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In February, the House Committee on Natural Resources held an oversight hearing on the Endangered Species Act (ESA) and the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA).

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Numerous lists of species that are likely to go extinct within the next few years have been published. Front and center on all of them is the tiny, critically endangered porpoise known as the vaquita.

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The Canadian National Farm Animal Care Council (NFACC), a collaboration between the agriculture industry, animal welfare groups, government, and other interested parties, recently released its Code of Practice for the Care and Handling of Pigs.

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S-203, the Ending the Captivity of Whales and Dolphins Act, has received Royal Assent, making the historic legislation, which ends the public display of captive cetaceans, official Canadian law. After nearly four years of debate, S-203 passed the Canadian Parliament on Monday, June 10th to much celebration.
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The brutal annual slaughter of Canada’s harp seals may be gasping its last breaths this year.

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Wildlife and animal protection groups submitted recommendations today urging Canada’s fishery management agency to continue to expand protections for critically imperiled North Atlantic right whales. Following an unprecedented 12 right whale deaths in Canadian waters in 2017, Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) closed key fishing areas in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, including in the entanglement-prone snow crab fishery. The agency is now considering measures for the 2019 season.
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In March, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) released a report titled Evaluating the Taxonomic Status of the Mexican Gray Wolf and the Red Wolf.

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Evidence is accumulating that dogs work wonders when paired with members of the military with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a traumatic brain injury (TBI), or another mental health issue arising from their military experiences.

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On January 2, 2013, President Obama signed into law the National Defense Authorization Act for FY2013 (H.R. 4310), which authorizes the Secretaries of the various military services to transfer back to Lackland Air Force Base or another location for adoption any Military Working Dog (MWD) who is to be retired and for whom “no suitable adoption is available at the military facility where the dog is located.”

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The government of South Africa, one of the largest captive hunting regions on the globe, officially banned the canned hunting of lions in June.

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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.

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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

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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.
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On May 5, the Captive Primate Safety Act (CPSA) was reintroduced in Congress. This bipartisan bill, sponsored by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Reps.

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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.

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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.

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Rising acidity levels in seawater, resulting from the ocean absorbing increasing amounts of atmospheric carbon dioxide, are causing clownfish some serious problems.

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Currently, there is no federal oversight of the use of invertebrates in research in the United States.

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A LAREF Discussion

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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.

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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).

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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.

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