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All in Animal Welfare
When we last checked in on Pablo Escobar’s hippos – the descendants of the dead drug lord’s hippopotamuses that have infiltrated Colombia’s Magdalena River basin – the government was attempting to control the invasive population by sterilizing them.
Last October a sickly bearded vulture was rescued by a roadside in Haute-Savoie, France, just south of Geneva. Taken to a veterinary clinic that specializes in vultures, the staff learned this specimen is 37 years old, the world’s oldest bearded vulture outside of captivity.
This month the National Zoo in Washington announced the birth of a painted river terrapin, the first time this critically endangered species has been successfully bred at the zoo. In fact, the little guy is already five months old. The zookeepers had found it on August 26, still sporting its egg tooth, a tiny built‑in tool it used to crack out of the shell, meaning it was only a day or two old when they found it.
ZooTampa’s manatee rehab center announced it had released 26 manatees in 2025, the highest number of rehabbed manatees returned to the wild in any single year since the facility opened in 1991.
For nearly 50 years, an eastern box turtle named Rockalina lived alone on a linoleum kitchen floor. When she was rescued last year by New Jersey turtle sanctuary Garden State Tortoise, she was wan, her eyes covered in dead skin, her claws unnaturally bent upward.
French film legend Brigitte Bardot died this week at 91. The pouty “sex kitten” appeared in over 50 films in a 20-year career, which she abruptly abandonedin 1973. For the remaining decadesBardot devoted her life to animal welfare.
An African elephant named Kariba has bounced around since her family was wiped out by ivory hunters 40-plus years ago. The orphan has lived in various European zoos since then but soon – in early 2026 – she will be housed in a real sanctuary in Portugal. How well she fares there could help decide the fates of an estimated 625 elephants in captivity around Europe.
On a windy Sunday morning in Cornwall, a young flamingo took flight from a local sanctuary. By the following day, she had crossed the Channel and arrived on Île Aganton along the north coast of France, 130 miles from where she began.
This month Japan deployed troops to fend off bear attacks in the northern prefecture of Akita. Bears have gone a bit nuts here this year, killing at least a dozen people since April and injuring more than 100.
We’ve covered this kind of behavior before: moronic tourists getting too close to wildlife in Yellowstone National Park. This time it was a man armed with pepper spray walking directly into a pack of wolves. Wildlife photographer Keith Allen Kerbs captured the incident (from a safe distance, using a 500-mm zoom lens) and posted a video on Instagram. The clip shows the man walking toward at least five wolves as he waves his arms. The wolves approach him and quickly back away as he wields the pepper spray.
Longtime television hostess Giuliana Rancic organized an impressive airlift out of Los Angeles this week: 109 dogs stuck in overcrowded California shelters and slated for euthanization were flown out to more accommodating rescues elsewhere in the country.
The endangered Siberian tiger, also known as the Amur tiger, is rarely seen in the wild, but this year the world’s largest big cat is making unwelcome appearances in Russia’s far east. The tigers are preying on dogs, livestock, and in a few cases, humans.
A fashion show in Chelsea this week featured a very special kind of fabric: wool harvested from gay sheep. Designer Michael Schmidt teamed up with German sheep farmer Michael Stücke and LGBTQ dating app Grindr to launch a line of knits that have the added benefit of saving the lives of the sheep that produced the wool.
he Mexican government was all set to eradicate the spiny-tailed iguana on Clarion Island. But now researchers have discovered that the reptile is in fact a native of the remote island and not an invasive species.
At least three weirdly colored dogs have been spotted in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, the abandoned area around the 1986 nuclear reactor disaster site. This month, researchers from Dogs of Chernobyl recorded canines with blue fur, and they’re not sure how it happened.
Earlier this year the West Coast Game Park Safari in Bandon, Oregon was shut down following a years-long investigation into the deplorable conditions at the roadside petting zoo. Hundreds of animals – lions, tigers, chimpanzees, camels, goats, capybaras – were victims of neglect; now some are finding a new life in sanctuaries. The Wildcat Sanctuary in Sandstone, Minnesota shared photos of its adopted jaguar, a sleek cat the shuttered petting zoo had called Lucifer, now known as Louie. The sanctuary also took in Bently the leopard, Nasha the lioness, and Lyla the lynx. The rescues enjoy spacious habitats and tender care in Minnesota, a far cry from their former lives.
With Diane Keaton’s passing last week we remember her film career – Annie Hall, the Godfather movies, Reds – but let’s tip our caps to her other passion, “a lifetime of dedication to the cause of animal welfare,” as the Helen Woodward Animal Center writes in a tribute.
The rights of seven chimpanzees, currently behind bars at the DeYoung Family Zoo in Wallace, Michigan, is being heard this week by the Michigan Court of Appeals. At issue is whether the chimps should be granted habeas corpus, a protection against unlawful imprisonment.
A marine park in Canada hoped to sell its last 30 beluga whales to an aquarium in China, but the deal was kiboshed by the fisheries minister. So Marineland, a near-bankrupt tourist attraction in Niagara Falls, is threatening to euthanize the whales if the government doesn’t cover some of the cost of their care.
When Hurricane Milton whipped through Florida last year, a dog abandoned and tied to a fence was spotted and rescued by Highway Patrol. The bull terrier was taken in by the Leon County Animal Shelter;a video of the dog left alone on Interstate 75 with water rising to his chest went viral.
