Al Cecere—founder and president of the American Eagle Foundation (AEF), a Tennessee-based nonprofit dedicated to bald eagle rehabilitation, recovery, and breeding programs—recalls seeing an Associated Press photo showing more than 20 dead bald eagles that had been...
For this edition of “Talking Animals,” I altered the show’s usual format to convene an in-studio panel discussion about Canine Companions For Independence (CCI), pegged to CCI’s then-upcoming third annual DogFest Walk ‘n’ Roll event, on March 3 at Al Lopez Park in...
Jane O’Hara—the animal advocate and artist whose paintings explore animal issues, depict their plight, and explore our relationships with them--recalls growing up in a family where animals didn’t have much of a presence, but she liked them. O’Hara notes that art...
Elaine West—the founder of Rooterville Animal Sanctuary, a haven housing about 300 rescued farm animals, predominantly pigs, located in Melrose, FL—recalls the first pig she met, as a kid at her aunt’s farm in Illinois, describing a love-at-first-sight sensation...
Maria McKee—the singer-songwriter who burst onto the music scene some 35 years ago, fronting the band Lone Justice, going on to a storied solo career—discusses her lifelong love of dogs, while noting, early on, there was an incident that so traumatized her that she...
Jodie Wiederkehr—campaign director for Chicago Alliance For Animals (CAA), she’s spearheading CAA’s campaign to ban horse carriages in Chicago—recalls how her earliest professional animal advocacy work began in 1997, but that she grew up in a politically-engaged...
Amy Kight—newly named executive director of Busch Wildlife Sanctuary (though she’s worked at the Jupiter, FL wildlife refuge, hospital, rehabilitation facility, and educational center since 2004)—discusses being so passionate about working with animals and so eager...
Dr. Peter Rork—a retired orthopedic surgeon and pilot who co-founded Dog Is My CoPilot, an organization that flys shelter animals to different parts of the country, boosting their prospects of being adopted—recalls his lifelong love of flying, taking his first...
Dr. Ann Weaver—an animal behaviorist conducting a long-term study of bottlenose dolphins off the coast of St. Petersburg, Florida—talks about the enormous array of species she has worked with directly or studied before landing on the dolphin study in 2005, driven...
Christophe Cox—co-founder and CEO of APOPO, a Tanzania-based nonprofit organization that trains African giant pouched rats to detect landmines and to detect tuberculosis—recounts the genesis of the organization, when co-founder Bart Weetjens began contemplating...
