogs and Death on a Factory Farm.

“You asked what kind of army we are. Cleveland Amory once said it. He said, “the army of the kind.”  And that's it. If there's anything going on, we find it irresistible not to speak out, to do something, to say something, to enlist other people to help because we're not some superhuman force, we're a collection of humans.” Ingrid Newkirk

Ingrid Newkirk co-founded People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) in 1980, and since then, I don’t think there has been a single day that she has not fought against injustice toward animals. She is not only a hero for millions of animals but also for humans, for showing all of us how to make change happen and for inspiring us to do it.

Since it was founded, PETA has exposed horrific animal abuse in laboratories, leading to many firsts, including canceled funding, closed facilities, seizure of animals, and charges filed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. PETA has also closed the largest horse-slaughter operation in North America, convinced dozens of major designers and hundreds of companies to stop using fur, ended all car-crash tests on animals, helped schools switch to innovative animal-free dissection tools, and provided millions of people with information on being vegan, companion animal care, and countless other issues.

Ingrid just celebrated her 75th birthday, so we got together to take a look back at her life and the life of PETA.

Happy Birthday, Ingrid!