Today, the Animal Welfare Institute (AWI) and 16 other conservation groups submitted more than 500,000 public comments to the US Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service, bringing the total to well over 800,000 comments in support of the Endangered Species Act (ESA), our nation’s most effective tool in saving wildlife facing extinction. In July, the Trump administration proposed sweeping changes to ESA regulations that would leave threatened and endangered wildlife at risk.
Ninety-seven legislators sent a letter yesterday urging House leadership to reject anti-wildlife riders in the final Department of the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act.
Laying hens belong on pasture where they can spend their day exploring and scratching in the grasses for insects, dust-bathing in the earth, stretching their wings, socializing with other hens, and basking in the sun. Although the vast majority of laying hens are still confined in row after row of cramped, barren “battery” cages stacked one on top of the other, an industry transformation is underway.
According to a recent report published by the University of British Columbia in Canada, 90 percent of the global small fish catch—which includes anchovies, sardines and mackerel—is processed into fish meal and fish oil and used in animal feed.
The California referendum to prohibit housing sows in gestation crates, hens in battery cages, and veal calves in crates by 2015 passed in November by a nearly two-to-one margin.
Enrichment of the environments of captive primates is currently of interest as both a basic and an applied research question, particularly when social and inanimate enhancements are used simultaneously. We measured the behavioural effects of two intensities of inanimate enrichment on 12 unimale- multifemale groups and 12 all-male groups from three cohorts of three to four- year-old rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta). Half of the groups received a simple, inexpensive enrichment programme while the other groups received a more complex and costly combination of physical and feeding enhancements.
In 1995, the US Marine Mammal Commission (MMC) invited AWI’s Dr. Naomi Rose (then with another organization) to co-author a chapter on captive marine mammals for a book it was publishing on marine mammal policy.
Meredith is a new animal control officer. She has been directed to visit a particular home on multiple occasions because of complaints from neighbors of dogs barking or running loose.
To keep their interest and encourage natural behaviors, animals in research facilities are often offered enrichment devices: objects to gnaw on, nesting materials that allow them to custom build their shelters, "food puzzles" to forage, and various toys to keep them occupied during the long hours cooped up in cages.
A group of five pygmy killer whales appeared in the shallow waters off the coast of the Hawaiian island of Kihei in early May - a worrisome and rare sight, since the species’ habitat is far offshore in deep waters.
Thanks to a flurry of activity at the end, the 113th Congress escaped the ignominy of being the least productive Congress in modern history. (It was the second-least productive, right behind the 112th.) Nonetheless, we made important gains on behalf of animals through provisions in the trillion-dollar spending bill passed right before Congress adjourned.
In the wild, chimpanzees spend most of their time foraging, so any device that stimulates this behaviour in captivity could potentially be effective enrichment. A simple grass foraging device constructed of a polyvinyl chloride (PVC) pipe cut in half lengthwise and planted with rye grass seed was designed to allow captive chimpanzees living in non- grassy enclosures to exhibit foraging similar to that of their wild counterparts.
Karen Paolillo’s new book focuses on the lives of a small group of wild hippos, but she also provides a broader look at the lives of wildlife and people in southeastern Zimbabwe. The former is captivating and much of the latter is deeply disturbing.
Distinguished medical historian Dr. John Parascandola offers an engaging, thought-provoking, and well-researched account of the growth of animal experimentation and the parallel rise of the animal protection movement in the United States and Great Britain during the 19th and 20th centuries. From the outset, he explains that “one of the major themes of the book is the crucial role played by the animal protection movement in promoting alternatives,” which he defines as methods that reduce the suffering of animals used in research.
After perhaps the most disheartening, divisive campaign in modern memory, the votes have been tabulated. Next year, a new administration will plant its flag in Washington, DC. A new Congress will convene. A new era will begin for the citizens of America and, by extension, the citizens of the world affected by American policy.
On Saturday, June 10, 2023, Dr. Roger Payne, 88, passed away, surrounded by the love of his family at his home in Vermont. Roger maintained his clarity and wisdom until the final moment.
He always needed to find answers to new questions, and often felt that science was not enough. Roger was frequently considered a rule-breaker, given his propensity to share theories about whales that had not yet been scientifically proven. He did this because he was convinced that the amount of time needed to generate change did not correspond to the timescale of science. Roger considered it necessary to awaken people’s fascination for whales, and he did so with his recordings of humpback whale songs that mobilized thousands of people. This catalyzed the Save the Whales movement, which culminated in a great victory when the International Whaling Commission (IWC) established a moratorium on commercial whaling that went into effect in 1986.
When a pit bull, a mother and a young child are featured in the same news story, the ending is often predictable, but in November, the NBC headline was quite different.
Twenty years ago (midway through my career at AWI) I was appointed AWI president following the untimely death of our founding president (and my mentor), Christine Stevens. One year later, I met Susan Millward.
There are only nine known species of caracaras. And though their populations are small and confined, they “refuse to behave like a species on the verge of extinction.” What seems like the most important idea from A Most Remarkable Creature is that humans have a lot to learn from this unique bird of prey, and “that only by looking to the nonhuman world, with all the tools of science and art, can we see what we really are—and that we aren’t as alone as we feel.”
Neurobiologists at the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle may have uncovered one of the reasons why 90 percent of drugs that succeed in mice fail in humans. In a study published in the journal Nature (Hodge et al., 2019), the scientists analyzed nearly 16,000 neurons from the outermost layer of the human brain.
Healthy laboratory animals who are no longer needed in research deserve the chance to be rehomed. The practice of rehoming retired laboratory animals is more common with dogs, but other species are also deserving of this opportunity. A few months ago, 10 female New Zealand white rabbits were granted a new beginning thanks to a collaboration between an animal rescue organization and the research institution where they had been living for approximately three years.
As you know, coronavirus (COVID-19) is spreading around the globe, and the human species is facing a pandemic unlike any the vast majority of us have endured in our lifetimes.
