After canceling all of our 2020 trips, I am very grateful to have renewed our Joyful Vegan Trips — taking all the precautions necessary (and required) for traveling during a pandemic (now endemic) and doing everything we can to neither spread nor contract Covid-19.
In June 2023, we will be running our third trip to Tuscany, which has a few spots left, and our second to Northern Italy. The latter is called Mountains and Lakes and Canals, because, well…Dolomites (Italian Alps), Lake Garda, and Venice!
Join me today in conversation with Tim Anderson, animal advocate, co-founder and board member of the East Bay Animal PAC, and engaged citizen.
We met over a decade ago working to stop backyard animal slaughter from becoming legal in our city, and as a result, he became one of my closest friends — and biggest inspirations.
In today’s episode, Tim
shares ideas for effective engagement with elected officials
talks about the power of local civic engagement to promote compassionate policies
offers numerous ways to get involved locally on behalf of animals — finding friendships and our own authentic voice along the way.
Citizen Tim
Tim has been involved in grassroots organizing for 25 years. His efforts include work on the successful senatorial campaign for Minnesota Senator Paul Wellstone, and the 2008 presidential election of Barack Obama. Locally, he’s worked on various Oakland mayoral and city council elections, as well as city-wide ballot initiatives.
He used to volunteer as a photographer at the Oakland Animal Shelter, where he adopted his adorable dog, Rex. And among many other things, he is responsible for a weekly clean-up group in his neighborhood, which came out of neighbors joining this guy who was outside every week picking up garbage.
Tim also spoke at my Compassion in Action conferences two years in a row, volunteered with me on numerous occasions when I needed help tabling at speaking events, and was a long-time supporter of my Food for Thought podcast.
with State Senator Nancy Skinnerwith City Councilman Dan Kalbwith Oakland Mayor Libby SchaafColleen and Tim at conferenceTim speaking at Compassion in Actionwith District Attorney Nancy O’Malleywith Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguinwith Rex
FUN FACT
Tim and I have spent a lot of time at Farm Sanctuary together, and I’m very lucky to have been on the receiving end of his photography skills. If you visited the page for the podcast episode The Burden of Burros and the Plight of Donkeys, you’ll see many photos of me with my donkey friends. Tim took many of those photos (see below), along with hundreds of others of me and other animals.
Welcome to the first Food for Thought episode of 2023 — the 17th year of this podcast! Let’s kick this new year off with recommendations of the best films and books enjoyed this past year. You can refer to the blog post for the list of movies. Grab some popcorn, sit back, and enjoy!
Depending on what you focus on, you can find reasons for despair or reasons for hope, and this episode is all about giving you reason for some optimism. Listen to the episode Good News for Animals: 10 Reasons for Hope, and for a full account of these 10 good-news stories, along with links and photos, visit the blog post called Good News for Animals and Nature (2022).
As another year comes to a close, I wanted to give you 10 reasons to be hopeful for animals and nature by focusing on some good news from 2022. Depending on what you focus on, you can find many reasons for despair or many reasons for hope, and I’m here to you some of the latter. (You can also listen to the Food for Thought podcast on the same topic.)
Make no mistake, however: optimism is not complacency.
Acknowledging victories provides an opportunity not only for well-deserved celebrations, but also for examining what tactics are working and what projects we may want to get involved in or support.
My hope is not complacent; it’s provisional. It’s the difference between wanting things to change and taking action to facilitate that change.
And so, here are 10 Reasons to be hopeful for animals and nature — just from 2022 alone!
1. Companion animals are no longer considered inanimate objects under Spanish law.
While it might be obvious to you and me that animals are sentient beings, this is not reflected in civil or criminal law in most places. While “livestock” animals are still considered property in many cities and countries throughout the world, more and more, dogs and cats are being given legal status that protects them in both criminal and civil cases. With the passage of this law in Spain, the welfare of dogs and cats must be considered in divorce proceedings, for example. They will no longer be able to be seized, abandoned, or separated from one of their human guardians in the case of a divorce or separation, without their wellbeing and welfare being taken into account.
2. In Wyoming, miles of fencing are being removed to help wildlife migrate.
Scientists conservatively estimate that more than 600,000 miles of fences crisscross the American West, hindering wild animals from moving around freely and safely. In some cases, the fences are simply left-over remnants that were erected decades ago and no longer serving any purpose. In others, they were constructed with little thought about their impact on other species.
Today, through an emerging field of research known as fence ecology, land managers and conservation groups in the United States are increasingly aware of how fences can harm wild animals. And they are beginning to push for fence removal or replacement as a solution that many otherwise-at-odds constituents can get behind. In Wyoming, the Absaroka Fence Initiative — a public-private partnership between willing landowners and land managers — sees volunteers, landowners, and federal agencies working together to help wildlife by removing miles and miles of fencing.
3. 400 years after they were hunted to extinction, beavers are now a protected species in England.
As of October 1st, 2022, it is illegal to deliberately capture, injure, kill or otherwise disturb the charismatic rodents, who have reclaimed a foothold in their native land in recent years. Beavers — known as “nature’s engineers” because of their industrious dam-building skills — create wetlands, which are an important habitat for many plants and animals. In doing so, they also prevent flooding and drought-related problems such as wildfires by keeping water in the land. While new incoming governments can always change this law, this is welcome news for now.
4. The largest wildlife crossing in the United States breaks ground.
In April 2022, construction began for a long-awaited a $90-million wildlife crossing above the US-101 Freeway in Agoura Hills in southern California. This is the result of a 20-year campaign to create an easier path of travel for mountain lions, foxes, and other wildlife to cross 10 lanes of Highway 101 without encountering a single car.
The efforts to save both animals and people have led to a proliferation of road crossings for animals along traditional migration routes and other crucial locations around the world. The practice originated in France in the 1950s and quickly spread to the Netherlands, which now is home of the world’s longest wildlife bridge at .5 miles (.8 km). According to the Federal Highway Administration, about 300,000 wildlife collisions happen on U.S. roadways each year, and those are just estimates. Many smaller animal deaths never get reported. This new bridge will save thousands of lives.
5. Australia’s Great Barrier Reef shows the best signs of coral recovery in 36 years.
Two-thirds of the Great Barrier Reef in Australia recorded the highest amount of coral cover in nearly four decades. While the reef is still vulnerable to climate change and mass bleaching, these latest results demonstrate the Reef can still recover in periods free of intense disturbances. The Great Barrier Reef has suffered from widespread and severe bleaching because of rising ocean temperatures. “What we’re seeing,” said Dr Paul Hardisty of the Great Barrier Reef Foundation, “is that the Great Barrier Reef is still a resilient system. It still maintains that ability to recover from disturbances.”
6. 200 nations agree to a landmark deal to promote biodiversity and save species from extinction.
The UN biodiversity conference, known as COP15, has been considered the last chance for nature’s recovery. One of the most significant parts of the pact is an agreement to protect 30 per cent of nature by 2030. This ‘30×30’ target is one of the biggest land and ocean conservation commitments in history. The deal includes a pledge to conservation in the developing world and protections for Indigenous peoples’ rights. Governments also agreed to take urgent action on preventing the extinction of species at threat from human activity and promote their recovery.
7. The largest U.S. climate legislation in history was signed into law.
The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) commits $370 billion to combat climate change. Aimed at slashing greenhouse gas emissions to around 40% by 2030 and curbing consumer energy costs at the same time, it is the largest federal response to climate change in history and will set the course for substantial changes in how the nation produces energy over the next decade.
Major provisions include major new or expanded funding to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, encouraging a domestic supply chain for electric vehicles and energy storage systems, promoting agricultural practices that capture carbon dioxide, expanding offshore production of energy (both fossil and wind), and providing federal support for energy efficiency. The IRA also includes dozens of new and extended tax credits for renewable energy, electric vehicles, electric transmission, and related industries.
8. In Europe, wolves, brown bears, and white-tailed eagles are making a dramatic recovery.
Some of the top predators are thriving in Europe, according to a major new report commissioned by Rewilding Europe, a charity working to restore wild spaces across the continent. Effective legal protection, habitat restoration, and wildlife reintroductions are all helping to drive species recovery. Among the top predators, the grey wolf is making the strongest recovery. Once hunted to near extinction, 17,000 wolves are now found right across Europe.
9. The urban bee population is no longer declining in The Netherlands thanks to a pollinator strategy.
The native wild bee population in the Netherlands has been declining since the 1940s, but recognizing the crucial role played by wild bees in the pollination of food crops, the government announced a national pollinator strategy in 2018. The strategy included 70 initiatives aimed at creating more nesting sites for bees and strengthening their food supply. Amsterdam has been working on various bee-friendly initiatives that include putting up “bee hotels,” which are a collection of hollow plant stems or thin bamboo that provide space for bees to nest. All of the efforts are working. The latest count of native bees since the project began showed no population decline.
10. A landmark bill will ban the shark fin trade in the United States.
Before the U.S. Senate passed this legislation, 14 states and three U.S. territories had already banned the sale and possession of shark fins. The new bill will prohibit the fin trade across the entire U.S. It’s estimated that fins from as many as 73 million sharks annually end up in the global market. This historic bill bans the buying and selling of shark fins in the United States, thereby removing our country from the global shark fin trade. Shark fins are mainly in demand for shark fin soup, a luxury dish popular in China, Hong Kong and many other places across Asia.
This forthcoming ban follows other measures to protect sharks, including the listing of many shark species on the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) and a ban on gear that is used to target sharks in the Pacific.
What did I miss? What are your reasons to be hopeful for animals and nature from 2022 or in general? Share your stories of hope with me in the comments below!
Thanks for listening to my NPR commentary about how the food waste we generate affects not just our wallets but the animals we attract to it. Listen below, on KQED’s website, read the transcript below, and please share with friends and family. It’s a perspective that can change the world for animals.
You’ve heard it before: of the edible food Americans buy and bring home, about 40% gets thrown in the garbage. That translates to between $1,300 and $2,200 per household per year. When we stop treating food as garbage, the benefits are manifold — most obviously: saving money. But removing food scraps from our garbage cans is also a benefit to our relationship with the natural world — especially wildlife.
The more food we throw away, the more wild animals come to rely on that food in our trash cans, leading to human-wildlife encounters that can be inconvenient and costly for us and dangerous — often fatal — for them.
Perceiving opportunistic visitors — from the largest bears to the smallest rodents — as a nuisance often ends badly for them, but rather than changing our behavior and removing the tasty buffets that lure them in the first place, we demonize the raccoons, opossums, mice, and rats who rummage through our garbage cans and pay companies to gas, poison, or glue-trap them.
Sadly, this isn’t the only price animals pay for our wastefulness. High mortality rates by vehicle collisions and consumption of toxic non-digestibles are also linked with animals’ attraction to our garbage. Reducing food waste is essential and do-able, especially since we know the main causes of it in our homes:
Buying more food than we need
Being unwilling to consume leftovers
Improperly storing food
And misunderstanding the meaning of “sell-by dates.”
By seeing the food in our refrigerators as valuable rather than disposable means taking responsibility and being resourceful. There’s a reason humans have been canning, pickling, and fermenting foods for hundreds of years. But if that feels too advanced…at least consider:
Making a cobbler out of tired-looking fruit
Making stock from veggie scraps
Freezing chopped herbs before they wilt and so much more…
By literally turning lemons into lemonade, we save money, we save resources, and we save animals.
Abstaining from meat, dairy, and eggs during religious holidays has been a tradition for centuries in many religions. In Christianity, for example, during Lent (40 days prior to Easter) and Advent (40 days prior to Christmas), parishioners were forbidden to consume animal flesh as well as as dairy, cheese, and eggs.
In today’s episode, we explore this history and demonstrate that not eating animal products was more common than not, especially during the period of contemplation and contrition leading up to the holy days of Easter and Christmas. I share my own experience growing up Catholic, my memories of Fish Fridays, and the meaning of a common English word whose origins are steeped in religious abstinence.
Plant-based recipes inspired by the popular holiday song
Search for “12 Days of Christmas recipes” on the internet, and you’ll find countless blog posts featuring loads of animal products: actual cooked hens for Day 3, egg-based dishes for Day 6, milky desserts for Day 8, and so on.
There’s absolutely no evidence that the song pays homage to the consumption of different birds on different days during the 12 Days of Christmas; rather, it was most likely a memory game played on Twelfth Night, the 12th and final night of the 12 Days of Christmas, which begins on December 25th and ends on January 6th, otherwise known as Epiphany.
Still, you will find no animals harmed in the crafting of these dishes. It was so much fun crafting this menu — making literal interpretations as well as taking creative license. You’ll see all the whys and wherefores and details about why I chose the dishes I did once you purchase!
Obviously, you can cook from this menu anytime of the year, but I was very mindful about making sure you have what you need for a single holiday dinner (appetizers, starters, mains, and desserts) or for featuring one recipe per day during the 12 days of Christmas. Enjoy!
Poached Pears — A Partridge in a Pear Tree (December 25) Chocolate Pecan Turtles — Two Turtle Doves (December 26) Fabulous French Toast — Three French Hens (December 27) Better-than-Chicken Vegetable Pot Pie — Four Calling Birds (December 28) Monkey Bread — Five Golden Rings (December 29) Eggless Egg Salad Crostini — Six Geese a Laying (December 30) Swan Cut-out Sugar Cookies — Seven Swans a Swimming (December 31) Potato Leek Soup — Eight Maids a Milking (January 1) Roasted Brussels Sprouts with Pink Lady Apples and Onions — Nine Ladies Dancing (January 2) Wassail — Ten Lords-a-Leaping (January 3) Polenta Fries + Eggless Meringue Cookies — Eleven Pipers Piping (January 4) Butternut Squash Timbales — Twelve Drummers Drumming (January 5)
(If you’d like to understand more about why — historically — The 12 Days of Christmas started on December 25th and ended on January 6th (otherwise known as the epiphany), check out the Food for Thought podcast episodes Forbidden Meat as well Food and Feasting.)
“Is it vegan to have a service dog?” “Do you think it’s ethical to have service dogs?” “Do you think using service animals is a form of exploitation?” These are the questions I’ve been asked over the years and which I tackle in today’s episode.
Maybe 100 years ago it would have been a joke, but not today. Today, the issue of animal cruelty is being heard at the highest court in the nation, and it’s no laughing matter. Join me in conversation with Josh Balk, vice president of farm animal protection at the Humane Society of the United States as we discuss why animals need to be top of mind all the time.
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