The Animal Welfare Institute (AWI) and Project Coyote expressed grave concerns in response to the North Carolina Wildlife Resource Commission’s decision to allow unlimited night hunting of coyotes and feral pigs, which could begin this summer. The Commission approved the rules largely to provide new opportunities for hunters to expand hunting opportunities, not as a means to effectively manage wildlife populations.
Date created: May 3, 2012
Last updated: February 2, 2022
It appears 2018 will be a deadly year for whales in the northern hemisphere, as both Norway and Iceland have issued their highest whaling quotas in years.
Date created: June 29, 2018
Last updated: June 10, 2021
In defiance of a global moratorium on commercial whaling, Norway has again issued an annual kill quota of 1,278 minke whales for the 2021 whaling season.
Date created: February 23, 2021
Last updated: January 18, 2024
The Animal Welfare Institute (AWI) is calling on the United States to take Norway to task over an unexpected export of more than four metric tons of whale products to Japan. A bill of lading obtained by AWI shows that a shipment of 4,250 kg of frozen whale products from the Norwegian company, Myklebust Trading, left Ålesund, Norway, in mid-February, 2013, and is scheduled to arrive in Tokyo on April 12. Paperwork identifies the recipient as a Japanese company, Toshi International.
Date created: April 8, 2013
Last updated: February 2, 2022
Documents obtained by the Washington, DC-based Animal Welfare Institute (AWI) reveal that a Norwegian whaling company, Lofothval, has sought permission to ship up to 22,000 pounds (10 metric tons) of whale meat to Iceland. The export request comes barely a month after the United States government raised concerns about Norway’s escalating whaling and trade in whale products during the 65th meeting of the International Whaling Commission (IWC).
Date created: October 27, 2014
Last updated: February 2, 2022
Norwegian whalers slaughtered more whales in 2020 than in each of the last three years, according to statistics released today by the Fishermen’s Sales Organization (Råfisklaget). A total of 481 minke whales have been killed so far this year—52 more than last year—and the whaling season is still underway.
Date created: August 24, 2020
Last updated: January 18, 2024
As Norway’s fisheries minister, Per Sandberg, travels around New York June 7-8 to promote Norwegian seafood, the Animal Welfare Institute (AWI) urges the city’s retailers, consumers and restaurateurs to question the source of any Norwegian seafood due to its possible ties to the country’s barbaric whaling industry.
Date created: June 6, 2018
Last updated: February 7, 2022
Just days after the Norwegian whaling industry announced that 575 minke whales were slaughtered this season (the most in five years) new documents reveal that whalers are struggling to sell the whale meat—and even offloading it for dog food.
Date created: October 18, 2021
Last updated: January 18, 2024
NOAH, Norway’s largest NGO for animals, the Animal Welfare Institute (AWI), and WDC (Whale and Dolphin Conservation) are urging Mattilsynet, the Norwegian Food Safety Authority, to revoke its approval of a potentially cruel and dangerous experiment involving wild minke whales. The research will use captured minke whales off Vestvågøy in the Lofoten area of northern Norway in order to study how the whales’ brains respond to ocean noise.
Date created: April 12, 2021
Last updated: April 18, 2022
Norway has hunted whales in its own waters for centuries, but key technological advances, such as the exploding harpoon cannon, developed by its whalers in the 19th century, enabled the expansion of Norwegian whaling—and that of other nations—to an industrial scale over a much broader area. After World War I, in response to dwindling whale stocks and a shortfall of whale oil for its own market, some of Norway’s whalers returned to Norway’s own waters, establishing the foundation of modern Norwegian whaling in the North Atlantic. By the mid-1930s, Norway dominated the global whaling industry, taking more than half of all whales killed and producing a large share of the world’s whale oil.
Date created: September 29, 2011
Last updated: September 10, 2021
A recent poll co-funded by AWI and other animal protection and conservation organizations paints a bleak picture for the Norwegian whaling industry’s future. Only 4 percent of Norwegians surveyed said they ate whale meat “often.”
Date created: January 2, 2020
Last updated: January 22, 2020
As the Norwegian whaling industry prepares for the start of the 2016 whaling season, the Animal Welfare Institute (AWI) and Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) today released a document that indicates Norwegian fur farms have used minke whale meat to feed animals raised for the country’s fur industry. In 2014, more than 113 metric tons of whale meat (equivalent to the amount of marketable meat from 75 minke whales) was delivered to Rogaland Pelsdyrfôrlaget, the largest manufacturer of animal feed for the Norwegian fur industry.
Date created: March 31, 2016
Last updated: February 2, 2022
Whale meat shipped from Norway to Japan contains levels of harmful pesticides—including aldrin, dieldrin and chlordane—that violate human health standards established by the Japanese government, according to tests conducted by the Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare.
Date created: March 10, 2015
Last updated: January 18, 2024
Norwegian whalers killed the highest number of minke whales this season in five years, despite dwindling public appetite for whale meat.
Date created: September 27, 2021
Last updated: January 18, 2024
In defiance of a 40-year-old international agreement to protect whales, Norway slaughtered at least 580 whales during the 2022 whaling season—the highest number in six years.
Date created: September 30, 2022
Last updated: September 30, 2022
by Dr. Ngaio L. Richards and Dr. Deborah Woollett
Date created: July 2, 2018
Last updated: March 31, 2023
The US Department of Agriculture recently finalized a new waiver system whereby bird slaughter plants can apply to increase their line speed to 175 birds per minute.
Date created: December 21, 2018
Last updated: December 21, 2018
The eastern massasauga is a small rattlesnake that was once widespread and common but is now threatened in approximately 75 percent of its range. It is protected in every state or province where it occurs and is listed as threatened under both the US Endangered Species Act and Canada’s federal Species at Risk Act. Efforts to study the population dynamics and survival of eastern massasaugas have historically been difficult due to cryptic coloring, reclusive behavior, and low recapture rates.
Date created: March 25, 2020
Last updated: March 20, 2023
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) exempted all agribusiness in December—no matter how industrialized, no matter the animal product produced—from having to declare noxious emissions produced by animal waste.
Date created: January 16, 2020
Last updated: May 27, 2021
On December 10, the New York City Council approved a measure that would make the Big Apple and its obstacle course of vertical structures a bit easier for birds to navigate. Proposed Initiative 1482B, introduced by City Council member Rafael Espinal, requires that at least 90 percent of the exterior of the first 75 feet of all new buildings or major renovations be constructed with glazed glass and other materials more visible to birds.
Date created: January 2, 2020
Last updated: January 22, 2020
The White House unveiled a National Strategy to Promote the Health of Honey Bees and Other Pollinators on May 19. The strategy seeks to arrest the catastrophic decline of such pollinators as honey bees and monarch butterflies, by making millions of acres of federal lands more habitable for bees and butterflies, while studying ways to reduce the havoc pesticides wreak on these and other key pollinators.
Date created: September 18, 2015
Last updated: January 9, 2020
The Obama administration is to be congratulated for its restoration of a key scientific review provision of the federal Endangered Species Act (ESA).
Date created: June 8, 2009
Last updated: January 16, 2020
President Obama has announced the creation of a 23-member federal task force to establish a comprehensive US Ocean Policy that "will incorporate ecosystem-based science and management and emphasize our public stewardship responsibilities."
Date created: November 5, 2009
Last updated: January 17, 2020
The Animal Welfare Institute (AWI) is pleased to learn that Obi Sushi restaurant, located in Northern Virginia's Reston Town Center, has retracted their decision to sell shark fin soup and other shark dishes.
Date created: January 23, 2009
Last updated: February 3, 2022