Public Policy (Legal/Legislative)
All In on the Fight Against Poaching and Wildlife Trafficking
Last night, the U.S. House of Representatives took an important step toward curbing the illegal killing and trafficking of wildlife when it passed the Global Anti-Poaching Act (H.R. 2494). This bipartisan legislation, led by House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce, R-Calif., and Ranking Member . . .
Ballot Measures Take Aim at Wildlife Trafficking, Extreme Confinement of Farm Animals, and More
Voting ends tomorrow in the statewide election in Washington, and the big item on the ballot for animal advocates is I-1401, the most comprehensive anti-wildlife trafficking proposal ever considered in a state. Polling indicates the measure has a strong lead, but we are taking nothing . . .
Raising the Barr: Finding Humanity in Our Relationship With Horses
“Support for ending the cruel and wasteful slaughter of America’s horses spans the political spectrum; it’s not a partisan issue — this is a quintessentially American issue. It’s about our values, our heritage, and what we tolerate as a society. Truly, this is a common . . .
Yerkes Shouldn’t Offload Chimps to Unaccredited Zoo
With the end of an era of invasive experiments on chimpanzees at hand, and the National Institutes of Health aiming to retire the vast majority of its government owned chimpanzees to the national chimpanzee sanctuary, the three laboratories that house privately owned chimpanzees are no . . .
Nebraska Halts Lion Hunting, But Predator Battles Rage
In a stroke of very good news, the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission announced last Friday that there would be no mountain lion hunting season in the state in 2016. Nebraska’s first and only mountain-lion-hunting season occurred in 2014, when hunters killed five lions, and it . . .
Inspector General Report Confirms Mass Slaughter of Wild Horses During Reign of Then-Interior Secretary Ken Salazar
On Friday, the Office of the Inspector General of the U.S. Department of the Interior issued a damning report about the Bureau of Land Management’s mismanagement of wild horses. The report concluded that agency officials did nothing to prevent a notorious livestock hauler from acquiring . . .
Dismantling the Crates and Cages in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts
We’re coming down to the wire in Massachusetts on the first critical phase of action for our ballot initiative to phase out the extreme confinement of animals in cages or crates on factory farms. We have until November 18th to gather signatures from 95,000 registered . . .
Washington’s Governor Nixes Radical Cougar-Killing Plan
This week, Washington Governor Jay Inslee granted an appeal made by The HSUS along with other animal protection and conservation groups and reversed the Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission’s 7 -1 decision to dramatically expand cougar hunting in the state. The governor’s intervention spared dozens of . . .
Damning Documents Expose Extreme Walking Horse Cruelty
A Freedom of Information Act request filed by The HSUS has yielded hundreds of pages of damning information, including grim and grisly photographs, documenting the abuse of Tennessee walking horses by Larry Wheelon, the trainer who got a get-out-of-jail card last year based on a . . .
Washington and Oregon Seek to Expand Protections for Elephants, Rhinos, Lions
Today, at a press conference in Portland, Oregon, we launched a statewide ballot initiative to protect some of the planet’s most iconic animals – 12 different taxa, including elephants, rhinos, lions, sea turtles, rays, and sharks, all facing a range of human-caused threats that jeopardize . . .
California Commission Says ‘No’ to Orca Breeding at SeaWorld
SeaWorld took yet another blow yesterday, when the California Coastal Commission approved the company’s plan to expand its orca pools only on the condition that it breed no more orcas at the facility, transfer no orcas out, and import no new orcas to the facility. SeaWorld’s . . .
Pro-Trophy Hunting, Pro-Trapping, Pro-Lead Ammo Bill Sees Action Tomorrow in House Committee
The timing itself suggests an extraordinary degree of tone-deafness. Just weeks after the Walter Palmer trophy-hunting escapade in Zimbabwe made international headlines, and the day after MSNBC releases a damning anti-trophy hunting documentary called Blood Lions, the U.S. House Natural Resources Committee is poised to . . .
