Friday, March 4, 2016

Animal welfare law in the UK

Golden Retriever walking with young girl

Pet owners' responsibilities are enforced by the Act © The Animal Welfare Act, an overhaul of pet abuse laws, came into force in England and Wales in 2007.
The Act was the first review of pet law in 94 years. It replaced the Protection of Animals Act, first passed in 1911 and designed to prevent outright cruelty to animals. The Animal Welfare Act combined more than 20 pieces of legislation into one.
The Act introduced tougher penalties for neglect and cruelty, including fines of up to £20,000, a maximum jail term of 51 weeks and a lifetime ban on some owners keeping pets. Enforcers such as the RSPCA have more powers to intervene if they suspect a pet is being neglected.
It also introduced a welfare offence for the first time. This places a 'duty of care' on pet owners to provide for their animals' basic needs, such as adequate food and water, veterinary treatment and an appropriate environment in which to live. Previously the 'duty of care' had only existed for farm animals.
The Act also raised from 12 to 16 the minimum age for buying a pet, or winning one as a prize, without parental accompaniment.
It banned the docking (cutting or removal) of animals' tails for cosmetic reasons, with the exception of 'working' dogs such as those in the police and armed forces.
Other acts of animal mutilation are also banned by the Act, but some practices including castrating, spaying cats and dogs and ear-tagging were not made illegal.

Consultation and opinion

Tail-docking is prohibited © A public consultation began in January 2002 and included many animal welfare campaigners, including the RSPCA (Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) and Catholic Concern for Animals (an international animal welfare society). Opinions were divided.
The RSPCA hailed the Act as a breakthrough in the fight against animal cruelty, but Catholic Concern for Animals said the bill was a "good step but did not go far enough."
Jackie Ballard, the RSPCA director general, said: "The new welfare offence will for the first time protect thousands of animals from enduring serious ongoing neglect each year, by legally obliging owners to care for them properly, something the RSPCA has been campaigning on for many, many years."
She added: "Every single day RSPCA inspectors have to watch in frustration and sadness as the neglect of numerous animals at risk turns into suffering. The Animal Welfare Bill would mean we could act before that suffering actually happens."
Deborah Jones, general secretary of Catholic Concern for Animals, praised the Government for placing more "emphasis on pre-emptive action" but called for other reforms.
She explained: "We want outright bans. The bill doesn't include farm animals, laboratory animal welfare and animals used for horse or greyhound racing."
She disagreed with government assurances that farmed animals already have a high standard of protection and did not need to be covered by the bill: "All animals should be given the utmost respect as God's creatures."
But Defra, the government department driving the bill, insists it is the most significant animal welfare legislation to come before Parliament for nearly a century.
Animal Welfare Minister Ben Bradshaw defended the Government's record. "Once this legislation is enacted, our law will be worthy of our reputation as a nation of animal lovers," he said.
"We are raising standards of animal welfare. Anyone who is responsible for an animal will have to do all that is reasonable to meet the needs of their animal."
He added: "The vast majority of pet owners and others involved with the care of animals have nothing to fear from this legislation. This Bill is aimed at those few who do not properly fulfil their responsibilities for the animals in their charge."
The Act was published by Defra (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) on 14 October 2005 and began its passage through Parliament on 13 October 2005.

Statistics

Ear-cropping is prohibited © The RSPCA's cruelty figures for 2006 revealed an 8% increase in rescues and collections from the previous year, an 11% increase in the number of complaints investigated but an 8% reduction in convictions. Dogs remained the most at risk, although there was a reduction in the overall number of offences against dogs (-15.6%) and cats (-9.5%). Offences against horses and ponies, bucking the downward trend, had increased by 33%.
High-profile cruelty cases included a terrier who was left in an abandoned house and had to eat her two dead companions to survive, a Bichon Frisé whose owner was caught on CCTV suspending it from its lead and kicking it, racing greyhounds being transported in cages too small for them to stand up straight or lie down, and a horse and sheep who had been left with untreated crippling injuries and had to be put to sleep.
By mid-2007 Jackie Ballard, the RSPCA's Director General, said the Act was already enabling officers to intervene earlier:

...although the new Animal Welfare Act is only a few months old, so far it seems to be working extremely well. Many front-line RSPCA inspectors are reporting that people are responding well to the new law, and increasingly we are able to prevent animal suffering before it begins.
Jackie Ballard, Director General, RSPCA, 1 August 2007 press release

Scotland

The Animal Health and Welfare (Scotland) Act came into force in October 2006. It aimed to make the law more robust. The Scottish SPCA (Scottish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) was among organisations contributing to the draft bill.
Part 1 of the Act is aimed at giving ministers the power to slaughter livestock to prevent the spread of disease. Part 2 deals with animal welfare, cruelty and neglect.
The Act makes it an offence to "fail to take reasonable steps to ensure the welfare of a protected animal" or to cause a protected animal unnecessary suffering (Caring for your Animals, Scottish Executive booklet). A 'protected animal' under the Act is any vertebrate (animal with a backbone) that is looked after by humans. This excludes some invertebrates kept as pets and all wild animals (wild animals and birds are protected under different laws).
The Act bans the sale of animals to under-16s, as in England and Wales, and bans giving animals as prizes altogether. It also removes a loophole that allows the ownership of animals to be transferred to a friend or a family member.
It increases the maximum penalties for causing unnecessary suffering or holding animal fights to a £20,000 fine, a 12-month prison sentence or both. It allows the confiscation of individual animals and allows courts to disqualify people from owning, keeping and working with animals.
The Act bans unnecessary procedures that interfere with an animal's bone structure and sensitive tissue, but when the Act was passed some procedures were left for further discussion. In February 2007 the Scottish Executive confirmed that tail docking was to be banned, while laying regulations permitting other procedures such as ear tagging and microchipping. The ban on tail docking in Scotland came into force in April 2007.

Thursday, March 3, 2016

Snakes, Sharks, and Other Wild Animals Americans Want

On World Wildlife Day, see the most popular wildlife and wildlife products imported to the U.S. for human use.

Nat Geo Videos

Every year Americans legally import millions of wild animals and wildlife products. Sometimes they’re live animals destined for zoos. Sometimes they’re trophies from hunts or intended for scientific purposes. But overwhelmingly, they’re for the commercial trade—coats, shoes, wallets, jewelry, and exotic pets. Some are bred in captivity. Some are taken from the wild. Here are some of the animals imported in the greatest numbers in recent years.
Pythons: Reese Witherspoon was slammed in 2011 when paparazzi photographed her carrying a $4,000 python-skin Chloé bag. In California, it’s been illegal to sell python-skin products since 1970 (but not to own them). So while they’re off the market in California, the rest of the U.S. still has quite an appetite for the snakes. Some 3.7 million pythons and python items were imported from 2005 through 2014, according to a National Geographic analysis of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service data. Reticulated pythons and Burmese pythons are the most popular species for skin products, and ball pythons were the most popular species imported live. Rarer species, such as Ramsay’s python, which is endangered, were imported live in smaller numbers.
American black bears: Americans import a lot of black bears—almost all are trophies from hunts in Canada. More than 72,000 black bear trophies (meaning the whole bodies) were imported during the past decade, as well as tens of thousands of teeth, claws, skins, and skulls.
Macaques: The crab-eating macaque, found throughout Southeast Asia, is one of the most popular species for biomedical research, especially for drug development and substance abuse research. Some countries have established breeding facilities to supply these animals to the research industry, but there are some concerns that they’re are actually getting macaques from the wild, contributing to their rapidly declining populations.
African elephants: No surprise here, Americans want elephant products. The vast majority are skin and leather items. From 2005 through 2014, more than 12,600 whole elephant skins were imported, plus nearly 22,000 skin pieces, and 6,000 small elephant-skin products such as watchbands and wallets. There was plenty of ivory too: more than 30,000 ivory pieces, including carvings and jewelry, and 2,500 tusks.
Sharks: Nearly half the 5.2 million shark teeth imported during the past decade were from mako sharks. Their long, thin teeth are sold by wholesalers in bulk to make into necklaces and other jewelry. Also popular are teeth from bull sharks, sand tiger sharks, and even great whites, whose populations are under pressure from the curio trade. And then there are shark fins. Most of that trade is under the table. Legally, though, Americans imported about 4,200 fins during the past decade.
Caimans and crocs: They come in as shoes, belts, and briefcases. Meat, skulls, and whole-body trophies from hunts. Teeth, tails, and oil. Also live crocs and their cousins, the caimans. The import of 7.4 million of these animals and their products during the past decade makes them among the most popular of all. The vast majority were common caimans, an animal that likely numbers in the millions and is not of conservation concern.
But another top species was the Nile crocodile, which was hunted to near extinction by the 1960s. It’s numbers have rebounded, but the commercial trade in wild-caught Nile crocs remains prohibited or tightly regulated in most countries. Most imported Nile crocodile products come from farmed animals in Zimbabwe and South Africa. Style icon Jane Birkin, the namesake of one of the most coveted handbag lines, by Hermès, requested that her name be removed from the label last year when a PETA investigation revealed serious animal welfare concerns at Zimbabwe and Texas crocodile farms that supply the fashion house.
The animals were allegedly living in overcrowded, dirty ponds, lacking proper medical care and diets, and being killed inhumanely. A sheriff’s investigation into the Texas farm confirmed most of PETA’s findings, though a grand jury cleared the farm’s employees, the Houston Press reported. Hermès called it an “isolated situation” and apparently dealt with it to Birkin’s satisfaction: In September 2015, she withdrew her request to have her name removed.
Vicuñas: It was the coat that took down President Dwight Eisenhower’s chief of staff, Sherman Adams. The silky smooth hair of the vicuña, a llama-like animal that lives only high in the Andes, is like cashmere to the umpteenth power. Today an off-the-rack vicuña coat can cost $21,000. So when Adams accepted one from his friend, billionaire textile manufacturer Bernard Goldfine, who just happened to be under investigation by the Federal Trade Commission, it was seen as a bribe. Adams resigned in 1958.
Like any animal with a product that’s highly coveted, the vicuña was nearly poached to extinction. With intensive management, their populations recovered, and the wool trade re-opened. But once again they face threats from poaching and the illegal trade. Legally, Americans imported some 4,800 pieces of vicuña clothing and more than 2,000 square yards (1,700 square meters) of vicuña cloth during the past ten years.
This story was produced by National Geographic’s Special Investigations Unit, which focuses on wildlife crime and is made possible by grants from the BAND Foundation and the Woodtiger Fund. Read more stories from the SIU on Wildlife Watch. Send tips, feedback and story ideas to ngwildlife@ngs.org.
Follow Rachael Bale on Twitter.

VIEW GALLERY

Science and Nature

Illegally collected Himalayan plant seeds sold in UK

By Navin Singh Khadka Environment reporter, BBC World Service

Image copyright Bhaskar Adhikary

Image caption Gentiana is a favourite among collectors

Seeds of exotic plants illegally collected in the Himalayas are being sold in the UK, the BBC has found.

National Himalayan authorities say no permission was obtained to gather and export the plant material.
The activity harms the environment and deprives local people of benefits from the trade of plants, they add.
Some of the suppliers told the BBC that locals had actually helped them collect the flowers; others said they did not know their activities were illegal.
Experts say horticulture societies and clubs across the UK have long raised questions about such practice.
"When people are flouting the regulations, then that impacts us - because the host countries get more cautious about things, and we are helping them develop the protocols for ethical sharing of plant materials and the benefits," said Mark Watson of the Royal Botanical Garden Edinburgh.
Thalictrum - genus of herbaceous perennial flowering plants

Thalictrum - genus of herbaceous perennial flowering plants

Image copyright Bhaskar Adhikary

Image caption Permits are required both to collect and to export plant seeds

The Rhododendron, Camellia and Magnolia Group (RCMG), a UK gardening organisation associated with the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS), has admitted that one of its collectors did not have permission.
The group's chairman, David Millais, wrote to the authorities in India's Sikkim state, saying: "We have been informed directly by Timothy Atkinson (one of the seed collectors for the group) that he did in fact not have permission to collect seed in Sikkim in 2012 and 2013, which is deeply regrettable.
"He does, however, confirm… that he acted in innocence, unaware he was in violation of local regulations and for which he appears genuinely remorseful."
Mr Mallais wrote to the Sikkim authorities after our investigation prompted the latter to launch an inquiry.
Mr Atkinson's name appeared in the RCMG listings for nearly 250 collections of different varieties of plant seeds in Sikkim and West Bengal states of India.
Some collections even took place in wildlife reserves and sanctuaries.
"Collection of plant specimens is strictly prohibited from wildlife protected areas under the Wildlife Protection Act of 1972, and even from the other reserved forest areas," said Thomas Chandy, principal secretary with Sikkim's department of forests, in a written response.
Mr Atkinson declined our request to interview him.

Eastern Nepal — Image caption Teams of collectors mount expeditions to gather plant resources in the Himalayas

The 2015 offer list of the RCMG had nearly 850 collections of plant seeds, with more than half of them sourced from the Himalayas, including in India, China and Myanmar.
The group later wrote to its members to inform them that all wild-collected seeds were being removed from the website.
Ray Brown is the proprietor of another supplier, Plant World Seeds, which put some of Himalayan seeds on its website. Mr Brown refused to comment when asked if he had obtained permits for the seeds' collection.
He was in a team that went to Nepal and collected nearly 60 plant seed varieties in just one trip in 2014.
In a write-up where he has listed all the seeds collected, Mr Brown wrote: "Every one of you will receive a few seeds of this treasure, and also the Meconopsis and Rheum noted above."

Rheum seeds on sale — Image caption A screen grab from October: Rheum seeds with an ID number on sale online

The ID numbers Mr Brown's team gave to the seeds collected in Nepal matched those of the seeds offered on his Plant World Seeds website. These numbers have now have been removed from the site.
Authorities in Nepal said Mr Brown's team had no permission to make a collection.
"We checked with our district forest offices where these plants are found in the high-mountain areas. None of the district forest offices reported that those named people were there with any kind of permission," Nepal's forest department chief, Resham Dangi, told BBC News. "It's not in the records."

'Totally illegal'

Some suppliers of seeds say they get them from local collectors and therefore they need no permission from host countries.
One such supplier is Himalayan plant expert Chris Chadwell, who has provided seeds to private and public gardens in the UK.

Image caption Himalayan plants growing at the Sheffield Botanical Gardens

The Sheffield Botanical Gardens, for example, has a bed where plants from the Himalayas are being grown, and officials at the garden said many seeds were supplied by Mr Chadwell.
"P Kohli and Company (an Indian firm, he says) have a licence, and they have been permitted to export seeds and I am associated with them, and I liaise with them and do my collecting trips with them," he told BBC News.
"But, yes, the rules and regulations are increasing and are stricter... and they are currently checking with authorities whether or not it's going be permissible to receive any seed in 2016."
Mr Chadwell refused to give us contact details for the Indian company and other individuals who he says have legally supplied seeds to him in the past.
Indian authorities have told the BBC that even if seeds are collected by locals, foreigners are not allowed to receive them without authorisation.
"The non-Indian person or entity is required to obtain the prior approval of National Biodiversity Authority (of India) for access to biological resources occurring in India or knowledge associated thereto for research or commercial utilisation or bio-survey and bio-utilization," said KP Raghuram, an official with the NBA.
Mr Dangi, with Nepal's forest department, said something similar: "If they want to get seeds collected and exported to them by locals, they first need to get the permit from the department of forest, and based on our approval the phytosanitary office screens such materials and gives the certification.
"Otherwise it's totally illegal."

Chadwell expedition — Image caption Chris Chadwell has organised several plant-hunting expeditions in the Himalayan region

The Sheffield Botanical Gardens officials said things were beyond their control.
"We are not the ones that are going out and doing the collection so we have to, to a certain extent, trust they are getting those permits," the garden's acting head, Ian Turner, told BBC News.
"But at any effect there is always an uncertainty because we don't collect the seeds ourselves; we don't acquire the permits and we have to take some of that on trust."
The Nagoya Protocol, an international treaty that came into being in 2014, prohibits the collection of plant materials without an agreement with host countries on the sharing of benefits arising from such resources.

Recipient responsibility

Some authorities in the Himalayan countries have also been criticised for not working in the spirit of that treaty and discouraging foreign seed-collectors who are willing to operate legally.
But experts say the onus is on the recipient countries as well.
"As an EU member state, the UK is subject to new EU regulation which implements the Protocol in the EU," says John Dickie, senior research leader with the Millennium Seed Bank, which is run by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.
"Users of genetic resources in the UK will need to show 'due diligence' that the resources were acquired legally."
Mr Watson from the Edinburgh gardens said people growing plants at home should be aware of where their plants are from - and what impact their removal could have on those countries and local people.
"A fair analogy is to compare with the fair trade type of movement: people are getting more aware these days of sourcing their food ethically, and it is about time people should be thinking about the same thing for the plants that they are growing in their garden."

Facebook wildlife trade prompts fears among environmentalists

By Matt McGrath Environment correspondent

binturong — Image caption Binturong cubs are one of the species being traded illegally on Facebook in Malaysia

Environmentalists say they are worried about the emergence of Facebook as an online marketplace for trade in endangered species.

Wildlife monitoring network Traffic found hundreds of protected animals for sale on Facebook groups in Malaysia, including sun bears, gibbons, and binturongs, also known as bearcats.
It says this type of illegal trading is a growing threat around the world.
Facebook said it "will not hesitate" to remove content promoting such trade.
The researchers monitored 14 Facebook groups for 30 minutes daily over a period of five months. They found more than 300 wild, live animals for sale as pets.
"You often find that in trading there's a small percentage of people involved in illegal activity," said Sarah Stoner from Traffic, one of the report's authors.
"But we identified 236 posts where there was perceived illegal activity, there were 106 different sellers, that's quite a lot of different people and it shows how prevalent it is."

Image copyright Traffic

Image caption A white handed gibbon was another endangered animal offered for sale

The researchers say the development of an online trade is surprising in Malaysia because open wildlife markets are not found in the country, unlike in other parts of Asia.
"The demand for these animals has always existed in Malaysia but it's never really had an outlet to flourish whereas the internet and Facebook seems to be providing that platform to enable the trade to happen in this manner," said Sarah Stoner.
Almost half of the species recorded were protected and illegal to sell under Malaysian law. Some 25 of the 69 non-native animals protected under the Convention on Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (Cites).
Traffic say they have shared the details of their investigation with Facebook who are looking to develop practical solutions to combat the trade.
"We are committed to working with Traffic to help tackle the illegal online trade of wildlife in Malaysia," Facebook said in a statement.
"Facebook does not allow the sale and trade of endangered animals and we will not hesitate to remove any content that violates our terms of service."
The investigators also passed on their information to the Malaysian authorities.

Image copyright Traffic

Image caption A pig nosed turtle offered for sale, from one of the postings on Facebook in Malaysia

"We have carried out 43 successful seizures, arrested at least 54 illegal traders and saved over 67 wildlife species from being traded illegally on Facebook,'' said Hasnan Yusop, from the Department of Wildlife and National Parks, who pointed out that his colleagues have been Facebook groups selling wildlife since 2013.
''More importantly, we also want to send out a stern warning - if anyone is caught violating our law, they will face harsh penalties," he added.
Investigators are concerned that the use of social media and smartphones means that anyone interested in selling wildlife can rapidly access huge numbers of potential buyers.
They are worried that technology is opening lucrative new markets, all over the world.
"Although the findings are about illegal wildlife trade in Malaysia, we believe it reflects a worldwide problem," said Traffic's Sarah Stoner.
"Social media's ability to put traffickers in touch with many potential buyers quickly, cheaply and anonymously is of concern for threatened wildlife and enforcement agencies which demands nothing short of a concerted global response.''

Think You Know Rainbows? Look Again [Slide Show]

If sunlight catches a rain shower at just the right moment, shimmering colors arc across the horizon. Although the most common rainbow is a single crescent containing every color from red through violet, if you pay close attention, you will discover that rainbows come in a surprising variety of colors and shapes. And scientists are finally figuring out why.
Rainbows can be just red, missing violet and blue or completely white. Multiple bows can be stacked on top of one another like a deck of cards or two can spring from the same pot of gold. Stand on top of a mountain with the sun at your back and a storm up ahead and you might even witness a full 360-degree circle of glittering multicolored light.
Rainbows can arise whenever there are water droplets in the air and light to interact with them. Sunlight enters a drop, gets both refracted and reflected, then exits again, splayed out like a fan into a rainbow’s well-known hues. The drop acts much like a prism and a lens; the prism separates the white light into its constituent colors while the lens (the drop’s curvy surface) focuses them into a rainbow’s intense crescents.
But the rainbow contains all the colors of the visible spectrum only if the incoming light contains the same. “Anything that modifies the light before it hits the water drops will impact the colors in a rainbow,” says Wojciech Jarosz, a researcher at Dartmouth College who simulates how light interacts with water and other materials to create real-looking images for animated films and video games. “If it was a particularly polluted day with a yellow sky, you would get a more yellow rainbow,” Jarosz says. The additional pollution particles change how the air scatters and absorbs different colors of light. Catch a rainbow near sunset and blue, green, yellow and even orange can be missing, with only red making it through the atmosphere without being scattered away.
Light isn’t the only factor that can alter a bow. The drops themselves are equally important. Small raindrops form near-perfect spheres whereas larger drops take on a burgerlike shape as they fall and flatten because of air resistance. “If you don't have a perfectly spherical water drop, the rainbow arc no longer has perfect symmetry,” Jarosz says. Rainbows from larger drops sit closer to the horizon, looking more squashed than perfectly circular, and their colors can appear more vibrant than the wispier, broader rainbows formed by smaller drops.
Mix two rain showers with different-size raindrops and the exotic twinned rainbow may come in to view. Each shower produces its own unique rainbow, which arcs along divergent paths, but the two appear joined at the bottom. “They're not very common,” says Jarosz, who was among the first to unravel the puzzle of how twinned bows form. “You need all the conditions for a rainbow in the first place and two sets of water drops different enough in size that you can distinctly see each of those individual rainbows.” If instead the showers have a broad distribution of drop sizes, the two rainbows blur into one.
Although rainbows cannot appear without light and drops, these ingredients do not have to come from the sun and a rain cloud. Jeroen van Beeck, a physicist at The Von Karman Institute for Fluid Dynamics in Belgium creates red bows in the lab with a laser and a droplet spray. “Monochromatic rainbows aren’t as romantic but they are much purer,” van Beeck says. “You can get enormous amounts of information from them.” Every liquid droplet has its own unique rainbow fingerprint. Form that rainbow under controlled conditions and you can precisely determine a drop’s shape, size, composition and even temperature.
Out in the natural world most of the variations come from the sun’s elevation and not how warm the air is or how squashed the drops are. The middle of a rainbow’s circle lies directly opposite the sun. At dawn, this central point is on the horizon—exactly half of the circle is visible and the rainbow rides high in the sky. (The rest is hidden below the horizon and can only be seen if you stand on top of a mountain or are aloft in a plane.) As the sun rises, this central point sinks and the rainbow slowly disappears from sight. If it is raining at midday in the height of summer, the sky will be empty.” The rays are coming from directly above you, the rainbow is underground,” van Beeck explains.
Katherine Wright is a science writer and journal editor working for the American Physical Society in Long Island, N.Y.

Tuesday, March 1, 2016

Butterfly Nature

Remember the butterfly effect. Quantum physicists have noticed that if a butterfly moves its wing on the other side of the planet, everything on the whole planet has been influenced to shift to accommodate that slight movement, and in the long run the outcome for everything may be phenomenally different. Your thoughts count, your feelings count, your actions count.

Discovery New Animal and Pets

Friday, March 4, 2016

Animal welfare law in the UK

Animal welfare law in the UK

Consultation and opinion

Statistics

Scotland

Thursday, March 3, 2016

Snakes, Sharks, and Other Wild Animals Americans Want

Snakes, Sharks, and Other Wild Animals Americans Want

Photography

Environment

Dream. Plan. Go. Share.

World's Best Hikes

Spotlight

Play. Watch. Explore.

Magazine Subscriptions

Shop Our New Spring Collection

Science and Nature

Illegally collected Himalayan plant seeds sold in UK

Illegally collected Himalayan plant seeds sold in UK

'Totally illegal'

Recipient responsibility

Facebook wildlife trade prompts fears among environmentalists

Facebook wildlife trade prompts fears among environmentalists

Think You Know Rainbows? Look Again [Slide Show]

Think You Know Rainbows? Look Again [Slide Show]

Tuesday, March 1, 2016

Butterfly Nature

swf

Blogger templates

Blog Archive

Friday, March 4, 2016

Animal welfare law in the UK

Consultation and opinion

Statistics

Scotland

Thursday, March 3, 2016

Snakes, Sharks, and Other Wild Animals Americans Want

Photography

Environment

Dream. Plan. Go. Share.

World's Best Hikes

Spotlight

Play. Watch. Explore.

Magazine Subscriptions

Shop Our New Spring Collection

8 Pictures From Inside Sea Turtle Rescue and Rehab

Illegally collected Himalayan plant seeds sold in UK

'Totally illegal'

Recipient responsibility

Facebook wildlife trade prompts fears among environmentalists

Think You Know Rainbows? Look Again [Slide Show]

Tuesday, March 1, 2016