The distant view from Kelly Brenner’s Seattle living room was enviable, a testament to the engineering marvels of modern human habitat. But much closer to home were sights even more spectacular than the Space Needle rising hundreds of feet in front of the Olympic Mountains. Against the backdrop of...

The mountain lion known as P-47 survived fires, freeways and hostile ranchers. But in March, the 3-year-old big cat—tracked by California biologists since his kitten days—succumbed to a hidden hazard: an insidious form of food poisoning. Six anticoagulant compounds—chemicals used to kill rodents...

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...

In 2019, Sara Shields, in southern India for workshops with Humane Society International colleagues, drove into the countryside near Bangalore to visit industrial chicken operations. At the first farm she stopped at, she saw hundreds of white-feathered birds in long open-sided barns with burlap...

Factory farm animals, locked in extreme confinement, suffer some of the worst cruelty imaginable. Egg-laying hens are confined in cages so small they can’t even flap their wings. Mother pigs in the pork industry are locked in metal “gestation crates,” which prohibit them from turning around for...

As the year comes to an end, animal advocates celebrate the passage of three new animal protection ordinances and resolutions in Montclair. Most notably, Montclair prohibited the retail sale of dogs and cats in pet stores. Montclair joins 136 municipalities in New Jersey that have enacted humane pet...

The shocking number of animal cruelty cases reported every day is just the tip of the iceberg—most cases are never reported. Unlike violent crimes against people, cases of animal abuse are not compiled by state or federal agencies, making it difficult to calculate just how common they are. However...

Today, veterinarians and 18 organizations, led by the Humane Society of the United States, submitted a petition to the Illinois Department of Natural Resources requesting that the agency initiate rulemaking to prohibit cruel, unnecessary wildlife killing contests in the state. At least 20 killing...

In October, the Supreme Court heard a pork industry challenge to California’s Proposition 12, the world’s strongest law to protect farm animals. The Humane Society of the United States and its allies defended the law, which requires that mother pigs , egg-laying hens and calves raised for veal in...

As my beloved seedlings languished untouched on the display table, I improved my sales pitch: “Would you like a late-flowering thoroughwort to help migrating butterflies refuel? What about an aster that’s the only pollen source for some bee species?” But unlike the animals who would devour these...

It’s a peculiar rite of modern homeownership: Plant a tulip bulb in autumn, cage or spray it to deter nibblers, admire its fleeting blooms a few months later, let it rot in soil ill-suited to its needs and repeat the whole cycle again the following year.

BEND, Oregon—Today at a hearing in Bend, the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission voted unanimously to prohibit wildlife killing contests for coyotes and other species classified as unprotected mammals in the state. A coalition of 22 local and national wildlife and conservation organizations and...

As a new homeowner susceptible to sales pitches from the garden industrial complex, I spent my early planting years salivating over glossy magazine spreads exploding with color and texture and promises of endless summers. “Flower porn” was how my husband described those lushly photographed...