At the Wheeler Wildlife Refuge, there are 285 bird species, as well as a wide variety of mammals, reptiles, amphibians, fish, mussels, snails and plants. These species are already vulnerable to pesticides dumped on the 3000 acres of land given over to private commercial agriculture. Since the Fish and Wildlife Service recently decided to allow bee-killing neonicotinoid pesticides and genetically engineered crops requiring more pesticide use, the refuge and the creatures who inhabit the refuge have become more vulnerable to harm. Conservation groups filed a petition asking the Fish and Wildlife Service to end toxic pesticide use on the refuge. This is to take advantage of federal law’s requirement for the service to evaluate every 10 years whether previously approved economic, rather than conservation uses of the land is appropriate. Uses that aren’t compatible with the purpose of the refuge must be ended.

Is there any way that the use of chemicals known to be disastrous for the environment and the life it supports can be approved? Perhaps, if the service decides to abandon its conscience and its responsibility to these animals, and to people. This is why raising your voice to protect the refuge will draw attention to the issue. Agency decisions have huge consequences, but lately they have been slipped under the public’s radar in a cowardly way. It’s time to hold the Fish and Wildlife Service accountable to the animals it claims to protect.

https://www.biologicaldiversity.org/news/press_releases/2018/wheeler-national-wildlife-refuge-09-06-2018.php

Two horrific acts of animal cruelty — only one prison sentence. Dunky the Chihuahua was dragged from his owner’s car and thrown from the top of a parking garage. The woman who killed Dunky got 3 years for his death and for auto burglary and vandalism. Meanwhile, a woman who poured accelerant over a dog called Denali and set her on fire is facing charges for arson, but not a single one for animal cruelty. There were 7 other dogs in the house at the time. The attack on Denali was an act of deliberate vengeance against the woman’s ex-husband.

Since animals are mostly considered property by the law, punishment for animal cruelty has been mixed up with these ideas. Perhaps the police involved in Denali’s case see the dogs as merely the property of the ex-husband? Is it easier to charge a woman with a known criminal record (Dunky’s killer), who is also being charged for crimes against property?

Animal cruelty is a charge that doesn’t seem to be taken very seriously by itself, but it should be. When prison sentences are served for animal cruelty, that means people who are a danger to animals can’t hurt them. Denali’s killer should be serving time for the attempted murder of 8 animals. Please sign and share the petition.

Woman Gets 3 Years For Throwing Dog Off Building From 7th Floor

SIGN: Justice for Dog Doused in Accelerant and Set on Fire

This week, a chance to vote on a bill to ban the live sheep trade fell flat in the Australian House of Representatives. It had passed the Senate and had wide support among Australian politicians across both sides of the aisle. It failed because two politicians refused to “cross the floor” and take a stand to support the bill. Earlier this year, video footage exposed the horror of the live sheep trade, showing sheep packed together, afflicted from the heat and dying on the long voyage north to the Middle East. An Australian Green politician has rightly said the live sheep trade is “simply incompatible with animal welfare.” It just won’t do to slightly improve conditions, as the Liberal party have suggested, by increasing space and ventilation. Travel will still be hard on the animals, and exporters will likely cut corners to save money on power etc.

Australian politicians have made this ban political by choosing to treat it as a partisan issue. The Liberals don’t want to vote with the opposition party because the opposition have made this a policy issue for the next election. If politicians prefer to be political rather than vote for animal welfare, that is their choice. It now represents an opportunity – an opportunity for Australians to put pressure on their politicians to end this trade, or suffer in the next election. It can also be an opportunity to take more comprehensive action to protect animals. No one is even talking about live exports of other animals, such as cattle. Please read more, sign and share, and if you’re an Australian voter, contact your representatives!

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/sep/10/live-exports-ban-coalition-pressured-to-allow-lower-house-vote-after-bill-passes-senate

https://secure.animalsaustralia.org/take_action/live-export-shipboard-cruelty/?r=5b9a9f999e7521536860057&ua_s=e-mail#action

The USDA have been silently slaughtering kittens for years. We know this because of Freedom of Information Act requests made by White Coat Waste Project that revealed the slaughter. After White Coat Waste Project noticed a casual reference on the website to kittens at the Beltsville Agricultural Center Research facility, they requested information from the USDA showing that the kittens have been used in experiments for years and then incinerated.

It’s not just that the kittens died – lives casually thrown away year after year – but the ordeal these animals had to go through before they died. During the course of the experiments, the kittens were force-fed raw meat so their feces could be inspected for parasites. It’s not clear how this affected the health of the animals, but they were clearly deemed unfit to be rehabilitated. Did they receive care after these experiments? The USDA has refused to comply with the most recent FOIA request, so White Coat Waste Project is suing them.

The USDA is the body responsible for setting standards and holding agriculture accountable. Their casual hypocrisy on this matter is unconscionable. Please read more about this horrific cover-up, share on social media and sign the petition.

https://petitions.whitecoatwaste.org/sue-usda/?pid=6879934&utm_source=email&utm_campaign=usda_lawsuit&utm_medium=hf&red=caged-kittens-2%2f%3finitiativekey%3dXAPAAAVEGSKG

https://www.cnn.com/2018/09/07/politics/usda-cat-experiments/index.html

The couple who captured footage of closely packed together pigs did so on a casual detour. They had no idea they were exposing Canada’s animal outdated transportation conditions, they just noticed the animals were in discomfort and started filming.

In Canada, pigs can be trucked for up to 36 hours without a break for rest, food or water, compared to 8 hours in the European Union. These outdated laws are due for a change but no one has been paying attention.

Sometimes all it takes is a little push. The video is steadily gaining views. A recent Vancouver Sun story showed that 46 pigs had died being shipped from Alberta to Donald’s Fine Foods in Langley. Phone video footage is a small weapon which can have a huge impact, and thankfully it is easily accessible to most people. Please share the news and remember you can use your phone to pay attention to the conditions around you. You never know, it could save animal lives!

See the original article for details: https://www.kamloopsmatters.com/local-news/video-by-kamloops-animal-rights-group-prompts-investigation-984692

Good news: the USDA listened to activists who urged them not to implement a disastrous plan to allow labs to regulate themselves on animal welfare. The USDA had proposed allowing the AAALAC (Association for Assessment and Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care International) to police the Animal Welfare Act in labs. This “third party” is a private organization with council-members from the very facilities the organization is accrediting. The AAALC would have kept their findings private.

Organizing for Animals Helped Prevent this Disaster

Amongst other things, the USDA was swayed by a vast majority of public comments opposing the project. Recently, many changes by government agencies that would affect animals and the environment have been deliberately slipped under the radar or unaccompanied by a press release. Reports have been redacted or removed from the USDA website. When activists pushed back they kept the accreditation changes in the public eye and kept the heat on public officials, forcing them to reconsider. Victories like these shows that battles can be won. There are so many animals at risk of abuse, mistreatment and death. And, unbelievable as it may seem, sometimes the power to help animals lies in the hands of a few. That’s why it’s important to organize for animals. Donations, actions and staying informed make a difference.

More from the Washington Post on this story: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/animalia/wp/2018/05/17/usda-may-warn-some-facilities-when-animal-welfare-inspectors-are-coming/?utm_term=.cdb79dd431c9

Because of a legal loophole, Japanese whalers can still kill large numbers of whales in the Antarctic every year, and this year, many pregnant and young whales were amongst the dead. Japan justifies these expeditions for scientific research, but their reasons are shaky.

For a start, the International Whaling Committee banned commercial whaling in 1985, and most countries, if not all, complied. A 1946 law that says whaling can still take place for scientific reasons is used as a justification for Japan’s expeditions. The whales on these expeditions can be sold for meat, leading to accusations that the scientific explanation is a convenient excuse. The scientific research is apparently undertaken to discover such factors as sexual maturity, nutritional condition and prey consumption of the whales. However critics have said this can be done by taking a biopsy instead. As well as claiming whale-hunting is done for scientific research, Japan has also defended its ancient “culture” of whaling.

122 pregnant whales and 114 juvenile whales died in this massacre. 333 whales in total were killed on this expedition. How did they die? By harpooning, ie using harpoons loaded with a 30g penthrite grenade.

Rather than terrorizing their population and using a violent method of killing them, Japanese whalers could find a more humane way of studying them, but they choose not to. Cultural inertia towards animals needs a wake-up call. Around the world, people are realizing that we don’t have to accept a cultural narrative about dominating and harming animals. It’s time to put pressure on the defenders of “cultural” cruelty to animals.

More info on this story:

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=12061465
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-44307396
https://www.news.com.au/national/queensland/japan-whaling-kills-122-pregnant-whales-for-research/news-story/a1851aeec523563c79d593df7085e61b

Yellowstone’s bears have just finally recovered to the point that they have been taken off the endangered species list. But Wyoming wildlife officials have approved a Fall trophy hunt that would threaten the bears again. The hunt has strong opposition from many quarters, but it is still going ahead. It seems the plan is to actively reduce the bear population in the Greater Yellowstone area. Even female bears will be targeted. It’s been pointed out by the Sierra Club that grizzly bears are some of the slowest animals to reproduce, so hunting them, and especially their females, will decimate the population. All this, and there doesn’t appear to be any plan for sustainable initiatives that promote coexistence.

Then there’s the fact that hunters will be terrorizing a population that has been under siege for years. Would a population not under perpetual attack from humans be more likely to peacefully co-exist?

Please read, share and sign the Sierra club’s petition. There is no reason why Yellowstone’s bear families should have to be traumatized and decimated once again by human hunters.

Just recently, a decomposed dog was found abandoned in a foreclosed home. We don’t know how long the animal suffered without food and water, but to have to deteriorate over the course of days would have been an incredibly painful end to the dog’s life. What’s maybe even worse though is the emotional distress the dog would have felt, abandoned by his owner and restrained so he couldn’t seek out food and water.

Legal chaining isn’t just a problem because people can cruelly abandon animals, it’s also a problem in cold and hot weather, or in any other situation where the dog’s life may be in danger so it can’t free itself. Dogs may be vulnerable to attack from other animals like coyotes or bears for example. Then there is the little-understood reality of what chaining is like for dogs psychologically. Chaining is stressful for dogs, and leads to aggressive behavior. According to a study by the Centers for Disease Control, chained dogs are 2.8 times more likely to bite than non-chained dogs. Jennifer Tierney of Fur-Ever Friends of North Carolina was quoted in this article stating that chaining is a “public health issue” for humans, too.

New laws are slowly being adopted, like Pennsylvania’s Libre Law, which limit chaining. Banning chaining altogether though would have the most beneficial effects for both humans and dogs. Chaining carries too much potential for abuse and emotional suffering – and sometimes plain old error. People who chain dogs habitually may simply forget to unchain them during extreme weather. Get informed about chaining by checking out some of the useful info the human society has on their website, and contact your local representative, to end this practice. For more information on the death of the brown Labrador who was abandoned, please follow the link to the petition: http://www.dogster.com/the-scoop/pennsylvania-stands-up-to-animal-cruelty

When mainstream publications like Fortune.com start publishing articles arguing for a meat tax, you know that something is in the air. Sweden, Denmark and Germany are calling for a meat tax. The American Institute for Cancer Research and the American College of Cardiology are in favor. The environmental costs of methane and soil erosion from the cattle industry are well known. Meanwhile, people are waking up to the horrible conditions that animals suffer in factory farms. The article also points out how much damage the meat industry does in its production phase even before animal products go into people’s bodies. Air and water pollution from meat production predominantly affects people unfortunate enough to live within range (usually lower income people, who are often people of color).

When we treat the environment, animals or other human beings as dehumanized products, there are always consequences for individual and collective wellbeing. Cruelty has been sold as self-interest when in fact it is quite the opposite – it undermines whole environmental systems and deprives us of our potential to peacefully co-exist with animals.

http://fortune.com/2018/02/20/meat-tax-climate-change-health-us/