Inside This Issue:
- Bizarre Bankruptcy Case Gets an Animal Welfare Expert
- A Path to Survival for Endangered Elephants
- A Tale as Old as Time Itself: Animal Activists vs. City Shelter
- News Bites: Pet Cremation Fraud; Loon Love, and More!
Bizarre Bankruptcy Case Gets an Animal Welfare Expert
More details will emerge after May 5.
The recent armed standoff at the Dolphin Company's Cancun, Mexico headquarters is just the latest chapter in a bizarre "he said, he said" situation that began with troubling revelations about animal welfare at Gulf World Marine Park in Panama City Beach, Florida. The crisis came to a head when US law enforcement and wildlife officials raided the Florida marine park following mounting concerns about animal treatment. Four dolphins had died at the facility, triggering intense scrutiny from regulators. Animal welfare groups reported dire conditions, citing unclean water and unsafe conditions for the marine mammals.
The Dolphin Company, which had purchased Gulf World from former CEO Ron Hardy for $15 million in 2015, filed for bankruptcy on March 31, 2025, as investigations intensified. The park's Animal Welfare Act license is set to expire in September, and cannot be renewed unless multiple compliance issues are addressed. Since the April 11 standoff, opposing legal teams have filed contradicting preliminary statements. Eduardo Albor's legal team maintains compliance with Mexican bankruptcy law, noting their presence at headquarters was backed by state law enforcement, while the debtors had municipal police support. The complexity of simultaneous court proceedings in Mexico and Delaware has complicated matters further. However, Tuesday's emergency hearing in Delaware showed signs of cooperation, with all parties present and willing to negotiate.
A significant development from Tuesday's hearing was the announcement of an animal welfare expert's retention. The move signals compliance with requirements likely to come up at the upcoming hearing, particularly regarding risk mitigation strategies for the animals living at various Dolphin Company facilities. While Tuesday's hearing focused primarily on negotiations, the May 5 hearing is expected to address more definitive matters, including financing motions and comprehensive animal welfare strategies.
Source: Animal welfare expert retained in Gulf World’s bankruptcy case
A Path to Survival for Endangered Elephants
A Borneo elephant strikes a pose.
Winner of the 2025 Whitley Award, Dr. Farina Othman, is using her background as an elephant ecologist to help the world’s smallest elephant – and ultimately, all rainforest creatures – survive into the next century.
The Bornean elephant, a distinct subspecies found only on the island of Borneo, stands as a testament to island biogeography, where isolation leads to unique adaptations. Borneo's “tiny” elephants, standing only nine feet tall, have evolved separately on this Southeast Asian island, primarily in Malaysia's Sabah state. Today, they are endangered, with fewer than 1,000 remaining in the wild. Their story is one of direct human impact: over the past four decades, Sabah has lost over half of its natural forest habitat to logging and palm oil plantations. In just twenty years, Borneo's timber exports exceeded those from Africa and the Amazon combined. This massive deforestation has forced elephants into increasingly fragmented habitats, leading to deadly encounters with humans.
The situation is particularly grim around palm oil plantations, where illegal harvesting operations sometimes use toxic pesticides that poison elephants, either accidentally or intentionally. In the decade between 2010 and 2020, 131 Bornean elephants died primarily due to human-related causes. Recovery for these magnificent creatures is particularly challenging due to their biology. Female elephants carry their young for nearly two years and typically give birth to just one calf at a time. This slow reproductive rate means that even if we protect every remaining elephant today, rebuilding their population will take generations.
Dr. Othman’s conservation plan is simple, yet ingenious. She is primarily focused on creating wildlife corridors through palm oil plantations, allowing elephants to move safely between the remaining forest fragments. This addresses one of the main causes of the elephants’ decline. In addition, there has been emphasis on rotating palm oil plantation plots to keep from removing precious rainforest spaces. These initiatives, combined with stricter protection measures and community education, offer hope for the survival of Borneo's unique elephants.
Source: The world’s smallest elephants are facing extinction. One woman has a plan to save them
A Tale As Old As Time Itself: Animal Activists vs. City Shelter
A somewhat depressing stock photo of an animal shelter.
Out of Texas comes an insightful opinion piece from a writer covering animal rights activists and their tactics. The piece itself is centered around garden-variety rescue activism: accusations that a small city’s “no-kill” shelter is killing healthy animals and a showdown with the city’s mayor, who is defensive and proud of the shelter’s work. If you are involved with rescue issues at all, you’ve heard this type of thing at least a hundred times before, so we won’t focus on the specifics of that. What we will focus on are the writer’s keen observations on the activists’ row with his city’s mayor.
First off, the mayor, having accepted the support of animal rights activists, is now feeling the sting of their demands – demands that will never be satisfied until the activists have full control over the city’s shelter and animal policies. The idea that it’s naive to think you can make any sort mutually beneficial deal with these folks has, alas, been proven true many times over.
Speaking of unsatisfied demands, the city shelter has a live-release rate of over 90%, which is something most people take pride in. So the activists move the goalposts, demanding a 95% live-release rate before considering the shelter “truly” no-kill. But are a full 95% of the animals in the city’s shelter healthy and adoptable? According to people who truly believe that every animal can be saved – provided it is paired with the right adoptive home, given enough veterinary care, or taken to the right behaviorist – sure. 95% is probably conservative for them, in fact. However, given the descriptions and length of stay for many of the shelter’s animals, the answer for most observers is almost assuredly no.
Also mentioned is the impossible contradiction of demanding that every stray animal in the city is saved while the shelter is already filled with unadopted (possibly unadoptable) animals in perpetuity, all the while competing with closed-admission rescues that offer younger, smaller, and generally more appealing animals. That prospective pet owners lean toward puppies and kittens and generally shy away from the bigger animals (especially ones perceived as "pit bulls") is a tough reality that can be attested to by many a shelter worker who has seen animals languish without being adopted for months and months on end.
Finally, it is touched on that out-of-town activists disproportionately show up in other towns to support animal legislation – laws that produce policies that they will likely pay no taxes in support of and that will be of no personal consequence to them or their families. Alas, it’s far easier to demand someone else pick up every stray animal in their city and adopt out 95%+ of their animals than it is to do the work yourself.
Source: Who is making the decisions at the animal shelter, the council or animal-rights people?
News Bites: Pet Cremation Fraud; Loon Love, and More!
He looks proud of himself.
How would you feel if you paid to have your pet cremated, only to learn that the person you trusted with the service simply threw your pet’s body into a landfill and gave you the ashes of some mysterious, random animal that wasn’t even your pet?
That’s what Patrick Vereb, the owner of a Pittsburg funeral home, is accused of doing. And not just a few times: on at least 6,500 occasions and to the tune of $657,517 in fees.
This news hits particularly hard for Jackie Schultz, the owner of a special-needs and disabled pet rescue. Schultz has used Eternity Pet Memorial’s services numerous times over the years, and even recommended the pet memorial service for other grieving pet owners. Not only is she angry at the deception, she no doubt feels terrible for steering others toward the fraudulent business. After surrendering himself to police, Mr. Vareb was released without bail, and he is now awaiting a preliminary hearing on May 9. Given that literally thousands of grieving pet owners may have been deceived and defrauded, the Pennsylvania Attorney General's Office has put up a website for people who may have been harmed by the funeral home.
The tiny “bone collector,” an extremely rare type of carnivorous caterpillar, earns its meals by poaching the prey of spiders. It's not an honest living, but it sure must be exciting! The caterpillar’s methods are quite clever: it hides in plain sight, masking its presence by covering itself in the discarded remains of the spider’s previous meals, as well as molted bits of the spider’s own exoskeleton.
This is a case where we really wish we could speak with animals. There’s gotta be a story behind the evolutionary pressures that pushed this gnarly caterpillar toward its current daring lifestyle. It’s a shame this discovery wasn’t published in October!
In northern Michigan, at the Seney National Wildlife Refuge, all eyes are on Fe, the world’s oldest known common loon and a record-setting reproducer of her species. The reason? Her long and dramatic love life has captured the undivided attention of the world’s birders, who are just dying to see if she gets back together with her old paramour, ABJ, who she split up with back in 2022. The full details of their breakup are unknown, but it’s become a real soap opera. Fe was with ABJ for 25 years and had most of her 42 chicks with him, but in recent years, she has sought out other mates. Meanwhile, ABJ has had a rough go at bachelorhood, mating unsuccessfully, and even having his beak broken. Is it too late for this power couple of the wildlife refuge to patch things up and rekindle their relationship, or has that ship sailed? Stay tuned!
Acupuncture has become increasingly mainstream in American medicine, to a point where it is now covered by many insurance plans. It has become more common in veterinary medicine, too, and many pet owners consider it a godsend. In a nutshell, acupuncture increases levels of endogenous opioids, and has been shown to reduce the recovery time of small animals with painful nerve and back injuries. It can also aid in stimulating the appetite of sick and recovering animals, and when combined with veterinary techniques such as nerve blocks, has been shown to improve the overall effectiveness of treatment.
Acupuncture is not a cure all, but there are situations where it may be a great option for helping your pet. And as an added benefit, you won’t have to worry about the dosing schedule, side effects, and complications of using drugs. If your pet is hurting and your veterinarian suggests acupuncture, it’s really not an “out there” plan of action – at this point, this ancient treatment is practically mainstream!
We can’t let a week of animal news go by without at least one reminder of the doom and gloom in our lives. This week’s installment: per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), toxic “forever chemicals,” are building up around the North Pole, posing a grave threat to the health of animals and people who live there. PFAS exposure has been tied to liver damage and certain cancers. It is also associated with harm to an animal’s endocrine, physiological, and reproductive systems. Blargh!
Finally, and on the lighter side, you probably already know that animals convey various messages through their pee. For example, urine can mark territory, inform about reproductive status, or simply let others know “Hey, I’m feeling really stressed out.” But the messages sent via urine are rarely – if ever – as ostentatious as those written by Amazon River dolphins. With these guys (and it’s always the guys), think of it as a form of skywriting... using calligraphy. The males of this species love to roll over on their backs, then spray a fountain-like jet of urine up into the air, apparently as a form of communication, as it often attracts other males who will swim up to watch the show. What, exactly, these dolphins are telling each other is a matter of speculation, but you have to give them points for effort and style.
Also in the News...
★ (Video) Watch: Animals Returning After California Wildfire (Trail Cam Magic; "Nature Is Healing")
★ Man arrested for animal cruelty after dead snake found, pit bull starving in filthy cage (Animal Abuse & Arrests)
★ Louisiana laws for service and emotional support animals. What about fake service animals? (Service Animals; ADA; Integrity)
★ Washington becomes twelfth state to restrict circus animal use. Here’s why (Animals in Entertainment; Animal Law)
★ Westminster looks to ban the sale of live animals in the city’s pet shops (Yet Another Pet Store Ban)
★ How Animals Understand Death (Cross-Species Philosophy; Understanding Shared Experience)
★ Meet Milwaukee's animals: Onassis the turtle is zoo's oldest resident, still going strong (Not Our Usual List; Venerable Resident of the Zoo)
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