AWI Quarterly » 2011 Spring

The fight to extend or deny protections for animals takes place in state capitals as well as on Capitol Hill. The high-profile confrontation this year is in Missouri - again. Last year, Missouri voters approved Proposition B, the Puppy Mill Cruelty Prevention Act, a ballot initiative addressing the most egregious cruelties of that state’s puppy mill industry.

On March 11, AWI Senior Federal Policy Advisor Nancy Blaney testified before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies in favor of continued funding for the Department of Justice’s National Animal Cruelty and Animal Fighting Initiative.

A powerful U.S. law allows the president to impose trade sanctions on nations whose citizens undermine conservation agreements.

Large-scale commercial whaling began in the 17th century for Western countries such as the U.S., U.K., and the Netherlands. According to Paul Greenberg, the author of Four Fish, "if you are from Europe and born before 1960, no matter how much of an environmentalist you may consider yourself, there is a high likelihood that you have eaten whale."

Seal Sitters Marine Mammal Stranding Network is a nonprofit group of volunteers in the Pacific Northwest trained by NOAA.

"The most horrible sound you’ll ever hear." That’s how Kristi Gatt described the howl of pain and terror her dog made when a steel-jaw leghold trap clamped down on her paw in North Carolina’s Croatan National Forest.

A major spill of heavy fuel oil from a wrecked freighter has fouled the waters surrounding one of the world’s most important bird nesting sites on a remote South Atlantic island. On March 16, the Oliva, a Maltese-registered cargo vessel carrying a load of soybeans from Brazil to the Philippines, ran aground and sank off Nightingale Island.