It was a simple gesture. In 2006, a single donor to the Animal Welfare Institute offered a $10,000 grant to support the development of new tools and strategies to prevent, reduce, or mitigate human-wildlife conflicts in North America.
The Cove is a highly suspenseful documentary that introduces viewers to Ric O’Barry, the dolphin trainer from the 1960s hit television series "Flipper."
Few people have heard of “penning.” This cruel practice involves the live trapping of coyotes and foxes (generally with leghold traps or snares) who are then often shipped and traded across state lines and sold to penning facilities.
For many Americans, a visit to a national park can be an enlightening and awe-inspiring journey. From the splendor of a sunrise at the Grand Canyon to the sheer beauty of Yellowstone and from the desolation of Death Valley to the history of Gettysburg, America’s national parks have been set aside to protect some of the United States’ most treasured landscapes and hallowed grounds.
In The Dolphin Who Saved Me: How an Extraordinary Friendship Helped Me Overcome Trauma and Find Hope, author Melody Horrill holds nothing back with her blunt and unrelenting descriptions of the violence and trauma she experienced growing up in a deeply dysfunctional home. Yet, just when her suffering seems too much to bear, she takes the reader into another reality: the time she spent with the dolphins of Australia’s Port River—in particular, a scarred and solitary male bottlenose named Jock.
Captive primates rarely have to spend as much time searching for, obtaining and processing food as do their wild counterparts. Enrichment techniques designed to encourage captive primates to spend more species-appropriate amounts of time in foraging behaviours have been successful. The present study measured the behavioural effects of four feeding enhancements: two devices (mats and puzzles) and two foods (produce and frozen juice), on four cohorts (n = 63) of single-caged, yearling rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta).
The Elephant in the Living Room is a compelling documentary that examines the little-known yet widespread problem of exotic pet ownership in the U.S. - in particular the practice of making pets out of dangerous wild animals such as lions, tigers, elephants, bears and venomous snakes.
The isolated, white-furred wolves of Ellesmere Island, Canada, are distinctive among their species in that they have not been conditioned over generations to fear humans. On the second closest land mass to the North Pole, they let researcher L. David Mech observe their dens and hunts uninhibited for the better part of 24 summers. In The Ellesmere Wolves: Behavior and Ecology in the High Arctic, which Mech coauthored with Morgan Anderson and H. Dean Cluff, he states, “The Ellesmere wolves—way off there near the end of the Earth—should long be able to continue their lives as natural as can be, wild and free of human wrath.”
High in the clear blue skies over the Grand Canyon, California condors wheel slowly, searching for their next meal. In the shortgrass prairie of Wyoming, the dark eyes of black-footed ferrets peek out from the safety of old prairie dog burrows.
In September, the Environmental Protection Agency announced a plan to reduce and eventually eliminate its reliance on animal testing to assess the danger of chemicals. Currently, the EPA performs, or requires chemical companies to perform, tests on rabbits, mice, rats, and fish to assess chemical toxicity.
Some politicians in Washington feel that restarting a horse slaughter industry on American soil is a good idea. We’d like to offer a small window into how the horse slaughter industry currently operates, as shady players make deals amongst themselves while duping innocent people into giving up their horses to be butchered.
In recognition of April as Animal Cruelty Awareness Month, the Animal Welfare Institute announces the availability of the Animal Cruelty Crime Statistics: Findings from a Survey of State Uniform Crime Reporting Programs. For the first time, a snapshot has been taken of whether and how states collect and report animal cruelty crime data. Knowing this is the first step towards having such information available on a national level.
Loro Parque, Tenerife, has housed western lowland gorillas since 1992. Initially we were to have two groups. One was to contain animals from an under-represented bloodline in Europe, which we were to house on a temporary basis. The other group was to contain selected males to form a bachelor group. What follows is a history of the gorillas at Loro Parque from 1992 to the present time.
Squirrel monkeys (Saimiri spp.) have always been a common sight in zoos, but this seems to have changed in the past few years. Breeding is often poor, and zoos have discovered that this genus is not as easy to keep as has always been assumed.
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 roots of primatology lie in the exploits and adventures of early travelers and explorers in the 1600s and 1700s. Author Chris Herzfeld recounts the myriad ways humans have pursued their fascination with apes—from early collections of bodies for museums to collection of living beings for zoos, breeding colonies, and laboratories.
This summer, I traveled to Vietnam to help facilitate and document a snare removal workshop for rangers from Vietnam’s Forest Protection Department (FPD) as part of the Emerging Wildlife Conservation Leaders (EWCL) initiative.
The Hidden World of the Fox is a concise, yet broad overview of the fox. The author, British mammal ecologist Adele Brand, has been studying foxes for 20 years, and though her primary focus is foxes resident to England, she is interested in foxes around the globe. Her research has included travel to Yucatán’s rainforest, the Thar Desert in India, Subarctic Canada, and Rock Creek Park in Washington, DC. Foxes are widespread because of their incredible ability to adapt to a variety of environments and take advantage of opportunities available because of location or circumstance.
The Homes for Horses Coalition, a resource and representative voice of the nation’s horse rescue and sanctuary community, announced the appointment of Cindy Gendron as the program’s new coordinator. The coalition was formed in 2007 by the Animal Welfare Institute, the Humane Society of the United States and the ASPCA (The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals®) to serve as a recognized national network of experts in equine care and government policy affecting equines.
The Homes for Horses Coalition today launched http://www.homesforhorses.org. The Web site is a resource tool for equine rescue personnel, members of the media, and anyone interested in equine protection efforts.
