In this photo essay, Carolina Herbert explores her passion and connection with animals and the intimate and unconditional relationships they have with people. As she collects images and stories from people in her local community, she learns how vitally important animals are in people’s lives and the roles they play in supporting wellbeing, mental health, healing from trauma, depression and isolation. How they bring joy and play into the lives of families and teach children about loss and letting go. Animals connect us more deeply to what matters between us and to who we really are. She explores how animals also need our unconditional care and support especially when injured and how we can learn the gift of being able to deeply listen, attune and respond to their needs. In times when we are increasingly separated from our natural world, and, as animals’ lives are threatened in our escalating climate crisis, there is no greater time than now to restore our relationships to these unconditional love and joy bringing beings.

In an interview, an American theologian, philosopher, and environmentalist, Dr. John Cobb talks about the ecological civilization and his perception of the ways to build it. He develops his thoughts on religious pluralism and interfaith dialogue, as well as the need to reconcile religion and science and to build what he calls Earthism, and how to develop a more sustainable future by replacing the national and global market by local economies.

We offer a selection of poems dedicated to wild and domesticated animals, written by poets of over the centuries. These verses express the mystery and drama of the relationships between people and animals, allowing us to see the ecopoietic, visionary, and sacred dimensions of these relationships, their ability to generate new meanings and forms of experience. We invite readers to contribute to this selection of poems. Please feel free to send us poems on animals than you find relevant.

Is it possible to understand the human-animal bond from the eco-human perspective? What would the human-animal bond be like from the viewpoint of ecopoiesis? We are ourselves animals, with distinctive capacities perhaps, but not fundamentally different from other living creatures. If ecopoiesis is the way in which we have made our world and all that is in it, does that not also imply an aesthetic responsibility to all that lives? In that case, it would be our responsibility to enable other creatures to flourish, in so far as that is possible. The human-animal bond is first of all a bond in which we recognize our kinship with other living creatures. To be kin implies to be kind. Just as we think it cruel to be unkind to members of our own family, is there not cruelty in the way that we are with other animals? Our hope is that our perspectives on this bond will show us not only new ways to think about other creatures but also to act in what used to be called a more “humane” way in relation to them.

An experienced photographer and traveler, Mikhail Korostelev shares in this interview what wildlife photography means to him, how photography has influenced his perception of the world of animals, and what role photography plays in the animal rights movement and the environmental movement.