Summer 2018

Photo by Pete Oxford/Minden Pictures
Volume
67
Number
2
About the Cover

A hawksbill sea turtle (Eretmochelys imbricate) cruises the reef off Indonesia’s Raja Ampat Islands. Habitat loss and degradation, entanglement in fishing gear, ingestion of marine debris, slaughter for meat, and the tortoiseshell trade have taken a heavy toll on this critically endangered animal.

AWI is partnering with acclaimed author Katherine Applegate and HarperCollins Children’s Books to raise awareness about species threatened by human activities and our responsibility to ensure we don’t cause their extinction. See page 16 to learn more about the partnership and Applegate’s new endangered-species-themed “Endling” series.

Photograph by Pete Oxford/Minden Pictures.

Summer 2018 Quarterly PDF

Table of Contents

Wildlife

At Elephants’ Expense, USFWS Sticks to Its Guns
In November 2017, the US Fish and Wildlife Service announced it was reversing a 2014 Obama administration ban on the importation of sport-hunted elephant trophies from Zimbabwe and Zambia. ( See AWI Quarterly , spring...
Finding Noninvasive Methods to Survey Wild Horse Populations
Dr. Karen Herman, Executive Director, Sky Mountain Wild Horse Sanctuary The 23,882-acre Jarita Mesa Wild Horse Territory (JMWHT) is located in rugged, forested mountain terrain in the Carson National Forest of New Mexico. Prior to...
Marmosets Spread the Wealth When No One Sees
In 2007, a study at the University of Zurich (Burkart et al., 2007) looked at cooperative behavior among common marmosets ( Callithrix jacchus ). The study found that the animals spontaneously provided food to “nonreciprocating...
Nose for Trouble: Using Dogs to Detect Rodenticides
Dr. Ngaio L. Richards and Dr. Deborah Woollett San Joaquin kit foxes know auspicious habitat when they see it, but would not know if it is free of harmful anticoagulant rodenticide baits or of prey...
Snare Claims Wolf in Gruesome Fashion
A wolf in Minnesota was shot and killed this February after a truly horrible encounter with a strangling snare. Wolves are not legal targets for such devices, but snares are sanctioned year-round to kill coyotes...
Under Fire, Mother Bears Alter Tactics
Brown bear mothers in Sweden are apparently changing their reproductive strategy in response to hunting, according to a new study (Van de Walle et al., 2018). The study found that prior to 2005, only about...
Wilderness Way in Senegal Named After AWI Founder
Swing open the main gate at Senegal’s Ferlo North Wildlife Reserve and a broad avenue greets you, unfolding for more than two miles across an idyllic African landscape. The landscape is idyllic because it has...

Animals in Laboratories

A Primate Dealer’s Pitiful Con
Envelopes with white powder and a threatening message were sent to two people associated with Matthew Block, founder of Worldwide Primates, which imports primates for experimentation. One went to Block’s mother, the other to a...
ARS Uses Kittens as Toxic Test Tubes
A decades-long Agricultural Research Service (ARS) project has intentionally killed untold hundreds of kittens. According to the White Coat Waste Project, which exposed the study, the Animal Parasitic Diseases Laboratory in Beltsville, Maryland, feeds two-month-old...
Baboon Breakout at Biomedical Lab
Four baboons housed in an outdoor corral escaped from the Texas Biomedical Research Institute (TBRI) by using a 55-gallon barrel to scale the enclosure. The clever monkeys had pulled the barrel upright, next to the...
Lab Gasses Monkeys as Volkswagen Rigs Results
“I feel like a chump.” So said Dr. Jake McDonald, chief science officer at Lovelace Respiratory Research Institute (LRRI) in Albuquerque, New Mexico, to the New York Times , after he learned that Volkswagen had...

Government Affairs

Animal Protection Stays on Board Omnibus
Congress finally passed an “omnibus” funding measure for the remainder of the current fiscal year. Thanks to the intervention of our allies in the House and Senate, the barrage of messages to Congress from animal...
Citizens Trip Bobcat Trapping Proposals in Two States
This year, Indiana and Ohio officials floated the idea of establishing trapping seasons for bobcats in their respective states (and a hunting season in Indiana). Fortunately, after local AWI members and others expressed fierce disapproval...
Farm Bill
The Agriculture and Nutrition Act of 2018, HR 2, was defeated on May 18 in the US House of Representatives by a vote of 198-213. This massive farm bill came to the floor loaded with...
Florida Strengthens Animal Cruelty Law
On March 23, National Puppy Day, Florida Governor Rick Scott signed “Ponce’s Law” to increase penalties for animal abusers. Named after a Labrador puppy found beaten to death, the new law raises animal cruelty from...
Killing Oversight via the Cures Act
A law passed in 2016—the 21st Century Cures Act—has given the research industry the opening that it has sought to reduce oversight of the treatment of animals. This law requires a review of all regulations...
Rotten Eggs: Iowa Contrives to Keep Hens Caged
In March, Iowa enacted a law that will require most egg retailers in the state to continue carrying “conventional” eggs from hens raised in densely packed battery cages. Only those stores that had already fully...
Trying to Torpedo the MMPA
The picture for marine mammals isn’t entirely rosy, however. After 45 years as the nation’s premier law protecting marine mammals, the MMPA faces several attacks in Congress. Of particular concern are HR 3133, the Streamlining...

Marine Life

Bowheads: 100-Ton Duke Ellingtons
The haunting songs of the humpback whale are well known. (They are literally unearthly— phonograph recordings of their communications are currently passing through the outer reaches of the solar system and into interstellar space aboard...
Lesser Protection for Leatherback Turtles?
The Northwest Atlantic subpopulation of leatherback turtles could soon lose important protections under the Endangered Species Act in response to a September 2017 petition filed by the Blue Water Fishermen’s Association. The petition requested that...
Norway and Iceland Resume Whale Slaughter
It appears 2018 will be a deadly year for whales in the northern hemisphere, as both Norway and Iceland have issued their highest whaling quotas in years. In all, as many as 1,287 minke whales...
Rare Dolphin Gains ESA Protection
In a response to a 2016 petition by AWI and allies, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) agreed on May 8 to list the Taiwanese white dolphin ( Sousa chinensis taiwanensis ), also known as...
Virgin Holidays Invests in Dolphin Sanctuary
Virgin Holidays has pledged $300,000 to support the creation of North America’s first dolphin sanctuary and the move of seven captive dolphins at the National Aquarium in Baltimore to the facility. Last year, Virgin Holidays...

Companion Animals

Military Dogs Not Getting Their Due
Since 2000, Congress has acted to improve the treatment of Military Working Dogs (MWDs) by facilitating their adoption at the end of their careers and authorizing the creation of a program of post-retirement veterinary care....
Pratt Fall: USDA Fails Again at AWA Enforcement
In a November 15, 2014, Des Moines Register article, Debra Pratt was called “a poster child” for the “kind of animal neglect that coins the phrase ‘puppy mill.’” After years of damning US Department of...

Farm Animals

AWI Report: Higher Welfare Means Healthier Animals
When the US Department of Agriculture withdrew the Organic Livestock and Poultry Practices rule earlier this year, it did so at the behest of a handful of large organic producers that seek to profit from...
Chicken Plant “Fowls” the Water
Residents of Delaware’s Inland Bays community are crying foul on a nearby Mountaire Farms chicken plant that produces millions of gallons of wastewater a month from slaughtering and processing chickens. The plant has incurred several...
Hawaii Halts Live Pig Shipments
The last shipment of live pigs from the US mainland—at least for the foreseeable future—has docked in Hawaii. For decades, pigs have been subjected to an arduous week-long journey by truck and ship to meet...
Insurer for Butterball Balks at Cleanup Coverage
Butterball, a major turkey producer in the United States, is in court over insurance coverage of a $3.5 million cleanup of pollution at a Carthage, Missouri, site. The insurer, Great American, claims that Butterball never...
Perdue to End Electric Stunning of Poultry
Perdue Farms has become the first major poultry producer in the United States to commit to adopting a process of stunning with gas, known as controlled atmosphere stunning (CAS), at all of its chicken slaughter...
Plaintiffs Prevail Against Pungent Pig Farm
A group of rural North Carolinians prevailed in court this April against Murphy-Brown LLC, a subsidiary of Chinese-owned global food giant Smithfield Foods. The landmark case concerned the stench of waste lagoons at the company’s...
USDA Proposes Faster Slaughter, Fewer Inspectors
The US Department of Agriculture recently proposed several changes to the process of slaughtering pigs, including allowing slaughterhouses to operate without any limits on the speed of the line. Pigs are already slaughtered on some...

Humane Education

AWI Partners with Acclaimed Author to Aid Endangered Animals
“When one is endangered, all are in peril.” This is the overarching theme of Katherine Applegate’s newest young adult book, Endling #1: The Last . The book—first in a series—hit shelves nationwide in May. It...

In Remembrance

Esmond Martin
by Bill Clark We were never close but we were friendly—on the same side in every fight. And we cooperated so frequently over the years that we came to anticipate each other’s involvement in the...

Reviews

Lion Hearted
Andrew Loveridge / Regan Arts / 280 pages Author Andrew Loveridge is a veteran wildlife biologist with many years’ experience working on lion research in Zimbabwe’s Hwange National Park. Raised in Zimbabwe and educated at...
The Great Apes
Chris Herzfeld / Yale University Press / 344 pages The Great Apes : A Short History, recently translated from French into English, is a comprehensive history of primatology. Many readers may not know that the...
The New York Pigeon
Andrew Garn / powerHouse Books / 144 pages Photographer Andrew Garn’s book is a coffee table love letter to a bird that doesn’t always get much love. Garn explains their long history cohabitating with humans....

AWI Special Event

Revolutionary Science and a Reverence for Life: AWI Awards Schweitzer Medal to Dr. Samuel K Wasser
Sam Wasser’s life is bound by threads so small that a thousand of them braided together wouldn’t amount to a single eyelash. These threads are strands of deoxyribonucleic acid, better known as DNA. DNA’s double...