Netflix's Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle, horse fights, (yes, I just found out people fight horses), Cloris Leachman, Dolce & Gabbana, SSENSE, Backcountry.com, USDA’s Secrecy on Animal Welfare Records, Dr. Juan A. Rivero National Zoological Park Updates, Endangered Species Act Protection Fund, Canada Goose, Poisoned Dogs Failed, the King of Cruelty Defeated, Heifer International and so much animal & wildlife cruelty, crimes & welfare to report on this final report of 2018!
Animal Law Conference & Student Convention Videos
If you missed these events this year, check out the videos of the panels from the Animal Law Conference and the Animal Legal Defense Fund Student Convention.
Harvard Animal Law & Policy Visiting Fellowship
The Fellowship provides an opportunity for legal practitioners and outstanding scholars from a range of disciplines to spend from three months to one academic year undertaking research, writing, and scholarly engagement on academic projects in the field of animal law and policy. The deadline to submit applications is February 15, 2019.
Animal Law LL.M. Scholarships
The Center for Animal Law Studies at Lewis & Clark Law School offers full and partial scholarships to domestic and international law school graduates who wish to apply to the Animal Law LL.M. Program.
Congratulations Fall 2018 Graduates!
If you’d like to stay involved in animal law after graduation, you can join the Animal Legal Defense Fund’s Pro Bono Program. The support of attorneys nationwide is integral to helping the Animal Legal Defense Fund protect the lives and advance the interests of animals through the legal system. We use volunteer attorneys to work on a variety of projects including litigation, research, drafting briefs, lobbying, tabling, and assisting prosecutors with animal cruelty cases. Sign up now and receive a free gift! You may also want to sign up for our Law Professional eNewsletter (check the box at the bottom of the page).
I wanted to give you an update about our work on the Dr. Juan A. Rivero National Zoological Park in Puerto Rico.
Numerous animals at the zoo have died in recent years due to poor sanitation, inadequate veterinary care, and poor handling from untrained staff. In 2017, a tiger named Angel died after the zoo failed to properly treat his symptoms, and a puma named Kali died after suffering from lameness for months.
How many more animals must die before the government shuts this zoo down?
Since I last emailed you, the Animal Legal Defense Fund has submitted formal complaints to the Puerto Rico Department of Agriculture and the Department of Natural and Environmental Resources urging the agencies to revoke any permits granted to the zoo and immediately relocate the animals there to sanctuaries — due to multiple Endangered Species Act, Animal Welfare Act, and animal cruelty violations.
After our complaints were sent, government officials have publicly expressed support for closing the zoo, but we need more than lip service to rescue the animals languishing at the zoo. We need to keep the pressure on! More than 100 animals are suffering at that zoo right now. Some have already died. These animals need our help before it’s too late — animals like:
- Mundi, an African elephant, and Felipe, a rhino, who are suffering from lameness — likely due to the inappropriate flooring in their enclosures.
- Eneida, a red kangaroo, who was repeatedly ill due to suspected poisoning from the wood her shelter was built with.
Monster
Coupon Book Offers Coupons to See Animals Languishing Inside Cages at Waccatee
Zoo. Waccatee
Zoo in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, leaves animals to languish inside
virtually barren enclosures with little to no stimulation. Big cats, bears, and
other animals have been seen pacing, and baboons were observed swaying and
rolling their heads—all signs of psychological distress. Ask the Monster Coupon
Book to leave Waccatee Zoo out of its advertisements in the future. Take Action Today!
How Can You Protect Animals From Winter weather? Although
they're equipped with fur and feathers, dogs, cats, birds, and other animals can
still suffer from frostbite, exposure, and dehydration (when water sources
freeze). Here are simple ways to help keep all animals safe this season. Protect Animals This Winter!
Here's Why You'll Want to Add 'Mowgli' to Your Netflix Queue. Not only does Netflix's Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle use computer-generated imagery instead of real wild animals, the film also features powerful anti-hunting and anti-captivity messaging. More reasons to watch Mowgli.
Gentle Rabbits Hung Upside Down, Throats Slit—Often While Fully Conscious. Companies like Dolce & Gabbana, SSENSE, Backcountry.com, and others are selling rabbit fur, despite knowing that rabbits in the fur industry are hung upside down and violently killed. An eyewitness saw rabbits who were still kicking and twitching as the skin was torn off their bodies. Send messages to these seven companies to tell them to ditch rabbit fur now. Tell Companies to drop fur.
Tell Canada Goose, 'Ditch Fur and Down'!
Update: If you feel that you were misled by Canada Goose's claims of "[e]thically sourced down and fur" and "humane treatment" of animals used for its coats, please e-mail us your story at Info@peta.org.
Cruelty can be found in every stitch of Canada Goose's jackets and other clothing items. Coyotes trapped for the company's fur-trimmed jackets can suffer for days and face blood loss, shock, dehydration, frostbite, gangrene, and attacks by predators. Mothers desperate to get back to their starving pups have attempted to chew off their own limbs to escape. Animals who don't succumb to the elements, blood loss, infection, or predators are often strangled, stomped on, or bludgeoned to death when the trapper returns.
The U.S. Wants to Slaughter Up to 1000 Sea Lions a Year
In June, the U.S. House of Representatives passed H.R. 2083, giving certain state governments and Native American tribes the right to kill up to 100 sea lions at a time. Last week, the U.S. Senate passed a similar bill which brings the sea lion slaughter even closer to reality.
Why, despite the celebrated protections of the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA), would our government allow state and tribal governments to kill up to 1000 sea lions a year?
Well according to some "experts," sea lions in the Columbia River basin are the principal threat to the wild salmon population in the area. Wild salmon have recently been added to the Endangered Species List. Congress, then, wants to cull the Columbia River sea lions which prey on the salmon, believing that will improve salmon stock.
In fact, the problem isn't the seal lion population, it's — you guessed it — us!
In 15 Years This Parrot Could Be Extinct, But Australia Wants to Bulldoze Its Home Anyway
The Australian native swift parrot on its current decline, is doomed for extinction within 15 years. That's why the federal government's threatened species commissioner made it a special priority with a goal of improving its trajectory by 2020. And yet, constant threats to its survival keep popping up. Australia is among the top 10 countries with the highest amount of endangered species. They should be taking action rather than destroying habitat.
Please sign the petition and ask Australia's Minister of the Environment is The Hon. Melissa Price to say no to the proposed dam and fish farm that could push the swift parrot over the edge.
48 States Have No Laws Protecting Pets Chained Outside in the Freezing Cold
Of the 50 states, only 2 (Texas and Pennsylvania) have weather-specific language in their anti-tethering laws. Another 19 have specifications for how to tether or how long is OK (usually longer than 10-hour stints) and California is the only state to be fully anti-tethering. Of the states that have any laws about how to tether a dog, only a handful say a person could face anything more than a small fine for violating the law. But the truth is, no dog should be tethered outdoors for extended periods, ever, especially not when it's freezing cold out!
Sign on if you want every single state to have a law prohibiting chaining dogs outside with specific language about harsh weather like cold winter months.
Gangsters who run brutal horse fights DON’T TAKE THE HOLIDAYS OFF!
Few things on this earth are as brutal and disturbing as organized horse fighting in the Philippines, and we are asking you today if you will please, please help us stop it.
The most urgent need right now is to fund a shelter for three horse-fighting survivors, heartbreakingly traumatized, who we rescued during a dangerous raid on a mountain near the Kalatungan Range on the island of Mindanao. After an hour’s walk through remote territory, we heard the screams of the crowd.
Hidden under a giant blue stadium tarpaulin was a scene of unspeakable inhumanity!
Two bloodied male horses, stallions, were fighting to the death over the scent of a terrified female horse. The poor mare was tied up in the ring and couldn’t escape their stray kicks. She was the prize for that day’s ‘victors’, to be mounted against her will – RAPED – by multiple males.
This as bad as it gets!
Organized crime networks use the illegal derbies to prey on poor people all year round by promising big jackpots made from the grisly suffering of horses.
These cruel thugs will NOT take the holidays off! They are doing gruesome, unsettling things to helpless horses for money. And they will not hesitate to harm our team. Please, please help now!
Support like yours meant Network for Animals was there to stop the sadistic fights while they were in progress. We shut them down! On our latest rescue mission, the Philippine National Police who accompanied us, arrested four people in the frenzy and four more from an earlier raid.
Cases will be filed against them all. But the most urgent need now is to build shelters for the three abused horses we rescued – two injured males and the poor, violated female.
These horses have been achingly neglected, injured both physically and emotionally by the disturbing events they were forced endure.
We arranged for a police officer to care for the horses (and helped fund their recovery and food). We negotiated a permanent home for them at a small government sanctuary where they can live in peace and dignity.
They will never have to fight again! But they now need shelter, and their compassionate guardians will need help to feed and care for them. Please will you donate and be there for the horses this holiday?
Organized horse fighting is billed as a cultural tradition, but due to the ghastly violence and suffering, it’s been illegal in the Philippines since 1998. Sensitive horses get goaded and beaten into battle. Every creature endures gouges, gashes, broken limbs, bites, kicks, and internal bleeding. They are painted with blood and in agonizing pain. The gangsters don’t care how horses suffer. They only care about the money.
Over the past six years, Network for Animals has nearly halved the number of horse fights in Mindanao. Our aim, as with any animal cruelty, is to wipe it out completely – something we can’t do without you.
Your donation will help build the urgently-needed horse shelters, plus fund nutrients and special food to help bring these horses back to health. You will also help fund veterinary care and the horses’ spaying and gelding (neuter) of the stallions. It will also help impoverished farmers keep their own horses OUT of the ring. You’ll fund police seminars too. Plus continue the raids and monitoring and help rescue horses whenever we can.
We know this is a long update, and we hope you never, ever have to witness a horse fight. But the stakes are so high for these intelligent, emotional animals.
Horse fighting is a hellish and illegal blood sport straight out of a nightmare, and we can’t stop it without you.
The U.S. Wants to Slaughter Up to 1000 Sea Lions a Year
Why, despite the celebrated protections of the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA), would our government allow state and tribal governments to kill up to 1000 sea lions a year?
Well according to some "experts," sea lions in the Columbia River basin are the principal threat to the wild salmon population in the area. Wild salmon have recently been added to the Endangered Species List. Congress, then, wants to cull the Columbia River sea lions which prey on the salmon, believing that will improve salmon stock.
In fact, the problem isn't the seal lion population, it's — you guessed it — us!
In 15 Years This Parrot Could Be Extinct, But Australia Wants to Bulldoze Its Home Anyway
Please sign the petition and ask Australia's Minister of the Environment is The Hon. Melissa Price to say no to the proposed dam and fish farm that could push the swift parrot over the edge.
48 States Have No Laws Protecting Pets Chained Outside in the Freezing Cold
Sign on if you want every single state to have a law prohibiting chaining dogs outside with specific language about harsh weather like cold winter months.
Gangsters who run brutal horse fights DON’T TAKE THE HOLIDAYS OFF!
The most urgent need right now is to fund a shelter for three horse-fighting survivors, heartbreakingly traumatized, who we rescued during a dangerous raid on a mountain near the Kalatungan Range on the island of Mindanao. After an hour’s walk through remote territory, we heard the screams of the crowd.
Hidden under a giant blue stadium tarpaulin was a scene of unspeakable inhumanity!
This as bad as it gets!
Organized crime networks use the illegal derbies to prey on poor people all year round by promising big jackpots made from the grisly suffering of horses.
These cruel thugs will NOT take the holidays off! They are doing gruesome, unsettling things to helpless horses for money. And they will not hesitate to harm our team. Please, please help now!
Support like yours meant Network for Animals was there to stop the sadistic fights while they were in progress. We shut them down! On our latest rescue mission, the Philippine National Police who accompanied us, arrested four people in the frenzy and four more from an earlier raid.
Cases will be filed against them all. But the most urgent need now is to build shelters for the three abused horses we rescued – two injured males and the poor, violated female.
These horses have been achingly neglected, injured both physically and emotionally by the disturbing events they were forced endure.
They will never have to fight again! But they now need shelter, and their compassionate guardians will need help to feed and care for them. Please will you donate and be there for the horses this holiday?
Organized horse fighting is billed as a cultural tradition, but due to the ghastly violence and suffering, it’s been illegal in the Philippines since 1998. Sensitive horses get goaded and beaten into battle. Every creature endures gouges, gashes, broken limbs, bites, kicks, and internal bleeding. They are painted with blood and in agonizing pain. The gangsters don’t care how horses suffer. They only care about the money.
Over the past six years, Network for Animals has nearly halved the number of horse fights in Mindanao. Our aim, as with any animal cruelty, is to wipe it out completely – something we can’t do without you.
Your donation will help build the urgently-needed horse shelters, plus fund nutrients and special food to help bring these horses back to health. You will also help fund veterinary care and the horses’ spaying and gelding (neuter) of the stallions. It will also help impoverished farmers keep their own horses OUT of the ring. You’ll fund police seminars too. Plus continue the raids and monitoring and help rescue horses whenever we can.
We know this is a long update, and we hope you never, ever have to witness a horse fight. But the stakes are so high for these intelligent, emotional animals.
Just minutes ago we sued Trump to stop one of the most dangerous fossil fuel
projects ever proposed in the heart of the Arctic.
This lawsuit challenges Hilcorps' Liberty project, a massive offshore drilling operation in federal waters where polar bears are already in a desperate struggle for survival. An oil spill in such remote and important wildlife habitat would be a nightmare.
We can't fight this horrifying project without your support. Please help with the Endangered Species Act Protection Fund to save polar bears and their homes.
In October Trump granted Hilcorp, an oil and gas corporation with a nasty track record, permission to move forward on Alaska's Liberty project. Just last year one of Hilcorp's gas pipelines leaked into Alaska's Cook Inlet for nearly four months, and earlier this month it was responsible for an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Now it wants to build an artificial island and a 5.6-mile pipeline under Arctic waters.
Polar bears aren't the only species threatened. Construction of this oil rig mega-complex and pipelines threatens a suite of Arctic marine mammals that live there, including bowhead whales, ringed seals and bearded seals.
It's an incredibly risky proposal. An oil spill in Arctic waters would be impossible to clean up — the nearest Coast Guard station is 1,000 miles away.
We're pulling out all the stops to block this project, and we need you with us.
No one has done more to protect polar bears and their Arctic home than the Center for Biological Diversity.
We won Endangered Species Act protection for polar bears in 2005, setting the stage for the fight of a lifetime to protect them from starving as sea ice melts around them. Then in 2010 we secured 120 million acres of the bears' habitat, the largest tract of land and water ever set aside for wildlife through the Endangered Species Act.
Big Oil and the state of Alaska tried to reverse those protections last year, but we won again — when the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear their case, preserving the bears' 120 million acres.
Today's lawsuit is the next lifesaving step. We're not about to let Trump and the oil industry drill away these bears' homes.
The Center has already taken more than 100 legal actions against the Trump administration since he took office. And we're winning. This year we stopped Trump from ramming through the Keystone XL pipeline and won a halt of all fracking off the California coast, and we'll win again. This is urgent, vital work, and we need you with us.
Please help with our Endangered Species Act Protection Fund.
This lawsuit challenges Hilcorps' Liberty project, a massive offshore drilling operation in federal waters where polar bears are already in a desperate struggle for survival. An oil spill in such remote and important wildlife habitat would be a nightmare.
We can't fight this horrifying project without your support. Please help with the Endangered Species Act Protection Fund to save polar bears and their homes.
In October Trump granted Hilcorp, an oil and gas corporation with a nasty track record, permission to move forward on Alaska's Liberty project. Just last year one of Hilcorp's gas pipelines leaked into Alaska's Cook Inlet for nearly four months, and earlier this month it was responsible for an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Now it wants to build an artificial island and a 5.6-mile pipeline under Arctic waters.
Polar bears aren't the only species threatened. Construction of this oil rig mega-complex and pipelines threatens a suite of Arctic marine mammals that live there, including bowhead whales, ringed seals and bearded seals.
It's an incredibly risky proposal. An oil spill in Arctic waters would be impossible to clean up — the nearest Coast Guard station is 1,000 miles away.
We're pulling out all the stops to block this project, and we need you with us.
No one has done more to protect polar bears and their Arctic home than the Center for Biological Diversity.
We won Endangered Species Act protection for polar bears in 2005, setting the stage for the fight of a lifetime to protect them from starving as sea ice melts around them. Then in 2010 we secured 120 million acres of the bears' habitat, the largest tract of land and water ever set aside for wildlife through the Endangered Species Act.
Big Oil and the state of Alaska tried to reverse those protections last year, but we won again — when the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear their case, preserving the bears' 120 million acres.
Today's lawsuit is the next lifesaving step. We're not about to let Trump and the oil industry drill away these bears' homes.
The Center has already taken more than 100 legal actions against the Trump administration since he took office. And we're winning. This year we stopped Trump from ramming through the Keystone XL pipeline and won a halt of all fracking off the California coast, and we'll win again. This is urgent, vital work, and we need you with us.
Please help with our Endangered Species Act Protection Fund.
Federal Appeals Court to Hear Arguments in Lawsuit Concerning USDA’s Secrecy on Animal Welfare Records
Animal protection coalition fights to restore database of animal welfare records
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco will hear oral arguments from the Animal Legal Defense Fund, the nation’s preeminent legal advocacy organization for animals, in the lawsuit against the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) for removing tens of thousands of animal welfare records from the agency’s website.
When: Monday, December 17, 9 a.m.
Where: Courtroom 2, 3rd Floor Room 330, James R. Browning United States Court of Appeals Building, 95 Seventh Street San Francisco, CA 94103
Online: Check the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals website for live streaming of the argument.
The Animal Legal Defense Fund leads a coalition — including Stop Animal Exploitation NOW!, Companion Animal Protection Society and Animal Folks — that filed the lawsuit in February 2017.
The lawsuit argues that the USDA’s decision to remove the records previously posted in the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) database violates both the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and the Administrative Procedure Act (APA).
The removed documents include records relating to violations of the Animal Welfare Act (AWA) at thousands of research laboratories, roadside zoos and puppy mills across the country.
The coalition used these records to advocate for stronger animal protection policies, confront the USDA over inadequate regulation of substandard facilities, supply evidence for law enforcement action and build legal cases against egregious violators.
FOIA requires that agencies make available important types of documents, including final opinions, orders, and frequently requested records in a public reading room.
Reading rooms — formerly actual rooms with reading material filed for review — have been replaced by “electronic” reading rooms, in the form of website and document databases, like the APHIS database. The coalition’s appeal argues that FOIA authorizes courts to order agencies to comply with the reading room requirement.
“The public must have access to the USDA’s animal welfare records. This transparency is not only critically important for protecting animals, but is required by the law and necessary to hold government agencies accountable,” says Animal Legal Defense Fund Executive Director Stephen Wells. “We look forward to our upcoming hearing and to these records being restored.”
The organizations are represented pro bono by Margaret Kwoka, Associate Professor at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law.
Animal protection coalition fights to restore database of animal welfare records
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco will hear oral arguments from the Animal Legal Defense Fund, the nation’s preeminent legal advocacy organization for animals, in the lawsuit against the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) for removing tens of thousands of animal welfare records from the agency’s website.
When: Monday, December 17, 9 a.m.
Where: Courtroom 2, 3rd Floor Room 330, James R. Browning United States Court of Appeals Building, 95 Seventh Street San Francisco, CA 94103
Online: Check the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals website for live streaming of the argument.
The Animal Legal Defense Fund leads a coalition — including Stop Animal Exploitation NOW!, Companion Animal Protection Society and Animal Folks — that filed the lawsuit in February 2017.
The lawsuit argues that the USDA’s decision to remove the records previously posted in the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) database violates both the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and the Administrative Procedure Act (APA).
The removed documents include records relating to violations of the Animal Welfare Act (AWA) at thousands of research laboratories, roadside zoos and puppy mills across the country.
The coalition used these records to advocate for stronger animal protection policies, confront the USDA over inadequate regulation of substandard facilities, supply evidence for law enforcement action and build legal cases against egregious violators.
FOIA requires that agencies make available important types of documents, including final opinions, orders, and frequently requested records in a public reading room.
Reading rooms — formerly actual rooms with reading material filed for review — have been replaced by “electronic” reading rooms, in the form of website and document databases, like the APHIS database. The coalition’s appeal argues that FOIA authorizes courts to order agencies to comply with the reading room requirement.
“The public must have access to the USDA’s animal welfare records. This transparency is not only critically important for protecting animals, but is required by the law and necessary to hold government agencies accountable,” says Animal Legal Defense Fund Executive Director Stephen Wells. “We look forward to our upcoming hearing and to these records being restored.”
The organizations are represented pro bono by Margaret Kwoka, Associate Professor at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law.
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