An engaging and at times sobering look at the coexistence of humans and animals in the 21st century and how their sometimes disparate needs affect environments, politics, economies, and culture worldwide. There is an urgent need to understand human-animal interactions and relations as we become increasingly aware of our devastating impact on the natural resources needed for the survival of all animal species. This timely reference explores such topics as climate change and biodiversity, the impact of animal domestication and industrial farming on local and global ecosystems, and the impact of human consumption of wild species for food, entertainment, medicine, and social status. This volume also explores the role of pets in our lives, advocacy movements on behalf of animals, and the role of animals in art and media culture. Authors Julie Urbanik and Connie L. Johnston introduce the concept of animal geography, present different aspects of human-animal relationships worldwide, and highlight the importance of examining these interconnections. Alphabetical entries illustrate key relationships, concepts, practices, and animal species. The book concludes with a comprehensive appendix of select excerpts from key primary source documents relating to animals and a glossary. Includes excerpts from 20 primary source documents related to animals Offers a comprehensive look at a variety of aspects of human-animal relationships Discusses how human actions affect the survival of other species, such as the northern spotted owl and bluefin tuna

Zoo Ethics examines the workings of modern zoos and considers the core ethical challenges faced by people who choose to hold and display animals in zoos, aquariums, or sanctuaries. Jenny Gray asserts the value of animal life and assesses the impacts of modern zoos, including the costs to animals in terms of welfare and the loss of liberty. Gray highlights contemporary events, including the killing of the gorilla Harambe at the Cincinnati Zoo in May 2016, the widely publicized culling of a young giraffe in the Copenhagen Zoo in 2014, and the investigation of the Tiger Temple in western Thailand. Gray describes the positive welfare and health outcomes of many animals held in zoos, the increased attention and protection for their species in the wild, and the enjoyment and education of the people who visit zoos. Zoo Ethics will empower students of animal ethics and veterinary sciences, zoo and aquarium professionals, and interested zoo visitors to have an informed view of the challenges of compassionate conservation and to develop their own ethical positions.

The conventional history of animals could be more accurately described as the history of human ideas about animals. Only in the last few decades have scholars from a wide variety of disciplines attempted to document the lives of historical animals in ways that recognize their agency as sentient beings with complex intelligence. This collection advances the field further, inviting us to examine our recorded history through an animal-centric lens to discover how animals have altered the course of our collective past. The seventeen scholars gathered here present case studies from the Pacific Ocean, Africa, Europe, and the Americas, involving species ranging from gorillas and horses to salamanders and orcas. Together they seek out new methodologies, questions, and stories that challenge accepted historical assumptions and structures. Drawing upon environmental, social, and political history, the contributors employ research from such wide-ranging fields as philosophy and veterinary medicine, embracing a radical interdisciplinarity that is crucial to understanding our nonhuman past. Grounded in the knowledge that there has never been a purely human time in world history, this collection asks and answers an incredibly urgent question for historians and others interested in the nonhuman past: in an age of mass extinctions, mass animal captivity, and climate change, when we know much of what animals have done in the past, which of our activities will we want to change in the future?

"Who Speaks for Earthlings?" is a collection of Richard J Deboo's articles, poems and speeches primarily, but not exclusively, on the subject of animal rights. Always full of passion and utterly committed to justice, compassion and love for all lives the writings collected here will inspire and inform; by turns playful, resolute, determined and angry, Richard's words shine a bright, blazing candle on the lies and hypocrisy at the heart of the animal abuse industries of animal farming, research and the exploitation of animals in sport and entertainment. As a species we commit many cruel and unimaginably violent and brutal acts against our fellow Earthlings, but these writings show that we can do things another way - we can think and live differently. In so doing we can change the world, not only for ourselves but for all those who share this Earth with us.

A COLLECTION OF ESSAYS PLACING THE HUMAN-WOLF RELATIONSHIP IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVEInternational in range and chronological in organisation, this volume aims to grasp the maincurrents of thought about interactions with the wolf in modern history. It focuses on perceptions, interactions and dependencies, and includes cultural and social analyses as well as biological aspects. Wolves have been feared and admired, hunted and cared for. At the same historical moment, different cultural and social groups have upheld widely diverging ideas about the wolf. Fundamental dichotomies in modern history, between nature and culture, wilderness and civilisation and danger and security, have been portrayed in terms of wolf-human relationships. The wolf has been part of aesthetic, economic, political, psychological and cultural reasoning albeit it is nowadays mainly addressed as an object of wildlife management. There has been a major shift in perception from dangerous predator to endangered species, but the big bad fairytale wolf remains a cultural icon. This volume roots study of human-wolf relationships coherently within the disciplines of environmental and animal history for the first time.

HISTORIES OF HUMAN CONSTRUCTIONS OF NATURE Wild Things: Nature and the Social Imagination assembles eleven substantive and original essays on the cultural and social dimensions of environmental history. They address a global cornucopia of social and ecological systems, from Africa to Europe, North America and the Caribbean, and their temporal range extends from the 1830s into the twenty-first century. The imaginative (and actual) construction of landscapes and the appropriation of Nature - through image-fashioning, curating museum and zoo collections, making 'friends', 'enemies' and mythical symbols from animals - are recurring subjects. Among the volume's thought-provoking essays are a group enmeshing nature and the visual culture of photography and film. Canonical environmental history themes, from colonialism to conservation, are re-inflected by discourses including gender studies, Romanticism, politics and technology. The loci of the studies included here represent both the microcosmic - underwater laboratory, zoo, film studio; and broad canvases - the German forest, the Rocky Mountains, the islands of Haiti and Madagascar. Their casts too are richly varied - from Britain's otters and Africa's Nile crocodiles to Hollywood film-makers and South African cattle. The volume represents an excitingly diverse collection of studies of how humans, in imagination and deed, act on and are acted on by 'wild things'.