Once again, we are forced to highlight the abysmal state of enforcement of the Animal Welfare Act (AWA) and the Horse Protection Act (HPA) in recent years. As made plain by the graphs on this page, the US Department of Agriculture has all but abandoned its duty to protect animals under these vital laws. We hope that there will be better news to report from the new administration, but first we want to acknowledge the huge task newly appointed Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack and his staff have ahead of them if they are to address this (in addition to the steps they should take to correct course on farm animal welfare issues—see page 4).
Date created: March 25, 2021
Last updated: May 14, 2021
A pending lawsuit supported by a potent segment of the walking horse industry appears to be the major impetus for the US Department of Agriculture’s egregious decision to remove untold thousands of online Horse Protection Act (HPA) and Animal Welfare Act (AWA) records, the Animal Welfare Institute (AWI) stated today.
Date created: February 9, 2017
Last updated: May 2, 2022
A little-known US Department of Agriculture (USDA) program is using brutal methods and taxpayer dollars to indiscriminately kill wildlife across the United States. This program, ironically entitled Wildlife Services (WS), kills approximately 5 million animals each year in the name of “managing problems caused by wildlife.”
Date created: June 17, 2015
Last updated: April 2, 2021
In July, a scathing New York Times editorial entitled “Agriculture’s Misnamed Agency” highlighted the myriad problems plaguing USDA’s rogue Wildlife Services program, including its outdated and nonselective killing practices, lack of transparency and accountability, and ecologically destructive approach to wildlife management.
Date created: December 10, 2013
Last updated: January 15, 2020
Billions of birds fatally collide with human-made structures each year. These mortalities have consequences for avian population viability and the conservation of endangered species. This source of human-wildlife conflict also places economic and operational constraints on various industries. Furthermore, with continued increases in urbanization, the number and geographic extent of collisions continue to increase.
Date created: March 24, 2021
Last updated: September 1, 2022
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 is fun and engaging.
Date created: April 19, 2022
Last updated: April 25, 2022
In a presentation at the AALAS meeting, J. Hau from the University of Copenhagen described an interesting work in progress, the replacement of the rabbit with a free-range, free-will chicken as the traditional polyclonal antibody animal model.
Date created: December 6, 2011
Last updated: January 8, 2020
The preservation of large carnivores such as jaguars will not be achieved only by conserving isolated protected areas. They need large landscapes. Subpopulations need to mix genes to remain genetically robust; therefore, animals must move between protected areas, through landscapes dominated by human activity. Our understanding of how individual movement and human-wildlife conflict affect regional population persistence is poorly understood, as, traditionally, it would require large-scale trapping of jaguars to outfit them with radio collars to monitor their movements over time.
Date created: June 14, 2022
Last updated: March 20, 2023
The Arctic is warming faster than anywhere on Earth, and polar bears—listed as “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act—are at risk due to decreasing sea ice habitat. Monitoring polar bear populations is important for their conservation and management, but is also challenging because they occupy vast, remote, and extreme regions. With the loss of sea ice, conventional monitoring methods (including expensive aerial overflights) are becoming less reliable. Some of these methods are also invasive (e.g., physical capture, chemical immobilization, and satellite collaring), which has been of concern to local Indigenous communities, conservationists, and researchers.
Date created: August 30, 2023
Last updated: September 6, 2023
Long before elephant ivory carvings became fashionable, and before crocodile skin handbags and colorful tropical pet birds were stylish, people exploited wild animals as a source of food. Many ancient societies tried to limit the exploitation by imposing restrictions and taboos, and even religious prohibitions, but some people persisted nevertheless, and many wild species were forced into extinction as a consequence.
Date created: August 23, 2013
Last updated: January 15, 2020
Surveying nesting raptors provides important information on population productivity. Since raptors occupy spots near the top of the food web, they are also often good indicators of ecosystem health. But surveying raptor nests using traditional methods requires climbing to the nest or flying over it in a small airplane or helicopter.
Date created: September 18, 2015
Last updated: March 31, 2023
Noninvasive genetic tools are commonly used in conservation programs because they help practitioners address practical questions—such as estimating population size and reconstructing ancestries—without having to use stressful capture methods. Wolves across North America have benefited substantially from the use of noninvasive genetic methods, and the insights provided have helped wildlife managers make the best-informed decisions regarding population persistence.
Date created: September 4, 2024
Last updated: September 13, 2024
The Florida manatee (Trichechus manatus latirsotris) is an endemic subspecies of West Indian manatee that inhabits inland and coastal waters of the southeastern United States. Its population is threatened by natural and human-generated disturbances, including boat traffic, which may be ubiquitous throughout manatee habitat.
Date created: January 3, 2022
Last updated: September 1, 2022
The purpose of this study is to consider space use patterns of a single group of captive chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) housed in an indoor exhibit at the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo. Previous studies have focused on the space use of a group following movement from a small enclosure to a large outdoor enclosure (Bettinger et al., 1994; Clarke et al., 1982; Traylor-Holzer and Fritz, 1985; Matevia et at., 1991), use of large outdoor facilities (Menzel. 1969; Horvat and Kraemer, 1976), or space use patterns of mother-infant (Goff et al., 1994).
Date created: May 2, 2016
Last updated: November 11, 2020
Operant conditioning is commonly thought of as the process that teaches pigeons to peck levers, rats to run mazes, bears to dance, and dolphins to leap. Whether you appreciate the product, the process is certainly a versatile one and, unbeknownst to most of us, a natural part of our everyday life.
Date created: May 11, 2016
Last updated: July 16, 2020
North American bats have an estimated economic value of $23 billion annually due to their natural role as insect pest regulators. These bats have faced a significant decline due to white-nose syndrome (a fungal disease of hibernating bats), among other threats. Despite their ecological importance and conservation status, bats are sometimes labeled as pests because some species (those that typically roost in tree cavities) have adapted to roosting in manmade structures. Roost sites are used as maternity colonies (where females give birth to and raise pups) as well as hibernation sites.
Date created: September 1, 2022
Last updated: March 20, 2023
An attempt was made to encourage more foraging behaviour in eight pair-housed adult rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta). No special device and no special food were used. Daily commercial dry food rations (238g per animal) consisting of 33 bar-shaped or 16 star-shaped biscuits per animal were placed on the mesh ceiling of the cages instead of in the feed-boxes.
Date created: May 25, 2016
Last updated: May 19, 2021
The United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) issued an announcement today on the future of the red wolf recovery program, including both for captive wolves and the wild red wolves, the only wild population on the planet, reintroduced into eastern North Carolina in 1987.
Date created: September 12, 2016
Last updated: May 2, 2022
In September of last year, the US Fish and Wildlife Service proposed significantly reducing the range of the existing wild population of red wolves by removing individual wolves from the wild in order to increase the captive breeding population—so
Date created: September 1, 2017
Last updated: September 1, 2017
On October 4, the US Fish and Wildlife Service ruled against adding the Pacific walrus to the list of threatened and endangered species under the Endangered Species Act.
Date created: January 4, 2018
Last updated: January 4, 2018
In the summer 2015 edition of the AWI Quarterly, we told you about an alarming proposal from the US Fish and Wildlife Service that would create serious roadblocks for private citizens wishing to petition the agency to protect imperiled species under the Endangered Species Act.
Date created: July 6, 2016
Last updated: January 15, 2020
As we go to press, proposals have been published in the Federal Register by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) that portend an enormous impact on the future of the affected species. The first calls for the removal of the gray wolf (Canis lupus) from the list of threatened and endangered species under the Endangered Species Act (ESA).
Date created: August 23, 2013
Last updated: January 15, 2020
The US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) gave the green light in March for two American hunters to import one black rhino carcass each from Namibia as trophies. One hunter, Michael Luzich, had already shot a rhino—having paid the Namibian government $200,000 for the privilege—but had not yet received permission from the US government to import the carcass.
Date created: May 29, 2015
Last updated: January 9, 2020
The US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) has postponed its decision on listing the northern long-eared bat as endangered under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) until April 2015. The decision was originally due this past October (see Summer 2014 AWI Quarterly), but USFWS capitulated to objections from industry groups and several state natural resource agencies.
Date created: December 10, 2014
Last updated: December 4, 2019
The Animal Welfare Institute (AWI) commends the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) for releasing a final rule today that provides additional Endangered Species Act protections for imperiled African elephants.
Date created: April 1, 2024
Last updated: September 5, 2024
