Bringing you a digest of news and opinion pieces you might have missed from the past week, covering all things animal agriculture, animal protection and environmental justice.

We hear a great deal about large zoos with money to spend on maintaining enclosures and keeping up the appearance of conservation work, but what about the countless small, private zoos around the world? Coco Hou tells us about her experience visiting Club de los Animalitos in Mexico.

Philosopher Peter Singer has been awarded $1 million as the winner of the 2021 Berggruen Prize for Philosophy and Culture. As is fitting of both the ‘father of effective altruism’ and the author of the extremely influential book Animal Liberation, Singer plans to donate a third of the money to the most effective organisations working to end factory farming.

Several stories in recent weeks have emerged about wild boar. Together they paint a vivid picture of contradictions in everything from environmentalism to zoonotic diseases, as Claire Hamlett explains.

PICTURE STORY: Alejandro Prieto’s winning entry into this year’s Bird Photographer of the Year competition - a roadrunner seemingly blocked by the wall built by the Trump administration on the Mexico-US border - is a poignant reminder of the effect we humans have on those with whom we share this planet.

Hanging feeders and bird tables are mainstays of the idyllic British garden, topped up by well-intentioned ‘bird lovers’. Who can blame us for believing that we’re helping our feathered wildlife by leaving some seeds and nuts out, particularly in the winter when food is scarce? According to a study out this month, we could be doing more harm than good, writes Andrew Gough.

At the Tokyo Olympic Games yesterday, German athlete Annika Schleu set out on the equestrian stage of the modern pentathlon in tears astride a clearly distressed horse called Saint Boy. Heartbreaking scenes, but footage reviewed afterwards showed something far more shocking: event coach Kim Raisner appearing to strike Saint Boy with her fist in an attempt to control him and telling Schleu to whip him harder.

The EU has just lifted a ban on feeding animals byproducts of animal-based food production that has been in place for nearly 30 years following the BSE crisis of the 1990s that led to people dying from vCJD. Are we really going to ignore the lessons of the past?

While everyone was distracted by Covid-19, in a matter of days Russia has quietly passed amendments to laws that effectively legalise trophy hunting of endangered species for “research and education” or in “exceptional cases”.

A Guardian article out this week has highlighted the sad story of two right whales in the Gulf of St Lawrence seen entangled in fishing gear, bringing to light the controversy at the heart of the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) and its so-called ‘blue tick ecolabel’ that certifies fisheries responsible for killing endangered species.

ZSL’s two zoos - London and Whipsnade - are in serious trouble. Lockdown has meant no ticket sales yet with a workforce that cannot possibly be furloughed. They’re asking for the UK government to help, but with zoos as problematic as they are, should we let them fail?