Nestled among honking geese, hooting primates, scurrying lizards and lowing cows, the Black Beauty Ranch pollinator garden is “a different kind of place,” says Master Gardener and volunteer Cynthia Holifield. Before Holifield began her work seven years ago, staff despaired of the barren space behind...
The term “roadkill” was coined in the 1940s, according to Merriam-Webster, entering the lexicon alongside “DDT” and other harbingers of a dystopian technological age that runs roughshod over the natural world. In the 1990s, the word became a cheeky insult when a rival called then-House Speaker Newt...
Sixty-two dogs were living on the Las Vegas, New Mexico, property when our Animal Rescue Team arrived in March to assist in rescuing them. They were found outdoors on frozen ground littered with broken glass, wires and other debris. Kirsten Peek, HSUS media relations manager, was present that day...
My husband and I were contemplating whether to hike the 3-mile trail in Utah’s Zion National Park that September day. I’d read that this trail was our best chance to spot bighorn sheep, but after a week of exploring the five national parks in the state, our bodies were tired—and it was already late...
At Black Beauty Ranch, titles like “caregiver” and “maintenance technician” don’t do the people who hold them justice, and they don’t capture the dozens of unique tasks the team carries out every day: figuring out how to get pine sap off a goat’s horn (rub it with peanut oil), learning how to “drag”...
Flying back and forth over Cape Cod Bay, a survey plane spotted a half dozen of the world’s rarest creatures: North Atlantic right whales. Such sightings are good news. The species hovers near extinction—by one estimate, fewer than 360 remain. Each time researchers locate a whale, they take pictures...
It’s a long way from dog meat farmer Il-Hwan Kim’s operation in South Korea to Washington, DC. Yet that’s the amazing journey being taken by 170 dogs rescued by Humane Society International’s Animal Rescue Team. Together with more than two dozen other dogs from previous HSI rescue operations who had...
When our Humane Society International team first saw the Belgian Malinois, he was sitting forlornly in a cage only slightly larger than he, on a Korean dog meat farm. Dogs belonging to this breed are prized by police departments and the military for their natural ability to detect scents, but Jean...
November 17, 2023, was a truly historic day in the fight to end the dog meat industry. In South Korea, where up to one million dogs are farmed and killed for human consumption each year, the government officially presented a roadmap to end the dog meat industry within a three-year period. We’ve been...
During this holiday season, as I think about how I’ll celebrate with my family around the dinner table, I have a special appreciation for the work that our food service innovation team does: This unique team helps people around the world access healthy, delicious plant-based food, and consequently...
For Precious and nine other female chimpanzees who have spent their lifetimes in research laboratories, this week marks the beginning of a new existence quite different from anything they have known before. A life where, for the first time, they will get a chance to do some of the things chimpanzees...
As the world looks on in horror at images of Brazil’s Amazon rainforest engulfed in flames, many are asking why this important ecosystem is on fire, and what we can do to put out the flames once and for all. The situation is complex but there is one simple action we can take: we need to dramatically...
This time of year is a special moment in the lives of black bears. After consuming about 20,000 calories and gaining three to five pounds every day during the late summer and early fall, black bears head to their winter dens. Because bears hibernate in their dens for three to six months (depending...
At the Golden Globes this Sunday, Hollywood’s A-list celebrities will sit down to an all-plant-based dinner. And while no one knows yet who will take home the evening’s top awards, the menu—chilled golden beet soup, king oyster mushrooms scallops and wild mushroom risotto, and roasted baby purple...