The Animal Welfare Institute (AWI) announced today the 15 winners of a scholarship designed to support high school seniors who are pursuing a post-secondary education intended to better the lives of animals.
“Even if animals were to experience pain differently: humans shouldn’t be harming them at all,” reads the last line of an essay question response submitted by one of AWI’s recent scholarship winners.
Carnivores in California can breathe a little easier, after AWI and allies reached a settlement with the US Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services program in November that will result in numerous protections for predators and other wild ani
The 118th Congress is gearing up to tackle the Farm Bill, a massive omnibus bill that must be reauthorized every five years or so and is a key driver of food and agriculture policy in the United States.
AWI today filed an emergency petition to list the pygmy three-toed sloth (Bradypus pygmaeus) as endangered under the US Endangered Species Act (ESA). Endemic to Panama’s Isla Escudo de Veraguas, the pygmy sloth—the world’s smallest sloth—is critically endangered, with as few as 79 left in the wild.
The Animal Welfare Institute, Whale and Dolphin Conservation, Whale and Dolphin Conservation North America, Earth Island Institute, and Cetacean Society International have filed a motion to intervene in defense of the National Marine Fisheries Service’s (NMFS) August 2013 decision to deny Georgia Aquarium’s request for a permit to import 18 beluga whales from Russia for public display. Our organizations strongly support NMFS’s determination, and we are disappointed that Georgia Aquarium has chosen to continue this ill-conceived effort.
In January, AWI and allies submitted a petition to the Environmental Protection Agency to cancel the registration of Compound 1080 (sodium fluoroacetate), used in “livestock protection collars” by the USDA’s Wildlife Services program to kill coyotes.
AWI’s latest analysis of the enormous number of vital animal welfare records still missing from the US Department of Agriculture’s website reveals that, following the Contender Farms v.
The Animal Welfare Institute (AWI) stated that changes are needed to US animal export to address the gross violations of international animal welfare code occurring on shipments of farm animals leaving the United States. Some of those changes are reflected in new rules recently proposed by the US Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service.
California stands poised to be the first state to end captivity of orcas for entertainment purposes. In early March, AWI’s Dr. Naomi Rose joined Assemblymember Richard Bloom (D-Santa Monica), Blackfish director Gabriella Cowperthwaite, and two former SeaWorld trainers at a press conference on Santa Monica pier to announce the introduction of SB 2140 by Assemblymember Bloom.
We pour a lot of plastic into the world’s oceans—directly and through the myriad waterways that spill into the seas. A pioneering study published in Science in February estimated that, in 2010 alone, we dumped nearly 9 million tons of plastic into the deep—so much that if we were to spread it out along the shores, we could cover every foot of the planet’s coastlines with five full grocery bags of the stuff.
AWI staff members are dedicated to helping animals on the job and off, and many of us engage in various activities for animals after we leave the office.
Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke issued a statement late Friday night halting a notice in the Federal Register—published earlier that day—allowing the importation of sport-hunted elephant trophies into the United States.
The Fiscal Year 2018 omnibus appropriations bill was signed today by President Trump. “We thank animal champions in Congress for their crucial work on this bill,” said Nancy Blaney, Animal Welfare Institute director of government affairs. “In a hard-fought victory for animals, the bill reflects most of the crucial appropriations priorities affecting animal welfare.”
Following bipartisan outcry from elected officials and concerned Florida residents, Department of Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke announced Tuesday that Florida is no longer among the states that will be opened to oil and gas drilling leases.
The House Agriculture Committee yesterday reported out its version of the 2018 farm bill (H.R. 2), legislation Congress must pass this year to reauthorize a variety of programs on which the agriculture sector heavily depends. The committee accepted one amendment that would improve animal welfare but also adopted an amendment offered by Representative Steve King (R-IA) that would have adverse consequences for animal welfare.
Tilikum, the SeaWorld orca who changed the captive cetacean world when he killed his trainer, Dawn Brancheau, at SeaWorld Orlando in 2010, has died. He was approximately 36 years of age and the father of many of SeaWorld’s current population of orcas.
Over the past few months, the Animal Welfare Institute (AWI) has been the target of several online petitions, circulated on Change.org and spread through social media networks, which falsely claim AWI supports the cruel killing of coyote pups and the use of steel-jaw leghold traps on federal refuge lands. These claims could not be further from the truth. AWI is and has always been vehemently opposed to both practices.
Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus announced it is shutting its doors in May 2017 after 146 years in operation, according to a January 14 press release from Feld Entertainment.
The Animal Welfare Institute (AWI) commends the decision made by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in Australia’s challenge to Japan’s scientific whaling program conducted in the Antarctic (known as JARPA II). In its ruling, issued this morning in The Hague, the ICJ, by a vote of 12–4, concluded that JARPA II does not comply with Article VIII of the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling (the Article that authorizes whaling for the purposes of scientific research).
The Iowa State Senate has now passed HF 2408, a bill that would force grocery stores to sell eggs from hens packed into cages so densely crowded they can barely move. Since the House already passed this piece of legislation, it is now up to Governor Kim Reynolds to either sign the bill into law, or to issue a veto and protect farm animals.
The Animal Welfare Institute (AWI) joins the growing number of citizens and elected officials from both parties in staunch opposition to the US Department of the Interior’s proposed plan to open and expand offshore drilling operations in the Atlantic, Pacific, and Arctic oceans and the eastern Gulf of Mexico.
The Animal Welfare Institute (AWI) applauds Representatives Seth Moulton (D-MA) and John Rutherford (R-FL) for introducing the bipartisan Scientific Assistance for Very Endangered (SAVE) Right Whales Act. This legislation would provide sustained funding opportunities through 2029 for collaborative efforts between states, nongovernmental organizations and industry leaders to enact much-needed conservation efforts to protect the North Atlantic right whale.
The Animal Welfare Institute (AWI) strongly opposes Iceland’s decision Tuesday to establish a base whaling quota of 209 fin whales and 217 minke whales annually from 2019 to 2023. Due to this misguided regulation, Iceland’s image as a nature tourism destination could face irreparable damage.
