Ethics News

Many of us love animals. At least, we think we do. We may serve our cats gourmet food and let them sleep in our beds. We may buy our dogs…

The Pope, a prince, and a judge walk into a bar... Sounds like the beginning of a bad joke. What it represents instead is not a meeting in a bar,…

Wild animals, especially big cats, have captivated human interest for as long as we have existed. The very first figurative art, laboriously carved out of woolly mammoth ivory over 40,000…

Shoes, watches, wallets and bags — anything made from exotic reptile skins — were plucked from the shelves in Selfridges, a high-end department store in the U.K., in February 2019.…

Starting October 6, the Catholic Church will hold its first ever synod focused on an ecological biome. Bishops, indigenous leaders and activists will meet and set plans to help save the Amazon.

During Climate Week, starting September 22 at the UN in New York City, interfaith leaders will unveil the Faiths for Forests Declaration, with a call to political action by global congregations.

Fishkeeping has been around for centuries, and the amount of people who want to start keeping fish grows year after year. However, many newcomers to the hobby don’t carry out…

Modern day expeditions face a collection dilemma as scientists consider ethics and endangerment A tray of Eriocnemis (a genus of hummingbird) specimens, Swedish Museum of Natural History - Naturhistoriska Riksmuseet,Stockholm,…

In Southern Italy over the weekend, Pope Francis reiterated his view that environmental destruction constituted a sin. Visiting the largely agricultural region of Molise, the pope responded to an address…

Sir David Attenborough has said that people living in poorer countries are just as concerned about the environment as those in the developed world, and "exporting environmentalism" isn't necessarily an…

The world's largest land animal looms small in the distance. Photo by: Cyril Christo and Marie Wilkinson. Africa's elephant poaching crisis doesn't just threaten a species, but imperils one of…

The Ethical Ape is a regular column published by author and researcher Shawn Thompson. The views expressed in the column are his own. The woman we know as Jane Goodall…

The Ethical Ape is a regular column published by author and researcher Shawn Thompson. The views expressed in the column are his own. It is the easiest of premises to…

The 2013 Zoos and Aquariums: Committing to Conservation (ZACC) conference runs from July 8th—July 12th in Des Moines, Iowa, hosted by the Blank Park Zoo. Ahead of the event, Mongabay.com…

Africa's Wildest Stories is a new initiative in Kenya to capture personal stories about the relationship of people to nature. Elephant Keeper Mishak Nzimbi (above) has been working at the…

Logging in Gabon, Central Africa. Photo by Rhett A. Butler. Industrial logging in primary tropical forests that is both sustainable and profitable is impossible, argues a new study in Bioscience,…

Aerial view of the infamous Río Huaypetue gold mine in the Peruvian Amazon. This remote but massive gold mine is known for the destruction of primary rainforest, widespread mercury pollution,…

Sawmill in Indonesia. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. Last year researchers took the first ever publicly-released video of an African golden cat (Profelis aurata) in a Gabon rainforest. This beautiful,…

An interview with Dr. Sarah Bexell. The vanishing giant panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) is just one victim of the global environmental crisis. Photo by: Sarah Bexell. Several years ago while teaching…

Climatologist Peter Gleick with the Pacific Institute has admitted to obtaining documents from the conservative advocacy group, the Heartland Institute, through a fake name and leaking them to the press.…

Our generation of ecological writers, scientists, and activists confront a situation without historical analog. 21st Century naturalists and environmentalists genuinely concerned about enjoying and preserving wilderness are forced to accept…

The view from Lazy Point. Photo courtesy of Carl Safina. Being compared—by more than one reviewer—to Henry Thoreau and Rachel Carson would make any nature writer's day. But add in…

An interview with Kirsten Conrad. Just the mention of the idea is enough to send shivers down many tiger conservationists' spines: re-legalize the trade in tiger parts. The trade has…

In June a German court handed down a guilty verdict to the Magdeburg Zoo director, Kai Perret, and three employees for euthanizing three tiger cubs in 2008. The zoo decided…

With 18,000 islands spanning two major bigeographic realms (and a curious outlier in Sulawesi) across an area of nearly 2 million square kilometers, Indonesia is one of the world's most…

Would a climate change tribunal offer justice to those affected by global warming? If Lord Bertrand Russell were still alive today, he would most likely be appalled by the Global…

In April marine scientist Jennifer Jacquet made the case on her blog Guilty Planet that people should abstain from eating seafood to help save life in the ocean. With fish…

Elephants die significantly earlier in zoos than in wild Elephants die significantly earlier in zoos than in wild Jeremy Hance, mongabay.com December 11, 2008

Intentions matter. This simple wisdom becomes quite apparent the older we become. Though we don't always have control on the outcome of our effort, our intentions often dictate how happy…

Philosophical shift in conservation reintegrates humans in parks Philosophical shift in conservation reintegrates humans in nature Not all conservation is wilderness conservation Rhett A. Butler, mongabay.com February 28, 2007 Humans…