Scientists from NOAA Fisheries have identified a new species of baleen whale in the Gulf of Mexico.
With a new administration taking the helm in January, we can expect an end to the damaging wildlife and environmental policies that have unfortunately been a hallmark of the current administration (
Time and again over the past two years, leadership in the House of Representatives advanced legislation aimed at dismantling long-standing animal protection laws.
New York City recently joined California in passing legislation to prohibit the sale of foie gras, a controversial “delicacy” in French cuisine that has long been criticized by animal advocates for the cruel way in which it is made.
After years of work by a coalition of advocacy groups, including AWI, the New York legislature passed a bill in June to ban wildlife killing contests, with certain exceptions, including contests involving white-tailed deer, turkey, and bear.
The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (NYDEC) released a revised wild mute swan management plan in which it backs away (somewhat) from its initial proposal to eradicate all 2,200 mute swans, a nonnative species, in the state.
AWI is pleased to announce the addition of new features to our online Refinement Database.
One of the many myths about high-welfare, sustainable food is that it's a "niche" market, only for the well off. Tackling the common misconception that making the right food choices is (at best) prohibitively expensive or (at worst) simply irrelevant is one of the challenges of AWI's Animal Welfare Approved (AWA) program.
Promoting the Analysis of NIBRS Animal Cruelty Data
AWI's Center for the Study of NIBRS Animal Cru
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) finally took steps to end the use of Class B dealers by its outside researchers, after years of pressure from Congress and animal welfare organizations and faced with the conclusion of a National Academy of Sciences report that "Class B dealers are not necessary as providers of random source animals for NIH-related research."
On October 1, the National Institutes of Health provided its annual update regarding government-owned and government-supported chimpanzees retired from research, including data on those who are still held in laboratories.
The use of random source (Class B) dogs for National Institutes of Health (NIH)-sponsored research is finally coming to an end. As of October 1, 2014, NIH will not allow any new grants to purchase or use NIH funds to support the use of random source dogs. NIH ended funding for research using random source cats in 2012.
The Chimpanzee Health, Improvement, Maintenance and Protection (CHIMP) Act requires all federally owned chimpanzees retired from research to be moved to a federally operated sanctuary, such as Chimp Haven, near Shreveport, Louisiana.
"Most current use of chimpanzees for biomedical research is unnecessary," according to a landmark Institute of Medicine report titled Chimpanzees in Biomedical and Behavioral Research: Assessing the Necessity.
On June 26, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) embraced nearly all of the recommendations regarding chimpanzees in research contained in the report of the Working Group of the Council of Councils (see Winter 2013 AWI Quarterly).
The Animal Welfare Institute (AWI), Cetacean Society International (CSI), Earth Island Institute (EII), and Whale and Dolphin Conservation (WDC) lauded the US National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) today for its final designation of the Sakhalin Bay-Amur River population of beluga whales in Russia as depleted under the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA).
The United States has prohibited the landing and possession of thorny skates in U.S. waters since 2003. Despite this, their numbers have dropped precipitously, to a point alarmingly below the threshold needed to ensure the species’ survival.
The Rice’s whale was initially listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act in 2019 as a subspecies—the Gulf of Mexico Bryde’s whale—but was reclassified as a unique species in 2021.