Species Unite

"Within a month of our investigation's release, we had some amazing news. The French government passed legislation to ban fur farms in France. In 2017, it was an issue which was not really on the public agenda, but within four years we have stopped an industry in France. Hundreds of thousands of animals don't have to be killed each year, don't have to live in these small cages going crazy each yea...

"I think every time we release a story, there's this sense of like almost like legal danger, the legal implications that can come from releasing stories. We've had times wherea story has been released and we haven't slept that night because we're scared of what the repercussions are going to be." - Amy Jones, Moving Animals Amy Jones and Paul Healey are the founders of Moving Animals , a photojour...

Jane Velez Mitchell the founder of Jane Unchained , a media platform for vegan and animal rights news. Her decades long career as a broadcast journalist has focused on bringing animal rights issues to the forefront. For six years she hosted her own show on CNN Headline News, where she ran a weekly segment on animal issues. Previously, Velez-Mitchell reported for the nationally syndicated Warner Br...

"We didn't want to start a Chimp sanctuary. I mean, it's the most extreme really… they're the most, at least in my mind, they're just so socially complex and their needs are so complex and they don't really go back to the wild - ever. And they live, to 50 or 60 years old and they have very complicated social groups. It's a lot. It's a lifetime… So, we were like, that's not what we want to do. So h...

Species Unite will be back with a brand new season next Thursday the 28th. Until then, we are re-sharing one of our favorite episodes, a conversation with Josh Balk. "The time to begin phasing out the intensive confinement systems in which we raise billions of animals is now. We need to accelerate society's direction of reducing demand for meat from animal factory farms and shift instead to more o...

Species Unite will be back with a brand new season on October 28th.  For now, we are re-sharing one of our favorite episodes, a conversation with Liza Heavener. "There would be some mornings that the indigenous tribal leaders would take us out into virgin rainforest… [I was] like, "no human has ever stood here before." And it was alive with, I mean, you name the animal… and it was loud full and of...

Species Unite will be back with a brand new season on October 28th. Today, we are re-sharing one of our favorite episodes, a conversation with Milo Runkle. The only way to help animals is to help people. It's humans that need to change, not animals. And I think it's the same way when we're talking about other issues in our society. It's about healing those who are causing violence, and it oftentim...

"My family was really suffering from all types of diet related health issues. I had an aunt who had multiple amputations before it took her life because of type two diabetes. I had a 40-year-old uncle who had a heart attack. My grandpa, who helped raise me, died of complications in a triple bypass surgery. All over the place there was suffering and it's really hard to, not feel like you have not t...

"Let me tell you, there were no bounties when wildlife management became a discipline and it's never been a part of wildlife management, but, but these are the crazy kooks at the absolute extreme of the hunting spectrum. And they got together and held fundraisers and started giving out thousand-dollar bounties on wolves." – Erik Molvar Eric Molvar is the executive director of the Western Watershed...

"So, the irony is that meat that people are so obsessed about their cat needing… Yeah, in the wild cats needs meat because in the wild, that meat is a source of the nutrients that a cat needs. But on a commercial bag of pet food, those nutrients, those core key nutrients that the cat needs, they're not coming from the meat, they're coming from the pre-mix that is largely a synthetic mix of vitamin...

"…because animal advocacy has now escaped advocacy and is entering different types of work, really science-oriented work…  maybe that was all it took in the first place. We just had such limited roles in the traditional sense of animal advocacy before. Because it was so communications driven… And so that's another reason why I'm so proud of how this field has developed is I think we've turned peop...

"…based on my personal experience and having worked with scientists and researchers most of my life, I would say that it's not too late. There are some things that are probably gone. There are places where only pockets of biodiversity may remain in the time ahead, but that doesn't mean we can't still have a healthy future. It may not be what it once was, but it's like the old saying - when's the b...

This week we are re-sharing one of our favorite episodes - a conversation with Carl Safina about beauty, wonder and why animals matter. "Beings who've succeeded on earth for millions of years, don't seek, and should not require, our approval. They belong as well as we do. We do ourselves no favors by asking whether their existence is worth our while. We are hardly in a position to judge, hurdling...

 "It made me feel like I wished that I had some sort of a super power, so that I could just picked them up and take them somewhere safe. But unfortunately, I'm not strong enough to have done that. So what I did was decide, at 11 years old, that I was going to commit my life to safeguarding the species… that I'll do everything in my power." – Jamal Galves Jamal Galves grew up in a small village in...

"It's kind of like light… you flick a light switch on in the room and when you flip that switch, what you want is the experience of a lit room. You're not thinking about whether it comes from renewable energy or fossil fuels. You just want light. Well, I think most people just want meat. They don't care if animals are slaughtered. In fact, they probably would prefer that they not be slaughtered fo...

Tuesday, August 10th is World Lion Day, so we are re-sharing this conversation with Beverly and Derek Joubert. "When we were born, there were 450,000 lions, and today there are 20,000 lines. So that's a ninety-five percent decline. There were 750,000 leopards, and now maybe 45,000 leopards left. Cheetah numbers have dropped below 7,000. Tigers have had a little bit of a resurgence, but still under...

"It is not hyperbole to say that livestock grazing on Western public lands is the single biggest and most important environmental impact that does the most damage. And, also causes the most widespread impact of any of the things that damage public lands, including oil and gas development, including strip mining and mountaintop removal, including, damming, the rivers. Livestock raising is the most...

"You can't get to a point where you're so sensitive that you don't call out cruelty and torture when you see it, whether it's to a human being or to the planet or to an animal, you can't just stay silent, but you have to approach in the right way."      N -Nina Jackel Nina Jackel is an activist and journalist and the founder and president of Lady Freethinker , a media organization that provides ne...

"And then a letter arrived in the mail. It was from a woman who had heard about my work to help zoo animals. She said, 'there's these two bears living in a cage in the town near my house. It's on a creek that floods every year. It's horrible conditions. I have no idea what to do. Can you help?' I don't think she knew that I was a 13-year-old." – Justin Barker Justin is an activist, a director, a p...

"So, we had 87 women come in for what we call pre-selection, the interviews... And I can say that after all the shit that I've been through in my life, that was some of the hardest two days of my life, listening to those stories. And, it was hard in a way because they were genuinely tough stories, but it was also hard in a way to know that even though I hadn't done anything directly to these women...

Planted. Not Buried. That is how Eric Adams has chosen to see himself through the darkest moments of his life. The first occurred at age 15, when he and his brother were beaten by the police. Four years later he became a police officer and spent the next 22 years on the force, working to help reform NYC policing from the inside. He retired as a captain and now he serves as the President of the Bor...

  "…by the way, today, there might be an ick factor associated with it, but there might come a day that people will wonder, why are we drinking other species milks… If you have access to the real thing or the stuff that's in the real thing. I mean, it's these special proteins…  these amazing different complex sugars and proteins that are found in human milk that are super valuable." - Max Rye Max...

Edwina Von Gal is a landscape designer and an indomitable steward of the planet.  She spent her career designing landscapes for the rich and famous and collaborating with architects and artists like Maya Lin, Richard Serra, and Frank Gehry. A little over a decade ago, Edwina had an epiphany about the chemicals that we are pouring into our lawns, landscapes, and backyards. She decided right then th...

Derek Sarno is a chef and a rockstar in the vegan world and he's on a mission to inspire you to cook and eat more plants. He's the Director of Plant-Based Innovation for Tesco PLC, and the Developer/Co-Founder of Wicked Kitchen. He helps lead Tesco's plant-based team and the initiative to bring delicious, unpretentious plant-based foods to mainstream market. Derek and his brother Chad are the foun...

"If we fast forward, let's say to 2025, I think you're going to see a lot of companies in the marketplace using mushroom-based products to create alternatives to things like meat and chicken and within food. And then also alternatives within textiles to things like silk, leather and packaging for things like Styrofoam and plastic and so on. So, I'm very much a… what do you call it? Maybe, a fungo...