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from Full Focus:
A night on the kangaroo cull
Photographer David Gray spent a night out with Steve O'Donnell, a professional plumber who by night is a government-licensed kangaroo shooter on the outskirts of Australia's capital Canberra. After dusk, Steve's job is to take part in the culling of Australia's kangaroo population, which is estimated at over 50 million, though precise numbers vary dramatically. Every licensed kangaroo shooter goes through rigorous testing and must abide by strict rules and conditions, including that a "headshot" must be obtained to minimize the animal's suffering. Read David's personal account here.
from Photographers Blog:
Racing greyhounds fall between the cracks
West Yorkshire, England
By Chris Helgren
I met Alice at a rescue center in West Yorkshire. She was skin and bones, flea-ridden, and half the weight of the dog she should have been. Alice was a greyhound bred for racing, who was picked up wandering the busy Doncaster Road, the victim of an uncaring owner who had dumped her rather than continue feeding her. She was brought to Tia Greyhound & Lurcher Rescue center, a sanctuary sited on the edge of a moor near Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire.
Tia was borne of the need to house dogs which were either abandoned or whose owners or trainers could not find space at regular welfare kennels. The Retired Greyhound Trust is doing an admirable job in housing and arranging for homes for about 4,000 dogs per year through their 72 branches, but their space is limited to about 800 kennels. Also, kennels charge up to 300 pounds for a new dog to be admitted. What happens in the cases seen by Rothery in Yorkshire is that if a greyhound owner cannot place their dog in one of these kennels, the pressure is on to move it out of their care in other ways, such as by advertising via websites Gumtree or Preloved. These new onward owners are not vetted, and there is no return policy if it doesn't work out.
from Photographers Blog:
The tiger, the pig and the cage
Sumatra Island, Indonesia
By Beawiharta
Over a three-week period in February, I covered two very different animal-related assignments in Indonesia – the slaughtering of snakes in West Java and the preservation of the endangered tiger in Sumatra.
In West Java, Wakira along with his 10 workers kill hundreds of snakes each day for their skin at his slaughterhouse in Cirebon. While in Sumatra, real estate tycoon Tomy Winata saves and releases tigers into the wild at his Tambling Wildlife Nature Conservation. I didn't enjoy the snake slaughterhouse assignment because snakes are dangerous and disgusting, but I really liked visiting the tigers in Tambling.
from Photographers Blog:
The lost dogs of Ciudad Juarez
Ciudad Juarez, Mexico
By Jose Luis Gonzalez
As a photojournalist living and working in Ciudad Juarez I’m used to seeing dead people being picked up off the streets.
The last few years have been brutal, with violence and shoot-outs every day and dead people everywhere. But it is much calmer now and corpses lying in puddles of blood are not as common a sight as they used to be. Nevertheless, some weeks ago I drove through a neighborhood and saw a couple of men dressed in hooded, white coveralls picking up another kind of corpse: a dead dog. They threw it into a container pulled by a truck and when they took off I started to follow them.
from Photographers Blog:
Among wolves
Merzig, Germany
By Lisi Niesner
“You can join me and pick up the deer carcass”, German wolf researcher Werner Freund invited me as he climbed into his lorry. I quickly jumped in. A rotten smell of meat hit me. I thought I wouldn't smell it after a while but this proved to be a very false assumption. We chatted while driving and he told me about his education as a gardener and his first botanical job at the Stuttgart zoo. Soon, his job turned into a predator zookeeper after the initial bear keeper was injured. “I have cataracts, but have heard it can be treated very well today”, he suddenly added. I started monitoring his driving suspiciously until we reached a house, not far from the French border. There it lay in the snow, directly on the driveway. He asked me to give him a hand, and in view of the fact that Werner Freund is almost 80 years old, it was just polite to help him load the animal’s cadaver. On the way back I told him I had never loaded or even touched a dead deer, which seemed to amuse him.
Back at his home he changed clothes to confront the Mongolian wolves pack with a familiar odor. I was curious. Werner opened the door of the fence and entered the enclosure. First the alpha male wolf Heiko, came towards him and licked his mouth which is a sign of acknowledgment and a sign of membership of the pack. After this ritual Werner got the deer cadaver, put it on the snowy ground, lay down and held it in a manner as if it were his prey. As a child I was told, like most other children, the tale of little red riding hood making me wary of the big bad wolf with bared teeth on display. Unexpectedly the pack was shy and approached carefully. Werner took over his role and bit into the leg of the deer but spat out the raw meat. I was too busy trying to shoot pictures through the wire-netting fence, to wonder what was going on in front of me. None of the wolves competed with him for the food.
from Photographers Blog:
Farewell to Fafá
By Ueslei Marcelino
Once upon a time, there was Fafá.
A brave lioness, wild by nature, strong and imposing, Fafá was born and raised in the Brasilia Zoo, and she was undoubtedly one of its biggest attractions.
The star’s last show, however, was a most unusual scene, inside a CAT scanner. Fafá, nearly 18 years old, had stopped eating, had bleeding nostrils, and suffered seizures, and everyone who cared for her at the zoo became concerned.
from Photographers Blog:
My day with Cocoa, the New York goat
By Allison Joyce
A few weeks ago, while I was at the Empire Hotel having a drink with friends, a latecomer arrived and laughingly said that on his way, he had passed by a goat hanging out at Lincoln Center. We were incredulous until he showed us a photo he had snapped on his phone and sure enough, there it was, a goat actually hanging out in the Lincoln Center fountain! Within days I read a story on Gawker titled "Amazing Pizza Goat Risks Overexposure," which stated that the "pizza goat", aka Cocoa, had dined at Serafina. I thought that this would make an incredible visual "only in New York" sort of story, so I tracked down the goat's owner, Cyrus Fakroddin, and met them at their home last weekend in Summitt, New Jersey with the Reuters TV crew.
We followed Cyrus and Cocoa around the home they share as Cocoa wandered about, lounged in front of a warm fire, hung out with Cyrus's pet chickens, and even jumped up onto the kitchen counter to snack on some fresh fruit. Before we headed into the city for the day, we ran an errand at the post office, and when confronted with their "no goats allowed" policy Cyrus simply told them that she was a service goat and that was that-- we were in! Walking around downtown Summitt, it was clear that Cyrus and Cocoa were local celebrities; they were greeted many times by their local fans.
from Photographers Blog:
Los Galgos Guapos (The Handsome Hounds)
By Erin Siegal
I'd never really known a galgo, or greyhound. To me, they were simply those weirdly skinny creatures in the NYC dog runs that looked like yawning alligators when panting, so rail-thin that they practically disappeared unless they turned sideways.
But now?
Well, let's just say that I think Dreamboat's name is pretty accurate.
"Dreamboat," a.k.a. U.S.S. Dreamboat, enjoys a bath.
In Tijuana, Mexico, the Caliente racetrack is famous. In the city's heyday, high-end thoroughbreds charged past glamorous crowds of onlookers; photos of the horses still adorn the walls in the casino's basement administrative offices. Today, however, a different kind of animal bursts from the starting gates each day: American greyhounds.
from Oddly Enough Blog:
Nine things I’ll miss most about this blog
Let's get the sad news out of the way first.
After an exhilarating five-year run, this blog is ending its run here. Websites change, and take new directions.
The slightly better news is that we have a couple of weeks until my final post, so let's have fun.
from Oddly Enough Blog:
It’s your turn to go “quack-quack,” Jim
Blog Guy, you don't seem to be too fond of hunting. I guess that's just because you love animals?
Look, I'd really, really like it to be just because of my feelings about animals, and my opposition to cruelty and suffering and stuff like that...
