12.11.25

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome. This is Rebecca Shore for Radio Eye and today
I will be reading the Smithsonian Magazine dated December twenty
twenty five. As a reminder, RADIOI is a reading service
intended for people who are blind or have other disabilities
that make it difficult to read printed material. Please join
me now for the first article, which is Part two

(00:22):
of the nation's biggest animal sanctuary operates under a mantra
to save them all? How could that be controversial? By
Douglas Starr. In Part one, we learned about Best Friends
Animal Society. Founded in the early nineteen eighties by a
diverse group of individuals in Utah, the society has grown

(00:44):
from humble beginnings into the largest sanctuary for neglected and
abused pets in the United States. Originally rooted in a
spiritual community, the organization shifted its focus entirely to animal welfare,
acquiring a vast property that now houses thousands of animals
across specialized neighborhoods like Dogtown, Catworld, and Horse Haven. The

(01:09):
sanctuary's philosophy is to rehabilitate every animal possible, opposing the
widespread practice of euthanizing shelter animals due to overcrowding. This approach,
combined with national outreach, training programs, and partnerships, has made
Best Friends a major force in animal welfare, though its

(01:29):
uncompromising stance has sparked debate within the industry. Here now
is Part two. In two thousand seven, Best Friends began
building a national network of like minded shelters whose staff
members help one another. They relieve overcrowding by transporting animals

(01:49):
to less crowded shelters and providing equipment and technical support.
In the twenty tens and twenty twenties, they created a
network of centres and programs in Atlanta, Bentonville, Arkansas, Houston,
Los Angeles, Salt Lake City, and New York City. They
hired hundreds of new employees to support regional help centers

(02:12):
offering veterinary care and management expertise. In twenty sixteen, we
drew a line in the sand and said we're going
to take this country to no kill by twenty twenty five.
Julie Castle, the society's CEO, told me we were very
interested in pushing the limits of what's considered saveable. As

(02:33):
Best Friends saw it, no more than ten percent of
the animals at any given shelter should be beyond saving.
Its definition of no kill meant keeping at least ninety
percent of animals alive, a goal it pursued with an
evangelical zeal Castle hired a tech team to gather data

(02:53):
on the nation's public and private animal shelters nearly four
thousand by their estimates, created a digital dashboard that shows
monthly performance data at the state, county, and individual shelter levels.
The map is online as well as on the wall
at the welcome center. In twenty twenty four, the society

(03:15):
developed an algorithm that uses artificial intelligence to predict rising
euthanasia rates before they occur, using an area's demographic, economic,
and social data. This all serves to identify shelters performing
below par in order to pair them with successful shelters
or send out a team from Best Friends to help.

(03:37):
In twenty eighteen, for example, Best Friends sent a team
to embed at a shelter in southern Texas. The Palm
Valley Animal Society was taking in nearly forty thousand animals
per year, but only around twenty five percent made it
out alive. Best Friends took over the shelter's management, helping

(03:58):
it boost adoptions through bat better marketing and special programs,
returning war loss pets to their original owners, and taking
other measures to reduce the kill rate. Within eighteen months,
we went from euthanizing over one hundred animals per day
to saving over ninety percent of them, said Luis Cantania,

(04:18):
who worked at Palm Valley at the time. He was
so impressed that he moved to Utah and became Best
Friend's Senior director of Sanctuary Animal Care. Kentinia's colleagues pointed
me to several other shelters with similar happy outcomes, but
some encounters went less smoothly. In order to earn best

(04:40):
Friends No Kill designation, a shelter must have a ninety
percent save rate, and when a place falls short, it
can be labeled pro kill by implication, Donors turn away,
staff members face stigma, and managers are harassed. There are
good leaders, veterans, caterinarians, and staff leaving animal welfare entirely

(05:03):
due to conflicts related to the arbitrary ninety percent metric,
said Julie Levy, an expert in shelter medicine education at
the University of Florida. When Paul ett dean executive director
of an animal shelter in Danville, Virginia, declined best Friend's
offer to step in. The society organized a local pressure

(05:25):
campaign with TV commercials, of Facebook page, door to door canvassing,
and testimony at city council meetings. As best Friends accused
her shelter of poor performance, Dean found herself living in
a social media hell of abuse and threats. Katie Fine,
a Best Friend's representative, said the society never meant for

(05:48):
such abuse to take place. The activism did eventually help
push the city to give the shelter support to make improvements,
but Ken Larking, the city manager, says it happened in
a way that caused unnecessary conflict and aggravation. Other communities
have reported similar experiences. Critics say this doctrinaire approach can

(06:12):
harm animals as well. Shelter managers who live in fear
of being branded pro kill often keep far more animals
than their capacity allows, to the point of stacking cages
in their hallways. The animals become stir crazy, which makes
them miserable as well as less attractive for adoption. Sometimes,

(06:34):
shelters that don't want to be targeted turn away animals
they would otherwise accept leaving them to be abandoned, neglected,
or dumped somewhere else. Dafna Nochminovitch, senior vice president of
Cruelty Investigations at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals PETA,

(06:54):
is a harsh critic of best friends. Maybe they reduce euthanasia,
but they don't reach suffering, she said. Few people in
the animal shelter world deny that the no kill message
was valuable decades ago, back when euthanizing animals was the norm.
The movement forced the industry to think creatively about sterilizing pets,

(07:17):
supporting pet owners, and boosting adoptions. But now that national
survival rates are around eighty nine percent, many see the
label as simplistic and divisive. It doesn't distinguish between private
shelters that can regulate their intake and public shelters that
often can't, between rich and poor areas, or urban and rural,

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between shelters that have staff shortages and those that don't.
Climate can also play a role, as warm weather enables
strays to survive and multiply. For example, one animal shelter
in Houston, where an estimated one million dogs and cats
run loose in the streets takes in or around twenty

(08:00):
thousand per year. What can they do with all these animals,
asked Mike Kuylee, vice president of the Animal Protection Division
for the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to
Animal's Angel Animal Medical Center. Unfortunately, he says, some of
the response has to involve euthanasia. Kylie's own shelters have

(08:25):
a laudable ninety four percent placement rate. Still, he refuses
to accept the no Killed designation, which he says creates
more fights than solutions, and he argues with best Friends
leaders about their philosophy, But he takes part in their
shelter collaborative program, accepting grants to partner with needy shelters

(08:46):
in South Carolina. We share a common goal, he explained.
Best Friends would seem to share another goal with many
of its critics and ambition to turn shelters into something
more akin to community resource centers, for instance, rather than
take in all commers. Some shelter managers are beginning to

(09:08):
ask pet owners why they need to surrender their pets
and offer to help them find ways to keep them.
Many shelters give out grants to pet owners for routine
procedures such as spaying, neutering, and vaccines, or even provide
those services for free if the problem is a pet's
behavioral issue. Some shelters provide access to animal training. If

(09:33):
a landlord doesn't allow pets, a shelter or animal welfare
organization sometimes helps negotiate a compromise, and most shelters now
offer foster programs, in which people can take an animal
temporarily to relieve overcrowding, much as foster parents might take
in a child. Castle, who began working at Best Friends

(09:57):
twenty seven years ago as a low paid do it
all employee, says she's encouraged by the country's progress. The
group didn't reach its goal of having every US shelter
meet its no kill standards by twenty twenty five, but
it estimates that about two thirds have and hundreds more
are close. Castle is confident it will get there, whether

(10:21):
or not its methods seem heavy handed. Shelters have such
a bad reputation, Castle said, we are going to rebrand
them as life saving centers with positive outcomes. There are
going to be places where you walk in and smile.
Accompanying this article, did you know what is the oldest

(10:43):
animal shelter in the United States. Animal pounds in the
United States date back to the Massachusetts settlements of the
sixteen hundreds. The country's oldest true animal shelter, the Women's
Animal Center, in Philadelphia, was established in eighteen sixty nine. Next,

(11:05):
the history of America flows through the Hudson River, and
the country's aquatic super Highway is on the rebound. The
Bucolic River is famous for reversing its current a few
times each day. Now, an ongoing clean up effort is
reversing decades of industrial contamination by Rebecca Taylor. For millennia,

(11:30):
before steamships busied the river's waters, Native Americans roved it
in dugout canoes, spearing sturgeons, known to fly into the
air like birds. The Hudson River's restless ribbon cuts a
three hundred and fifteen mile course down New York State
high tailing it across the backbone of the Appalachian Mountains,

(11:53):
hurtling past the highlands where George Washington held back the British,
before emptying into the harbor where Lady Liberty stands with
lifted lamp on a pedestal of limestone mined from the
river's Valley. Franklin D. Roosevelt fished in it, Naturalist John
Burroughs road on it, Winslow Homer painted it, and Washington

(12:16):
Irving thanked God he was born on the banks of
the Hudson. There's no American history without the story of
the Hudson, says historian Douglas Brinkley. The Hudson's journey begins
about two million years ago, when the Larnide ice sheet,
towering up to two miles high, blanketed much of North America.

(12:39):
Around twenty six thousand years ago, melting glaciers advancing and
retreating during the Last Ice Age sculpted the scenic River Valley,
carving hills and mountains. Its headwaters spring from the crystal
clear Lake Tier of the Clouds, high up the side
of a slope in the Adirondack Mountains, pouring white water

(13:01):
down a plum stretch of wilderness. The water then rushes
past a revolutionary battlefield in Saratoga and later zips along
the steep cliffs of the Palisades, the rocky bluffs that
shadow the Western Bank from New York into New Jersey.
English explorer Henry Hudson glided into the shad filled waters

(13:23):
in September sixteen o nine. Native Americans have long called
the river Mahican Tuck, a Mohican and Lennape word meaning
river that is never still or river that flows two ways.
For around six thousand years, fresh water pouring from the
mountains has kissed sea water flowing from the Atlantic roughly

(13:45):
midway along its route near modern day Troy, New York,
and the river becomes a tidal estuary, its current responding
to the changing tides. Geologists also call this phenomenon a
drowned river. Ocean tides flow inland upwards of one hundred
fifty miles, causing river water rolling out to sea to

(14:09):
reverse direction, so that the Hudson retreats up river with
the rising tide and back tracks out with the falling one.
The river's current changes about every six hours back and forth,
like a pendulum, keeping time clocking its up and down
course through history. During the American Revolution, Washington oversaw Continental

(14:33):
troops at Newburgh on the western shore, and John Adams
called the river and its region a kind of key
to the whole continent during that war because of its
importance in connecting the northern and southern colonies, as well
as Canada and Native American territories. So Journer Truth hoed
corn along the Western Bank. A dying Ulysses s. Grant

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composed his memoirs at a cottage overlooking the Hudson Valley,
and his tomb in New York City towers over the river.
Herman Melville may have been inspired by stories of great
white whales, rumored to make occasional visits near his boyhood
home in Albany. A muse for artists, the River Valley's

(15:20):
sublime beauty lured Thomas Cole, an English born artist who
first came up river with his sketch pad in eighteen
twenty five, establishing himself as the pioneer in the lush
oil painted landscapes that became the hall mark of the
Hudson River School. The resulting panoramic canvasses drew crowds clasping

(15:41):
opera glasses to gape at his work up close. Centuries hence,
an unnamed observer prophecied in the Art Journal in eighteen
seventy five. The River would be known for its associations
of genius and patriotism. Irving was the first American right
to popularize the river valley in story with his legend

(16:04):
of Sleepy Hollow and Rip van Winkle, who dreamed for
decades at the foot of the Catskills near the lordly Hudson.
The river became a highway for trade and tourism, as
nineteenth century steamboats toted passengers to spy firsthand the glittering
water portrayed so bewitchingly in courrier and ives prints. Trees

(16:28):
were torn from the river bank to build sloops and
schooners that loved bricks and bluestone to fashion New York
City's skyline. Speculators harvested ice from the river and cut
clay from the banks until the shad and sturgeon populations waned,
as did those of eagles and great blue heron. The

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river's suffering was only beginning for decades. Starting in nineteen
forty seven, General Electric Company plants operating at Fort Edward
and Hudson Falls dumped chemicals into the river, including more
than a million pounds of toxic polychlorinated biphenyls, contaminants found
to cause adverse health effects in humans and animals. In

(17:13):
the nineteen sixties, it became a symbol for pollution because
it was a dying river, Brinkley says, but the Hudson
is also a comeback story. Citizen groups launched lawsuits and
pressed for legislation. In nineteen sixty five, activists won a
landmark lawsuit recognizing the right of everyday citizens to protect

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the environment and hindering a power company from cutting into
storm King Mountain along the river bank. The Federal Clean
Water Act of nineteen seventy two made it a crime
for companies to discharge waste without a permit. From two
thousand nine to twenty fifteen, conservation crews plucked poisons from

(17:58):
the river beddging sediment along a two hundred miles swath
that makes up one of the largest federal clean up
sites in US history. Challenges remain, says Ned Sullivan, president
of Sina Hudson. Many species have made dramatic recoveries from
the brink of extinction, he says, noting a resurgence in

(18:20):
bald eagles and osprey's, but more work is needed. The
sturgeons and great blue herons are back in good numbers too,
and eagles, once all but gone from the valley, have
taken flight once again. Along the returning majesty of this
Glorious River. Accompanying this article What's in a Name? Who

(18:44):
was Henry Hudson Born circa fifteen sixty five. Henry Hudson
was an English explorer. Between sixteen o seven and sixteen eleven,
he made four voyages in search of a northern passage
from euro to Asia through the Arctic. On his third
voyage in sixteen o nine, he explored the Hudson River.

(19:08):
On his final voyage, his crew mutinied and left Hudson
adrift with his son in sixteen eleven in the bay
that now bears his name. Also accompanying this article of
humbacks and hog chokers, presenting some of the Hudson River's
most intriguing residence by Mike Riggs. Number one lined sea horse.

(19:36):
Everybody knows these tiny tenants of the tideway have an
unusual reproductive arrangement in which the males carry the eggs
until they hatch. The sea horse's other fascinating feature is
the development of a square tail that allows it to
cling to stationary objects like Hudson River Park's artificial reef system,

(19:58):
which stretches from pier to TI twenty six to peer
thirty four. Number two humpback whale. One sign that the
Hudson's not as dirty as it used to be is
the occasional appearance of humpback whales, sometimes spotted in the
river as they hunt Atlantic Manhattan fish. In twenty sixteen,

(20:20):
a hump back ventured as far as the George Washington Bridge,
near Manhattan's northern tip. Another was spotted in twenty twenty
near the Statue of Liberty in Upper New York Bay.
Number three hog choker a bottom feeder with two eyes
on the right side of its head. This fish, a

(20:40):
member of the sole family, dwells in the brackish waters
near the coast and the fresh water of this estuary
as far north as Albany. The origin of its name
is uncertain. One story holds that farmers would feed them
to their hogs, only to find the fish suctioned to
the pigs pallets, sometimes causing piggies to gag. Number four

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Atlantic tom cod. The flaky flesh of the tom cod
is delicious when pan fried in butter. Just don't get
your fish from the Hudson. Where that local tom cod
population has developed a genetic resistance to some pollutants found
in the water. They might look healthy, but they're chalk
full of PC bees and finally, number five short nose sturgeon.

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Some of the short nose specimens that roam the Hudson
today can live for as long as sixty years. Now
bouncing back after two centuries of overfishing, this protected bottom
feeder is in many ways just another New Yorker. It
delights in spending most of its time near the city,
but looks forward to venturing up state by river when

(21:54):
the weather turns warm. Next. An industry treus rocher in
the nineteen thirties wanted to make it easier for his
customers to buy more. They just needed a push. There
was a time when shoppers could buy only as much
as they could carry, and as ubiquitous as shopping carts

(22:15):
are today, it initially took some convincing to use them
by Heidi Brandis. Sylvan Goldman, a businessman and Oklahoma native,
was working for a California grocery wholesaler after World War
One when he became fascinated by the new supermarkets that
put everything under one roof. Still, he noticed a problem.

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Shoppers were buying only what they could carry in bags
and baskets. In nineteen twenty, he and his brother Alfred
brought the supermarket concept back to Oklahoma, where they established
their own chain of stores. But Goldman still fretted over
the persistent problem of shoppers being limited by their arms.

(23:01):
Goldman's first prototype for a shopping cart in nineteen thirty
six was wonderfully crude. It consisted of two folding chairs
placed seat to seat, with wheels attached to the bottom
and a basket on top. He introduced the first official
shopping cart on June fourth, nineteen thirty seven, at the

(23:22):
Humpty Dumpty Grocery store in Oklahoma City. Yet Goldman's heart
sank when he saw that customers wanted nothing to do
with the new contraptions. Women who had grown weary of
baby strollers refused to push anything around a store again.
Men considered the carts emasculating and said trundling them around

(23:44):
was women's work. According to Alison Atchison, director of Galleries
and Collections at the Science Museum Oklahoma, the museum now
houses the first cart Goldman put into public use, which
spent its earliest days unloved and unused, in front of
his store. Goldman's solution was elegant and very simple. He

(24:08):
hired attractive models to shop in the store while confidently
pushing the carts, showing other shoppers first hand how convenient
and fashionable they could be. Shoppers saw the appeal and
began emulating these comely men and women. Other grocers soon
clamored for the carts, but many had to be patient.

(24:30):
By nineteen forty, store owners looking to buy new shopping
carts reportedly faced a seven year wait list. That same year,
Goldman began producing the more familiar nesting cart, following a
patent war over the design, which solved the messy problem
of what to do with all those carts between customers.

(24:52):
Food producers began offering larger container sizes in stores, knowing
customers could now transport books the items with ease. Goldman's
humble invention helped create the foundation for today's retail landscape
of vast stores filled with oversized products. As Atchison says,

(25:13):
those wheels changed and innovated shopping forever, and they show
no signs of slowing their role today. Twenty million to
twenty five million shopping carts are cruising through America's retail
stores at any given moment. Roughly one cart for every
thirteen Americans, and did you know the first company to

(25:37):
use the term supermarket was Alber's Supermarkets, founded in Ohio
and nineteen thirty three by William H. Albers, a one
time president of Croker's. Finally, ask Smithsonian, you've got questions,
We've got experts. Why is the Midwest covered with prairies

(26:00):
instead of forests? The answer is from June when chair
of Botany National Museum of History. The Midwestern prairies used
to be forests. The shift likely started between twenty million
and twenty eight million years ago, and it accelerated during
the last five million years. Possible reasons include a drier
climate with more natural fires, as well as the appearance

(26:23):
of larger animals. Herbivores such as elk and bison needed
a complex digestive system housed in a large body to
derive nutrition from grasses. These big animals also tended to
form herds, which made it easier to defend themselves against
predators while migrating long distances to stay fueled. Their grazing

(26:44):
played a role in preventing large trees from returning to
the Midwest. Finally, do humans need to consider the environmental
impact of building on the Moon. The answer from Martin Elvis,
Senior Astrophysicist, Center for Astrophysics, Harvard and the Smithsonian. In
nineteen sixty seven, the international community came together to sign

(27:05):
the Outer Space Treaty, which banned countries from claiming celestial
territories or placing weapons on them. Nations were allowed to
claim samples their astronauts brought home, but space itself was
declared the province of all mankind. The treaty didn't focus
on environmental impacts, but in nineteen eighty four a group
at Los Alamos National Laboratory noted that the Moon, unlike

(27:29):
the Earth, has no atmosphere, which means it has no
systems like wind, water and erosion to erase scars on
the land. As scientists prepare to place powerful new telescopes
on celestial bodies, many are working to prevent the spoiling
of these sites. The International Astronomical Union, of which I'm
a member, is considering these issues as part of a

(27:50):
working group on Astronomy from the Moon. The UN is
also studying the issues. This concludes readings from the Smithsonian
Magazine for today. Your reader has been Rebecca Shore. Thank
you for listening and have a great day.