By Kitty Block and Sara Amundson The Bureau of Land Management’s Wild Horse and Burro Program is broken. Since inception of the program, the BLM has removed approximately 270,000 wild horses and burros from our public lands, without any significant use of fertility control tools, and without a plan...

The National Marine Fisheries Service today released a proposed rule intended to reduce the risk of critically endangered North Atlantic right whales getting entangled in heavy ropes used in fishing gear such as that used for catching lobsters and crabs. Unfortunately, this long-anticipated rule...

This morning, ProPublica revealed that Donald Trump Jr. traveled to Mongolia in August to slay a rare and endangered argali sheep – a beautiful creature with long, curving horns that’s fast disappearing from the planet. According to the ProPublica report, Trump, Jr. did not even have a permit from...

By Kitty Block and Sara Amundson President Trump has called trophy hunting a “horror show,” but on his watch, the Department of the Interior has dismantled regulations to protect wildlife and made it easier to import trophies of endangered and threatened animals. We have been encouraging members of...

The Horseracing Integrity Act, H.R. 2651, will better protect our nation’s racehorses by replacing outdated state-by-state drug and medication rules, banning race-day medication, and putting the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) in charge of a program to set one national uniform set of rules on...

In the Santiago Sur Criminal Detention Center, one of Chile’s oldest prisons, hundreds of cats live alongside 4,482 inmates. It’s relatively common in prisons throughout Chile that felines roam the halls. Originally introduced into penitentiaries to control rodent populations, cats have come to play...

Eight years ago, dozens of chimps already traumatized by their use as laboratory test subjects found themselves abandoned on a set of islands in Liberia, after funding for their care was pulled. Even though the chimps’ caretakers no longer had jobs or support, they stayed and fed the animals as best...

The Humane Society of the United States and its affiliates have been pressing hard and with steady success to reduce companion animal overpopulation since the 1970s. Lately, we’ve done so with a special focus on underserved communities and constituencies through our Rural Area Veterinary Services...

Earlier this month, Drax, a four-month-old puppy, was rushed to an Iowa emergency room with what appeared to be intense pain and paralysis in his rear legs. Drax’s owner, Thomas Hand, had been seen by witnesses beating and throwing the pup around. When the veterinarians examined him, Drax appeared...

Sweltering heat. Cramped, filthy crates. Days of confinement. These are the conditions puppies caught up in the puppy-mill-to-retail-sale pipeline often experience. Last month, a Texas Department of Public Safety officer found 28 French bulldog puppies packed tightly in plastic crates in a moving...

In West Point, Iowa, a large-scale, commercial breeding facility called the Stonehenge Kennel contains more than 800 dogs. Here, since 2015, more than 100 dogs have been found sick or injured; some had open lesions and could barely walk. As recently as December 2022, the U.S. Department of...

We all know what dogs love: a comfortable napping spot, a romp in the grass, a kind touch and the safety and security of a caring environment. But thousands of dogs in commercial breeding operations licensed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to sell to pet stores and online have none of these...

U.S. health authorities have conclusively linked numerous human cases of campylobacteriosis---a bacterial infection with often severe and debilitating symptoms---to infected puppies sold in several Petland pet stores. Today we filed a petition with the Consumer Product Safety Commission asking it to...

When Jaqueline Villegas met her family’s new puppy at Denver International Airport, she knew right away the puppy was not the healthy Shar-Pei she had seen on PuppyFind.com, a huge online marketplace for puppies with over 50,000 puppies listed for sale. PuppyFind is also a site that the Humane...

It is a long way from the stable, paddock and winner’s circle at Churchill Downs to the dark, dank and bloody slaughterhouses in which tens of thousands of American horses meet their sad and pitiable end each year. Yet some former racehorses do make that terrible journey, and it’s hard not to think...

The killing of Cecil the lion five years this week ago by an American trophy hunter in Zimbabwe triggered worldwide outrage. Father of a pride, lured with an elephant carcass, wounded by an arrow, he suffered for hours before being killed by gunshot. As it turned out, this was a shot heard around...

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is currently accepting public comments on its proposed Organic Livestock and Poultry Standards rule, which is a great opportunity to address farm animal welfare. We’re pushing hard for this landmark federal regulation to become final because the rule, which is over...

Today, I’ve turned the blog space over to my colleague, Stephanie Boyles Griffin, Senior Scientist in the HSUS’s Wildlife Protection Department, to relay some news about an important conference concerning non-lethal wildlife management taking place in Montana this week. The gathering is focused on...

What goes up must come down – eventually. Americans watched with great fascination this week as a raccoon climbed up a 23-story Minnesota building. A video of the little creature’s derring-do went viral as the social media universe lit up with interest. Millions wondered whether or not the raccoon...

The horse racing season concludes this weekend with the Belmont Stakes, the third and final race in the Triple Crown series. Racing enthusiasts will watch to see which horse takes home the big prize. But once the race ends and the tracks are empty again, the horse racing industry will find itself in...