Beagletown in the Berkshires

Clover Hill Farm’s main work is horses, but it moonlights as an inn and a beagle paradise.

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Rick Perry's wildlife staff use AR-15s to hunt burros, FOIA shows

burros on the roadside

Texas wildlife officials have been hunting down wild burros with AR-15s to clear a state park for bighorn sheep hunters, FOIA documents show.

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NYT: For every $1 we spend caring for animals, we spend $6 eating or killing them

A New York Times story this week explored the human animal connection in all its mysteries, but then came to the bottom line. We may love our cats and dogs, but we only spend $1 caring for animals for every $6 we spend eating, hunting and removing them. But if you include wildlife watching, pet and pro-animal lifestyle and efforts to eat less meat and less cruel animal products, I think it’s $3 to $1.

Natalie Anglier concluded:

We lavish some $48 billion annually on our pets and another $2 billion on animal protection and conservation causes; but that index of affection pales like so much well-cooked pork against the $300 billion we spend on meat and hunting, and the tens of billions devoted to removing or eradicating animals we consider pests.

The calculation does take into many of the spending categories of animal spending that are often overlooked. She does a great job by including animal eradication, like the taxpayer-funded USDA Wildlife Services branch. She includes the American Pet Product Association calculated the $48 billion based on vet care, food, boarding, grooming, vitamins, treats and toys. The animal causes? I think that’s from the annual Center for Philanthropy report, which puts “environmental/animal-related” organizations at $6.1 billion, not $2 billion. Granted, with many causes it’s hard to parse what is for animals and what’s for the ecosystem.

But here are some things these numbers overlook:

Wildlife watching: $46 billion. More Americans have fun watching wildlife than shooting it (71 million

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Feed Zoo Animals? Yes, At This NJ Rescue Facility

Popcorn Park Zoo Black Bear Nose

Their lives are much better now than they once were. BooBoo, a black bear, was used to pay for a car in Iowa, sold to a dealer who wanted the bear to draw in customers. Tigers were about to be used in a canned hunt. The Coati Cocoa spent two years in a cage in a basement.

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USDA Kills Another 4 million animals, including 477 dogs and 1,991 feral cats

Coyote

You know how Americans are appalled every time there’s a story out of China or Iraq about the government thugs primitively rounding up dogs and shooting them? Well, we do that, too. On purpose. Federal agents are out there killing dogs, more than one a day. They shot 157 dogs to death. And it’s not just in the yahoo states out west, either. (Although Texas and Arizona are the top states of dog-killing.) The USDA somehow insinuated itself into dog situations in 32 states. They went out and shot two dogs in Ohio and 30 in California. And it wasn’t because they feared they were rabid, either. They only tested 14 dogs for rabies.

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World Will Either Need 2x as Much Meat by 2050 or We Could Eat a Little Less

In-N-Out Veggie Burger

Even USDA data shows meat consumption actually shrinking in the last few years, both here and abroad. The typical U.S. household at 43 kilograms of beef a year in 2006, but has cut back to 39.3 kg–a 9% decrease.

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