IFAW received a request for assistance this morning from the Philippines-based Animal Welfare Coalition which is working in conjunction with the Department of Agriculture. The rescue team is out the door and will be arriving in the city within the next 24 hours.

“We need to move quickly,” said IFAW’s Disaster Relief Manager, Dick Green. “IFAW’s priority is to help mitigate the magnitude of the disaster for the affected people of Manila by giving attention to their animals which, in many cases, are all these people have left.”

The new, country-by-country economic analysis shows more than 13 million people took whale watching tours last year in 119 countries worldwide, generating ticket fees and tourism expenditures of more than US$2.1 billion during 2008.   The report also shows dramatic growth of the whale watching industry in Asia, the Pacific, South America, the Caribbean and Europe significantly outpacing global tourism growth rates over the past decade.  More than 3,000 whale watching operations around the world now employ an estimated 13,200 people.  Internation

The decrease in the number of seals killed coincides with remarkably low prices offered for seal pelts this year and the announcement of a European Union-wide ban on the importation and marketing of seal products.  

“The lack of demand for seal products this year means that over 200,000 baby seal pups have been spared a cruel and unnecessary death" said Sheryl Fink, a senior researcher with IFAW.

On Saturday, the accused parties reportedly received information that two men had arrived on the beach in a boat stacked to the brim with protected wildlife species from Venezuela. The officers then went to the beach and robbed the men at gunpoint.

Some 50 photographs of elephants in various scenarios, from imposing and iconic to intimate and touching images of this most intelligent and social of species, will be displayed.