Against a backdrop of picturesque mountains, past coils of razor wire, once-wild horses stand in the frozen dirt of the Cañon City Off-Range Corral.
The House appropriations committee and the full Senate have approved spending bills for the US Department of Agriculture, and both include important provisions for animal welfare.
Undercover investigations by animal advocates are an increasingly important tool in exposing the disturbing realities of factory farming. However, a number of states have begun to consider legislation aimed squarely at the messenger rather than the broken system.
Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack told reporters in March that “Congress should come up with a better solution for handling unwanted horses than slaughtering the animals for meat for human consumption.” Vilsack, a former governor of Iowa, noted that in his home state horses work with inmates in prisons, and that this helps prisoners acquire job skills for when they rejoin society.
The numbers are extremely bleak: bats in 20 states are now affected by white-nose syndrome (WNS) or the associated fungus, and the estimated death toll was recently revised upward to a staggering 5.7 million (or more) bats.
The success of the prosecutor training conference last year (AWI Quarterly Fall 2009) caught the attention of the federal government!
Not too long ago, the loss, injury or death of a companion animal during air travel was buried in the airlines’ “mishandled baggage" report filed with the Department of Transportation (DoT)—if it was acknowledged at all.
On December 8, 2014, Air Transport International (ATI) was cited by the USDA for violations of the Animal Welfare Act (AWA), after it transported 1,148 monkeys from China to Houston without providing food or water for more than 24 hours. This same company had been cited on July 28, 2014, for the same issue—in that case, not providing food and water for at least 32 hours to a shipment of over 1,700 monkeys.
Emirates, the world’s largest international air carrier, announced in May that it would no longer ship hunting trophies of elephants, rhinos, lions, and tigers. In August, in the wake of Cecil the lion’s trophy-hunt killing (see article, this page),
Safari hunting has suffered a few setbacks recently.
A federal grand jury indicted Maggie Ahmaogak, the former executive director of the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission (AEWC), in September.
There she was, in her 70s and arthritic, in the remote Baja, Mexico desert, camping out in the wilderness. It was by sheer willpower that Mrs. Thompson got into the small boat to finally see her beloved whales. And it wasn’t long before a friendly gray whale and her calf swam up to her in the small boat. It was then that the whale rose up to touch her hand. She wept in joy, love, and awe; and at the thought that they might suffer from whalers—including her own people of the Makah tribe of Northwest Washington.
Dr. Alexey Yablokov, described as Russia’s “environmental knight” and as the “grandfather of Russian ecology,” passed away on January 10 at the age of 83.
In the mid-20th century, the United States underwent an agricultural revolution that went largely unnoticed by the general public when the ability of science to industrialize farming overtook the knowledge and expertise of working farmers.
The crucial role of veterinarians in identifying and reporting suspected animal abuse is becoming clearer—to the public, to law enforcement, to veterinarians themselves, and to lawmakers.
Pairing singly-caged adult rhesus monkeys with infant or other adult companions is recommended as an inexpensive, effective, and safe way to promote the animals' well-being by enabling them to express their need for social contact and interaction.
Online retailer Amazon.com removed whale meat products from its Japanese website in February after a single day of public protests and a stern rebuke from the U.S. Commissioner to the International Whaling Commission (IWC).
As the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) decides whether to remove federal Endangered Species Act (ESA) protections for gray wolves across the continental United States, the disturbing fate of populations that have already been delisted in certain areas suggests that federal protections should remain in place.