Press Releases

The Animal Welfare Institute (AWI) announced today the 2017 winners of its Christine Stevens Wildlife Award. Established in 2006, the Christine Stevens Wildlife Award provides grants of up to $10,000 to help fund studies on...

Conservation organizations announced today that Trader Joe’s has declared it will stop buying shrimp from Mexico. The popular grocery store chain’s decision follows pressure from organizations behind the Boycott Mexican Shrimp campaign, launched earlier this...

The Animal Welfare Institute (AWI) commends Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) for his recent reintroduction of the Refuge from Cruel Trapping Act (S. 1919), a bill to prohibit the possession or use of body-gripping traps within...

Three hundred and fifty cats and dogs from the US Virgin Islands, recently decimated by Hurricane Irma, were evacuated by plane early this morning. The Amerijet cargo plane—arranged by Virginia Beach’s Island Dog Rescue with...

The Animal Welfare Institute (AWI) joined the Performing Animal Welfare Society (PAWS), Hollywood celebrities, other animal protection organizations, conservationists, and elephant sanctuaries, to issue an open letter this week to FJ Productions.

The Animal Welfare Institute (AWI) and the Animal Defense League of Arizona (ADLA) this week launched a digital campaign aimed at discouraging the public from buying tickets to attractions that exploit captive dolphins. Through the...

The California Superior Court ruled last week that Monterey County’s renewal of its contract with the US Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services program to kill predators and other native wildlife violated the California Environmental Quality...

The Animal Welfare Institute (AWI) is calling on Congress to permanently revoke all research funding of the USDA’s Meat Animal Research Center (MARC) in Clay Center, Nebraska. The request follows a July 2017 inspection report—newly...

The Animal Welfare Institute (AWI) and other animal advocacy organizations issued an open letter today to Joel Manby, CEO of SeaWorld, requesting the release of Tilikum's necropsy (animal autopsy) report and his full veterinary records.

A workshop held today at this week’s International Congress of the Society for Conservation Biology (ICCB 2017) revealed that the ecological services that cetaceans (whales and dolphins) provide to the planet may be the key...

The Animal Welfare Institute (AWI) and the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) condemn the USDA’s imminent plan to allow pig slaughterhouses to kill pigs at even faster speeds, making animals...

Two journal articles authored by experts from the Animal Welfare Institute(AWI) were recently featured in the newly released issue of the Journal of International Wildlife Law and Policy (Volume 20, Issue 1, 2017).

The Animal Welfare Institute (AWI), the Humane Education Network (HEN) and the Palo Alto Humane Society officially announced today the winners of the 2017 A Voice for Animals contest.

Local conservation and animal protection organizations rallied outside the Mexican Embassy today to call on the Mexican government to take drastic action to save the fewer than 30 vaquita porpoises left on the planet. Advocates...

The UNESCO World Heritage Committee (WHC) today gave Mexico one year to improve protections for the only remaining home of the critically endangered vaquita or face an “in danger” designation for the Gulf of California...

Tucson, AZ— Under a settlement with the Center for Biological Diversity and the Animal Welfare Institute approved today in Tucson federal court, the US Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agreed...

Washington, DC —The National Marine Fisheries Service today proposed listing the Taiwanese humpback dolphin (also known as the Taiwanese white dolphin), Sousa chinensis taiwanensis , as endangered, determining that the subspecies has a high risk...

Conservationists sued the US Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services today over its wildlife-killing program in Northern California. The lawsuit, filed in federal court in San Francisco, seeks updated environmental analysis of the program’s killing of...

A coalition of conservation and wildlife organizations today formally petitioned the Wildlife Services program of the US Department of Agriculture Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) for an immediate ban on the use of...

Conservation groups petitioned the US National Marine Fisheries Service today to ban imports of seafood caught with gillnets in Mexico’s Upper Gulf of California in an effort to save the critically endangered vaquita porpoise.