Designated as an endangered species in 1967, the red wolf was declared extinct in the wild in 1980. In 1987, an experimental population of red wolves was reintroduced into eastern North Carolina within the designated five county Red Wolf Recovery Area (recovery area), which includes Dare, Tyrrel, Hyde, Washington, and Beaufort counties
The Animal Welfare Institute and its co-plaintiffs brought claims pursuant to the Endangered Species Act and other laws against BP for burning critically endangered sea turtles as part of its clean-up efforts in the Gulf of Mexico following the massive Deepwater Horizon oil spill. The animal welfare and conservation groups subsequently amended their complaint to include the U.S. Coast Guard as a defendant for directing BP’s containment activities.
The Animal Welfare Institute and its co-plaintiffs have brought suit against the Indiana Department of Natural Resources over the Department’s decision to waive state permit requirements for a coyote and fox penning facility.
Through this litigation, AWI and other groups seek to prevent the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) from conducting surgical sterilization experiments on federally protected wild horses in Oregon.
The diminutive prairie dog plays an outsized role in the prairie ecosystem.
The US Fish and Wildlife Service has proposed prohibiting most forms of predator control on National Wildlife Refuge System lands, which AWI strongly supports.
Under the Horse Protection Act (HPA), representatives (known as “Designated Qualified Persons,” or DQPs) of certified horse industry organizations (HIOs) are authorized to inspect horses at shows and sales and to cite individuals for horse soring violations and assess penalties. However, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), some HIOs “have declined to issue sufficiently serious penalties to deter soring….”
The Shark Conservation Act (SCA) of 2010 combats the heinous practice of shark finning—cutting off a shark's fins and discarding the body, often still alive, into the sea—by requiring that sharks in U.S. waters be landed with their fins naturally attached.
by Marlene Halverson
In early December, AWI’s executive director, Susan Millward, attended meetings of the Convention for the Protection and Development of the Marine Environment of the Wider Caribbean Region (the “Cartagena Convention”). Susan and AWI have long been engaged in these biennial meetings of the Cartagena Convention, which was adopted in 1983 and entered into force in 1986 as a means to legally implement the Action Plan for the United Nations’ Caribbean Environment Programme.
Walk into any hardware store in the United States and chances are good that you can find highly toxic rodent poisons for sale. This includes loose poison pellets in open trays, not contained in any kind of bait station that would prevent non-target animals and people—particularly children—from accidentally consuming the product.
AWI continues its partnership with the Pan African Sanctuary Alliance by providing support to three member sanctuaries in Africa this year: the Chimpanzee Rehabilitation Project in The Gambia, the Limbe Wildlife Centre in Cameroon, and the Vervet
A recent, first-of-its-kind survey of more than 1,000 US egg consumers showed a high level of interest in a new technology called “in-ovo sexing” that can determine the sex of chicken embryos before they have hatched.
Bringing a dog into one's life and home can be a wonderful thing.
Before leaving office, former governor Rick Snyder vetoed a pair of bills that were pitched as efforts to strengthen oversight of pet stores but which in fact would have allowed the continued sale of animals from cruel and unscrupulous puppy and k
AWI is following up on the successful efforts to obtain international trade protections for the imperiled West African manatee under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), achieved at the CITES Conference of the Parties in March in Bangkok.
Two new developments spell good news for sharks. The first: India, a major shark fishing nation, has banned shark finning at sea, the practice of slicing off a shark’s fins—often while still alive—and throwing the mutilated shark back into the ocean.
Building on the public outrage accompanying several high profile prosecutions of horse soring, Reps. Ed Whitfield (R-KY) and Steve Cohen (D-TN) introduced legislation to strengthen the Horse Protection Act (HPA).
Pygmy three-toed sloths (Bradypus pygmaeus) may be on track to receive protection under the US Endangered Species Act (ESA). Such a listing would help prevent zoos and other US facilities from going abroad to pluck sloths from the wild in order to place them in captivity here in the United States.
Believed to be extinct, one of the world’s smallest and rarest primates had not been seen alive since 1921. But an Indonesian scientist expedition in 2000 proved decades of assumptions wrong.