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The Pet Safety and Protection Act (HR 3187), introduced May 13 by Representatives Mike Doyle (D-PA) and Chris Smith (R-NJ), would prevent companion dogs and cats from being acquired from random sources and sold for laboratory experiments by unscrupulous dealers.
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The diminutive prairie dog plays an outsized role in the prairie ecosystem.

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The US Fish and Wildlife Service has proposed prohibiting most forms of predator control on National Wildlife Refuge System lands, which AWI strongly supports.

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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….”

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Three US conservation groups petitioned the federal government today to protect Taiwanese humpback dolphins under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) to help prevent the extinction of a population that now numbers fewer than 75 dolphins. The petition from the Animal Welfare Institute (AWI), the Center for Biological Diversity, and WildEarth Guardians calls for the National Marine Fisheries Service (Service) to encourage Taiwan to address pollution, illegal fishing, boat traffic, and other threats these small dolphins face in the shallow waters along Taiwan’s densely populated west coast.
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The Big Cat Public Safety Act (BCPSA), a bill championed by AWI, was signed into law by President Biden in December 2022, marking an incredible step forward for b

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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.

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by Marlene Halverson

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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.

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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.

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The Animal Welfare Institute (AWI) and American Wild Horse Campaign (AWHC), along with prominent wildlife photographers Kimerlee Curyl and Carol Walker, submitted a formal protest yesterday opposing proposed amendments to two Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Resource Management Plans (RMPs) that would result in the largest-ever removal of wild horses from the range and elimination of their designated habitat.
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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

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n this paper, the authors present protocols specific to the provision of stimulation enrichment, a description of techniques utilized, evaluation procedures for both the protocol and individual assessment of well-being, and staff and training guidelines. The protocols are applicable for both large and small facilities.
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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.

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Bringing a dog into one's life and home can be a wonderful thing.

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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

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Reps. Laura Lanese (R-Grove City) and James Hoops (R-Napoleon) will introduce legislation Wednesday to ban puppy mills and other commercial dog breeders from performing painful procedures such as cutting off puppies’ tails and pulling out their dewclaws.
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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.

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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. 

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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).

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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.

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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.

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Classified as critically endangered and believed to have a rapidly declining population and habitat area, pygmy three-toed sloths (Bradypus pygmaeus) are entirely native to the island of Escudo de Veragua, off the Caribbean coast of Panama.
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The US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) has proposed listing the pygmy three-toed sloth under the Endangered Species Act in response to a 2013 emergency petition filed by the Animal Welfare Institute (AWI).
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We all want to do well by our furry companions. We want to have as much time as possible with them, but also want to make sure that they do not suffer when they are older and ailing.

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