More and more, advances in animal cognition research are changing the ways in which people perceive animals. Belinda Recio’s latest book, When Animals Rescue: Amazing True Stories about Heroic and Helpful Creatures, powerfully contributes to this change by allowing readers to look beyond the data.
Knowing how features of the environment, such as perches, might restrict or stimulate the expression of specified behaviors may help us to incorporate functional design alternatives in our housing plans for captive primates. Animal holding facilities and showcase facilities alike are commonly limited in the space available to resident primates such that the design of the vertical space may play a significant role in determining not only the comfort and quality of the housing, but also the appropriate physical place and social opportunity for animals to exhibit behavioral activity typical of the species.
Where the Animals Go is a unique book that contains full-color maps with detailed tracking information for one after another animal species—from whales, elephants, and orangutans to turtles, ants, and plankton.
The very title of Andrew Linzey’s book is likely to evoke an emotional response, but Why Animal Suffering Matters makes a rational, ethics-based case for treating animals humanely.
The United Egg Producers (UEP) and the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) announced in July that they had reached an agreement to phase in modifications to conventional battery cages over the next 15 to 18 years.
Egg-laying hens in confinement bear some of the worst abuses the agricultural industry offers. To the detriment of their own well-being, hens are bred for increasing egg production.
National Primate Research Centers (NPRCs) that experiment on nonhuman primates stand to gain an additional $30 million in taxpayer funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for fiscal year 2024, despite all seven receiving multiple citations deemed “critical” by US Department of Agriculture inspectors for primate injuries and deaths over the last decade, according to a new analysis by the Animal Welfare Institute (AWI).
Although more than 85 countries have banned or heavily restricted the use of steel-jaw leghold traps, the United States—one of the world’s largest fur producing and consuming nations—continues to defend these inhumane devices.
Congress could once again ban the use of federal funds to inspect horse slaughter plants in the United States if it follows the lead of the White House—a move that is strongly supported by the Animal Welfare Institute (AWI), The Humane Society of the United States and the ASPCA (The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals). President Obama’s FY 2014 budget proposal includes a request for Congress to block spending by the US Department of Agriculture to inspect US horse slaughter plants.
Bat conservationists throughout North America are holding their breath this winter, waiting nervously for the grim news of spring: how much farther has white-nose syndrome (WNS) spread and how many more bat hibernation caves will be littered with the bodies of bats killed by this tragic disease?
The Animal Welfare Institute is dedicated to alleviating animal suffering caused by people. We seek to improve the welfare of animals everywhere: in agriculture, in commerce, in our homes and communities, in research, and in the wild.
Cara Achterberg is the cofounder and board president of the nonprofit organization Who Will Let the Dogs Out. In Who Will Let the Dogs Out: Stories and Solutions for Shelters and Rescues, she chronicles the conditions of dogs in shelters across the southern United States. Through storytelling, data collection, and personal anecdotes, Achterberg has penned what amounts to both an exposé of the current lack of resources and support for homeless dogs and a blueprint for change.
When it comes to animal cruelty cases, it is often hard to tell whether the glass is half empty or half full. Some individuals who have committed heinous acts of abuse are not even prosecuted, while others are held accountable. Although there are still far too many sad and disappointing examples of the former, instances of the latter are on the rise.
It's easy to fall in love with Bernadette, Valerie and Wee Willy, three wild burros, adopted earlier this year from the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). Their charismatic personalities and occasional, delightful brays are enough to put a smile on anyone’s face.
Philanthropist and businesswoman Madeleine Pickens was joined today by the ASPCA, the American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign, the Animal Welfare Institute and many other organizations expressing their outrage over the deaths of at least seven mustangs in a Bureau of Land Management (BLM) roundup conducted Saturday in the Owyhee Complex in northeastern Nevada.
On the eve of US Rep. Deb Haaland’s historic confirmation hearing for Secretary of the Interior, the Animal Welfare Institute (AWI), the American Wild Horse Campaign (AWHC), and several other leading wild horse advocacy groups sent a letter to the New Mexico congresswoman applauding her nomination, and respectfully requesting that, once confirmed, she direct the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to stop pursuing dangerous surgical sterilizations on wild horses.
For decades, America's wild horses have faced tremendous pressure from the government, ranchers, the livestock industry, state wildlife agencies and others who do not support the protection of these iconic animals on Western rangelands. As a result, wild horse and burro populations and their herd areas have dramatically declined in number and size to the point that many herds are no longer self-sustaining and genetically viable.
Today, a coalition of wild horse advocates, conservationists, and academics filed a notice of appeal with the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals in response to a lower court decision greenlighting a Bureau of Land Management (BLM) plan to remove nearly 5,000 wild horses and eliminate 2.1 million acres of wild horse habitat in the Wyoming Checkerboard.
Velma Bronn Johnston’s boss told her at the end of her lengthy secretarial career, "The world is made up of three kinds of people - those who make things happen; those who watch things happen; and those who don’t know what’s happening. Go girl, go!"
Are wild horses truly "wild," as an indigenous species in North America, or are they "feral weeds" – barnyard escapees, far removed genetically from their prehistoric ancestors? The question at hand is, therefore, whether or not modern horses, Equus caballus, should be considered native wildlife.
Wild horses and settlers of the American west had a lot in common. They were tough, independent, and resourceful, with a deep need for freedom and open spaces. As more people migrated west, however, wild horses became victims of human progress. It’s this story of wild horses that David Philipps adroitly describes in Wild Horse Country: The History, Myth, and Future of the Mustang.
On September 8, the Wild Horse Annie Act (P.L. 86-234), having been approved by the US Congress unanimously, is signed into law. The Act prohibits the poisoning of wild horse and burro waterholes, as well as the use of motorized vehicles to round the horses up for sale to slaughterhouses.
