Spring 2022

Volume
71
Number
1
Spring 2022 Quarterly Cover
About the Cover

A playful young elephant in northern Namibia. In March, 22 wild-caught elephants, including young calves, were sold and shipped from Namibia to the Al Ain Zoo in the United Arab Emirates, sparking international outrage. In total, Namibia plans to sell 170 elephants, claiming their removal from the wild is necessary to lessen elephant-human conflicts. An independent investigation, however, revealed that Namibia is exaggerating the frequency and severity of such conflicts and that its wildlife management program is plagued by corruption and largely ineffective in its aims.

Table of Contents

Animals in Laboratories

Curiosity—the drive to gather information—is considered a fundamental motivation throughout the animal kingdom. As such, providing opportunities to satisfy that curiosity may be essential for animals to have good welfare in captivity. Fish are held...
Inter-male aggression in mice continues to challenge laboratory animal husbandry personnel, as intervention strategies are typically applied at the cage level without a good understanding of how individual behavior is affected. Aggression mitigation may be...
Every year, AWI awards grants of up to US$10,000 to support research projects aimed at developing or testing new and creative ways to improve the welfare of animals in research. We are pleased to announce...
A meta-analysis recently published in the journal BMC Biology (Cait et al., 2022) found that rats and mice housed in conventional laboratory cages have higher mortality rates and greater disease severity compared to rodents housed...

Companion Animals

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has triggered a monumental humanitarian crisis. It has had devastating impacts on animals, as well, which is why AWI is committed to supporting animal welfare groups that are working tirelessly...
by Andrew M. Campbell Domestic violence continues to impact households and communities around the globe. With an estimated 1 in 3 women and 1 in 4 men suffering physical abuse at the hands of an...

Farmed Animals

Earlier this year, AWI sent letters to the American Veterinary Medical Association regarding three of its policies open to comment. Specifically, we submitted comments requesting that the AVMA improve its policies relating to castration and...
This February, AWI and Animal Outlook (formerly Compassion Over Killing) submitted a request for enforcement of the Twenty-Eight Hour Law to the Department of Justice. The Twenty-Eight Hour Law generally requires that, for every 28...
After years of monitoring records generated by US Department of Agriculture inspectors that document horrific mistreatment of birds inside poultry slaughter plants, AWI is lobbying Congress to require increased oversight of bird handling at slaughter...
After a delay (extended by COVID-19), the Hawaii Department of Agriculture (HDOA) has finally proposed regulations to protect animals transported between the Hawaiian Islands. While the draft regulations are a good start, they unfortunately omit...
In early January, AWI once again reported on the number of animals killed in barn fires across the United States for the preceding year. In 2021, more than 681,000 farm animals are known to have...
Highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) last struck the poultry industry in the United States in 2015, when 48 million backyard and commercial birds were confirmed infected. The US Department of Agriculture generally orders the immediate...

Humane Education

The ever-rising cost of a college education can be daunting—particularly if you plan to enter fields involving animal care, conservation, and/or advocacy, where love of animals and dedication to the cause are greater draws than...
Stories can be a powerful way to share lessons with children about kindness and proper companion animal care. They provide children with an opportunity to consider new concepts and practice perspective-taking in a way that...

Marine Life

In September 2021, a damning inspection report prepared by the US Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) was released for Miami Seaquarium. (See AWI Quarterly , winter 2021 .) The report...
On January 1, Hawaii became the first US state to make shark fishing illegal. The law bans anyone from knowingly capturing, entangling, or killing any shark species in the state’s marine waters. There are certain...
Hvalur, Iceland’s sole remaining fin whaling company, announced in March that it intends to resume hunting this summer for the first time since 2018. Its two aging whaling vessels are currently being prepared, and the...
Yet another country has concluded that keeping cetaceans in captivity for human entertainment is an archaic practice that should end. After a two-year effort by activists in Kazakhstan, as well as international efforts by AWI...
AWI and more than 30 other animal protection and conservation organizations have called on the government of Greenland to immediately cancel hunting quotas for 50 narwhals from three populations in Southeast Greenland that face imminent...

Terrestrial Wildlife

Anticoagulant rodenticides (ARs) are rodent poisons that have been widely used globally for decades for the control of commensal rodents (those who live off what they obtain from human communities). Deaths due to exposure to...
The wildfires that raged across Australia in late 2019 and early 2020 were unprecedented in scope and severity. Nearly 3 billion animals, it is estimated, were killed or displaced, including numerous young wombats. Many were...
The grizzly bear—sometimes referred to as the “great bear”—is a study in contrasts: powerful yet vulnerable, long-studied but mysterious, admired and feared. Grizzlies have inhabited North America for tens of thousands of years, persisting through...
In a much-needed win for gray wolves, a federal court recently scrapped a rule issued by the US Fish and Wildlife Service in 2020 that removed Endangered Species Act (ESA) protections from wolves across most...
A recently published study in the journal Science (Slabe et al., 2022) documented alarmingly high levels of lead in bald and golden eagle populations across the United States. Nearly half of the animals tested from...
On March 5, the lives of 22 African elephants—mothers, juveniles, and young calves—changed forever. No longer free to roam the vast open spaces of northwestern Namibia’s Kunene region, they were loaded onto a cargo jet...
A new study published in the journal Ecography (Vynne et al., 2022) identifies key opportunities for improving ecosystem health through restoration of large mammal assemblages across terrestrial ecoregions. Large mammals, which include top predators and...

Government Affairs

Program oversight With nearly half the fiscal year over, Congress finally finished work on the fiscal year 2022 spending bills. The good news is that they contain several important provisions aimed at improving animal welfare...
It only took 20 years, two lawsuits, and prodding from Congress for the US Department of Agriculture to finally propose regulations to extend Animal Welfare Act (AWA) protections to birds not bred for use in...
Two AWI-supported state bills recently became law and another is on the cusp. In March, Governor Eric Holcomb of Indiana signed HB 1248 into law, prohibiting public contact with lions, tigers, leopards, snow leopards, jaguars...

In Remembrance

Born in Alabama, Dr. E. O. Wilson spent his formative years exploring forests and tidal pools, an activity that inspired a lifetime of inquiry and discovery. After completing his studies at the University of Alabama...
Senator Robert Dole (R-KS), who died in December at age 98, was a steadfast and skilled advocate of federal protection for animals. As a member of the House of Representatives in the 1960s, he served...
The life and career of Dr. Thomas Lovejoy—who coined the term “biological diversity”—was dedicated to the protection of the planet. After Lovejoy obtained a bachelor’s degree and PhD from Yale, an interest in birds led...

Reviews

To care about animal welfare is to care about the environment in which animals live. In Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest, Dr. Suzanne Simard puts it simply: “Mistreatment of one...
In Living Planet: The Web of Life on Earth—a fully updated edition of Sir David Attenborough’s 1984 book that accompanied the BBC’s Living Planet documentary series—the famed naturalist takes readers on a journey through the...
With We Are All Whalers: The Plight of Whales and Our Responsibility, Dr. Michael Moore proves definitively that he is no ivory tower scientist. He speaks with passion about his decades-long research on whales and...