Accredited zoos, aquariums, marine theme parks, and swim-with-dolphin operations—places that naturally concentrate large groups of people—were among the first tourism venues to close their doors in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
On January 23, in Utrecht, the Netherlands, an appeals court heard the arguments of the Free Morgan Foundation (FMF) for revoking the certificate (permit) that allowed the orca known as Morgan to be transferred from a Dutch aquarium to a zoo in Sp
Nonhuman primates (including apes, monkeys, lemurs, and lorises) are highly intelligent and typically social wild animals whose needs are irreconcilable with the realities of a captive life as pets.
The Captive Primate Safety Act (HR 8164/S 4206) was reintroduced in May by Reps. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) and Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA) and Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), with AWI’s strong endorsement.
The Animal Welfare Institute (AWI) applauds yesterday’s reintroduction of the Captive Primate Safety Act (CPSA), which would end the cruel and dangerous pet primate trade in the United States. Nonhuman primates, including chimpanzees, capuchins, and lemurs, suffer enormously when kept as pets. They can also injure or spread disease to the people around them.
The Animal Welfare Institute (AWI) endorses yesterday’s reintroduction of the Captive Primate Safety Act (CPSA), which would end the cruel and dangerous pet primate trade in the United States.
Few visitors to dolphinariums (aquariums, theme parks, or tourist attractions with dolphins or other cetaceans used in shows or swim-with encounters) pause to consider where the animals came from. Those who do may believe they are rescued animals, or born in captivity. Though occasionally true, most often this is not the case. Captive breeding of cetaceans is difficult, and most whales and dolphins currently in captivity around the world were deliberately captured—not rescued—from the wild. Even for bottlenose dolphins, orcas and beluga whales—the three species for which there has been some breeding success—self-sustaining breeding populations do not exist, and "new blood" is needed from the wild to supplement gene pools.
Almost two decades ago the US aquarium industry—facing mounting public distaste with the practice—ceased importing healthy wild-caught cetaceans for commercial display. Since then, people across the globe have come to realize that no aquarium can replicate the wild habitat these animals need and their importance in healthy marine ecosystems.
Rising acidity levels in seawater, resulting from the ocean absorbing increasing amounts of atmospheric carbon dioxide, are causing clownfish some serious problems.
The Caribbean Environment Programme was established in 1981 as one of the United Nations’ “Regional Seas” programs, in recognition of the importance and value of the Wider Caribbean’s fragile and vulnerable coastal and marine ecosystems.
Few Americans have heard of the US Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services (WS) program. Even fewer are aware that their tax dollars subsidize the killing of millions of animals every year under this program; between 2004 and 2007, WS killed 8,378,412 animals (Keefover-Ring 2009).
Dr. Carole Carlson, a valiant advocate for the conservation of whales and their marine environment, died on March 24 in Provincetown, Massachusetts, of pancreatic cancer. She was 69.
The animal protection community lost a true champion for chimpanzees on May 2, when Dr. Carole Noon passed away at 59 years of age after a battle with pancreatic cancer.
The Animal Welfare Institute (AWI) engages in precedent-setting litigation on behalf of animals in state and federal courts across the country, and most recently has been involved in nationally recognized cases to promote the welfare of horses, elephants, bats and marine mammals. Starting with the staff at our Washington, D.C.
Few endangered species sagas are as complex as the fight to save the Florida panther. Journalist Craig Pittman does an excellent job of untangling 50 years of biopolitics, egos, and evolving science in his new book Cat Tale: The Wild, Weird Battle to Save the Florida Panther.
What is the best strategy to capture animals who escape from their primary enclosure? It's my experience with group- and single-housed rhesus and stump-tailed macaques that catching animals who get loose can be a very traumatic, chaotic event not only for the animal who is free but for all the animals of the room.
The Animal Welfare Institute (AWI) and Compassion in World Farming (CIWF) are urging the Russian Federation to suspend imports of cattle by sea from the United States. This request from animal welfare organizations follows an incident in August in which more than 1,000 out of 3,400 breeding dairy cattle from one US shipment died en route to Russia or had to be euthanized upon arrival due to their extremely poor condition.
Unimaginable. Traumatic. That’s how the veterinarians who treated Cub described his injuries. He was discovered hobbling along a road in New Mexico; his body riddled with shotgun pellets as he tried to move on the exposed ends of bones where his hind legs once were. He had been caught in a steel-jaw leghold trap, and after being discovered by the trapper, he was shot. Still, somehow, he survived.
In a tragedy that made international headlines, Cecil the lion, a 13-year-old pride leader described as the “biggest tourist attraction” of Zimbabwe’s Hwange National Park, was killed by American trophy hunter Walter James Palmer in July.
The Endangered Species Act was signed into law in December 1973 to prevent the extinction of wildlife both at home and abroad. Fifty years later, it remains one of the strongest and most effective conservation laws in the world.
