Conservation Biology & Animal Rights: One Language

Conservationists and animal rights aficionados should, but do not always speak, the same language. Their focus is the same, but gulfs and debates continue to sunder what should be a unified concern for all life forms, wild or semi-wild. The genetics and phenotypes allegedly defining wild versus domestic are far less relevant than the basic ethical dispositions we should all be thinking about… Continue reading

Biological Miracles and Ecological Faith in the Future — Part 3

Preserving Sustainable Resources: Dancing Star Foundation Missions

Those at Dancing Star Foundation believe that all life is precious; that animal rights is most magnificently displayed in two specific arenas: among individuals, and at levels of vast habitat protection, such as at the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (over 20 million acres) or the largest single… Continue reading

Biological Miracles and Ecological Faith in the Future — Part 2

The Values of Conservation

Jean-Paul Sartre in the Amazon

Sartre’s stunning novel questioned our ability to make meaningful contact with nature, particularly the bark of a tree wherein is writ large the story of cavity nesting birds, not to mention all those other vertebrates and invertebrates that continue to be discovered at… Continue reading

Biological Miracles and Ecological Faith in the Future — Part 1

Is Conservation Achieving It’s Goals?

To glean but one example of the prolific nature of biodiversity, consider the ongoing data base from Ecuador’s Yasuni National Park, probably the single most biologically elegant fortress of interdependent life forms as yet discovered, with nearly six hundred bird species, 150 amphibian populations, “more tree species, 655″… Continue reading

Disasters and Solutions — Part 2

Biodiversity Successes and Failures

Wall Street burns, wealth accumulation vanishes overnight, but the real wealth — as every villager dependent on safe drinking water and healthy soils can attest to — is lodged in the integrity of ecosystems that we will either come to understand and make peace with, or vanish… Continue reading

Disasters and Solutions — Part 1

Ecological Challenge: Overconsumption

Back in the late 1980s we did an autopsy of the Exxon Valdez disaster. Six months following the terrible spill, we flew out to a remote beach in the Aleutian Islands only to find ourselves picking up massive scoops of undiluted oil. This was 2,000 miles from Valdez. Now, estimates suggest the oil will hit… Continue reading

Sustainability and Animal Rights: Hope for the Future

For the Jains, every entity, down to the equivalent of atoms, or nigodas, has a soul that is endowed with a unique life force; dewdrops, sand, spores, the wind herself all carry this force of being which we would ignore at our own fool-heartiness.

The animal rights conscience is the affirmation of a universal commitment to non-violence. It confirms a… Continue reading

The Animal Rights Conscience — Part 2

Slaughtering Biodiversity, Risking Sustainable Resources

The abnegation of the rights of other species has been a deeply offensive current characterizing our race for thousands of years. While we speak of sustainability as if we actually knew what we were talking about, we continue, by and large, to slaughter inhumanely, consume without blinking, destroy with not so much… Continue reading

The Animal Rights Conscience — Part 1

Ecological Diversity at Risk: Flora and Fauna

For all of our intense deliberations concerning the future of ourselves and all the other life forms co-habiting this fragile planet with us, not one person can adequately predict even a few seconds into the future. The lessons of the past have faded, as the philosopher Heidegger warned regarding our… Continue reading

The Attenuation of the Biological World — Part 4

Global Conservation vs. Individual Thinking

Predictions that as many as 60% of all life forms may well go extinct by the end of this century — compounded by our increasing consumption of animal products and the ever-present possibility of rogue detonations of purloined 80 percent plus enriched uranium (20 percent being the weapons grade threshold… Continue reading