Last month, the Environmental Investigation Agency and our international arm, Humane Society International, exposed that Amazon.com’s website in Japan was selling products from endangered and protected whale species. After our supporters contacted the company to express their outrage, Amazon withdrew all whale products from its Japanese website.

Amazon has banned selling whale and dolphin products.

Now, the Internet giant has made the policy official: both the Amazon.com website and its Japanese version have added an explicit ban on the sale of products from whales and dolphins. We’re thrilled that the company offered some bonus protection: adding a ban on selling shark products on its main U.S. website.

Thank you to all our supporters who took action to help whales and dolphins. Wildlife trafficking over the Internet is an enormous threat to many animals.

Marine mammal protection has always been a core issue for The HSUS, and readers know that it's among our highest priorities to put an end to the slaughter of seals in Canada. That “hunt” is set to begin in just a few weeks. (HSI and HSUS also campaign to end the Canadian killing of grey seals―a separate species―and a news story out yesterday reports the good news that only a handful of these animals have been killed this year, compared to more than a thousand in some previous years.)

Our Protect Seals team has been on the ice off the east coast of Canada documenting baby harp seals with their mothers, and we’re urging the Canadian government to stop subsidizing this needless killing and call it off for good. The momentum to end the hunt has grown as more and more countries ban the trade in seal fur. Take a look at our latest video of the peaceful harp seal nursery, then please take action to help stop the slaughter.

It will be a major moment in our movement’s history when we can shut the door on several centuries of commercial slaughter of seals in Atlantic Canada.

In the mid-1960s and early 1970s, there was a wave of federal lawmaking for animals, including such well-known statutes as the Animal Welfare Act (1966), the Marine Mammal Protection Act (1972), and the Endangered Species Act (1973). In 1970 came the Horse Protection Act. That law was designed to end the practice of horse “soring,” in which horses’ hooves and lower leg areas are intentionally injured in order to cause them pain and distress so that they step higher and more dramatically in shows, exaggerating their natural high-stepping gait and giving their trainers and owners an advantage. In spite of the law forbidding their conduct, too many trainers kept on with their abusive and now illegal practices, and law enforcement did not put a stop to it. And within the last 40-plus years, there hasn’t been a single upgrade of the law—either to strengthen penalties or to fortify the prohibitions on the underlying criminal behavior.

Earlier this month, I wrote about a groundbreaking horse soring investigation by our HSUS undercover team that led to federal criminal indictments of a kingpin within the industry, along with the rescue of eight horses. Our undercover footage is truly shocking stuff, but federal prosecutors have asked us not to release it yet. When it is released for viewing by the public, there will be a new level of awareness in the nation, because the intentional cruelty involved is undeniable. The perpetrators of this particular cruelty are every bit as bad as cockfighters or dogfighters, with the only difference being that they operate within a business enterprise that has enjoyed some social sanction, and that gives them the patina of legitimacy.

I described some of the instances of cruelty our investigator found in my announcement of the indictments, and the cruel practice of soring shocked many of you. I heard from a few people with firsthand knowledge of the horse show industry and its abuses, and they were especially glad to see the prosecution of a high-profile trainer such as Jackie McConnell, who has won countless awards in the field, while presumably relying on the very practice this nation sought to prohibit more than forty years ago.

The HSUS has uncovered a lawless, cheating subculture of cruelty within this industry, and it’s time for a renewed effort to crack down on this unconscionable mistreatment of horses, through stronger enforcement, better legislation, and serious self-regulation by the industry, among other remedies. There are a lot of good people in the industry, and we want to work with them, with the USDA, and with the Congress to stamp out the rampant abuses that have gone on for too long.

Here are a few of your comments:

Thank you for helping horses. As a horse owner (one of which is part Tennessee Walker) and lifetime horse lover, these practices sicken and anger me to the point of rage. I wish these trainers could feel how these horses feel, though I know that will never be possible. Keep shining the spotlight on abusive practices and working to make things better. ―Anne Foster

I used to own, train and breed Tennessee Walking Horses for pleasure riding. I went to many shows as a spectator and often hoped that the trainers that I knew did not sore the horses. They are truly a beautiful breed flat-shod and it saddens me to think of the pain and suffering they endure from trainers who care nothing about the horse and are in it for the money and recognition. Good work, HSUS! ―Debbie Clay

I never knew what horse soring was until now. It's amazing how sneaky people can be when it comes to making the almighty dollar. Thank you for exposing the brutality behind the soring... ―Joan

Esquire and GQ, in their March 2012 issues, had in-depth features on what went down at Terry Thompson’s “farm” in Zanesville, Ohio in the minutes and hours after he cut open the fences and provided a very fleeting pathway to freedom for nearly 50 dangerous and previously captive exotic animals, including tigers, lions, wolves, and even a grizzly bear. Both accounts, chilling as they were, opened in the same way—recounting the story of Thompson’s neighbor who was out walking his horse in his pasture but then soon realized he was being watched by an African lion in a crouched position. The man, Sam Kopchak, decided to walk and not run—so as not to trigger a predatory response from the lion—toward his barn, got in, and then locked the door behind him. He then called his mother to indicate something was wrong and to tell her to stay inside her house.

As Kopchak hunkered down in the barn, sheriff’s deputies began arriving at the location and their boss, Sheriff Matt Lutz, realized, with dusk rapidly approaching, that they had to hunt down and kill the animals, some of whom had charged the sheriff’s deputies. Many of the officers said they were traumatized by the actions they took that day.

iStockphoto
African elephants are one of the “Big Five”
sought by trophy hunters.

It got me to thinking that there are people, including Donald Trump’s two sons who were in the news yesterday, who are ready to travel to all ends of the earth to seek out opportunities to shoot and kill remarkable animals, like lions and bears, not for necessity or public safety, but for kicks and trophies. Newsday reported yesterday that Donald Trump, Jr. and his brother Eric went to Zimbabwe last year and shot elephants, crocodiles, Cape buffalo, and all manner of other animals in a killing spree.

What possesses these sons of privilege, who have the means to give to charity or do good works in the world, to destroy life for the thrill of the kill, for trophies, and for bragging rights? It’s one thing, it seems, to hunt for food and utilize the carcass, and it’s another to kill animals in a head-hunting exercise, especially if you are part of “the one percent.” Actually, it’s pretty much only folks in the one percent who can afford to travel to remote parts of the world shooting up rare species in the animal kingdom, all the while doing their damndest to attach some social benefit to the killing.

Last year, GoDaddy’s then CEO, Richard Parsons, posted a video of his own animal massacre in Zimbabwe, and apparently did so with pride, before the public latched on to his gambit and let him know how appalling it was.

But the guy who’s recently dominated the news on trophy hunting is Dan Richards, the president of the California Fish and Game Commission. The HSUS came across a picture of Richards in a pose with a lion he’d just shot, after a trophy hunting guide with a pack of dogs drove the tired lion into a tree and gave Richards the perfect set-up shot.

There’s no lion hunting in California, since voters there said they wanted no part of it more than two decades ago, but Richards decided he’d trek to Idaho to fulfill his dream of shooting a big cat. California lawmakers, urged on by The HSUS, asked him to resign for thumbing his nose at the people in his state and disrespecting his office, but Richards has stubbornly refused to do so, saying he did nothing wrong. My guess is, the lion thinks there was something pretty wrong about what Richards did.

Richards may survive the scandal. Lawmakers decided they won’t oust him just yet, largely because his term expires in less than a year. His fellow commissioners are likely to strip him of his post as president, however, and I’ll take any odds that Gov. Jerry Brown won’t appoint Richards to a second term next year.

So Richards hasn’t been fired. And Donald Trump, all-powerful though he is, cannot fire his sons, though it sounds like he might want to.

But we as a society can frown on this trophy hunting mania—this killing for killing’s sake, with all its attendant rationalizations. Joseph Wood Krutch said it best more than half a century ago: ”When a man wantonly destroys one of the works of man we call him vandal. When he wantonly destroys one of the works of God we call him sportsman.”

Subjecting animals to painful tests for tubes of lipstick or mascara cannot be justified, ethically or scientifically. But thousands of cosmetics lining the shelves in U.S. stores contain substances tested on rabbits, mice, and other animals. An important new research collaboration could finally bring the U.S. one step closer to eliminating these tests altogether.

At a joint press conference today, supported by The HSUS and our affiliates Humane Society International and the Humane Society Legislative Fund, the Environmental Protection Agency and The L’Oréal Group announced a plan to work together to evaluate non-animal methods to test substances used in cosmetics.

In addition to being cruel, current animal tests in use are simply not effective. With a drug failure rate of more than 90 percent due in large part to species differences, and tens of thousands of inadequately assessed chemicals, it’s urgent that we find more efficient and human-relevant methods to test substances for safety.

This new plan will use the EPA’s non-animal chemical evaluation tool, Toxicity Forecaster, or ToxCast. ToxCast, which includes more than 700 different tests that have already been used to evaluate hundreds of other chemicals, applies the information from these tests to profile chemical activity in terms of potential biological activity—effects on living cells. The partnership with L’Oréal will expand the use of this evaluation tool to substances used in cosmetics for the first time.

L’Oréal, the largest beauty and cosmetics company in the world, has been involved for years in developing non-animal safety tests, and is providing the EPA with $1.2 million in collaborative research funding and access to cosmetic ingredient safety data. When this research is complete, the EPA will compare the ToxCast results to the L’Oréal data to determine if the results are appropriate to use in the safety assessment of chemicals in cosmetics.

The HSUS and HSI have pressed for the development and acceptance of non-animal methods of chemical evaluation in the U.S., Europe, and elsewhere, and HSLF’s work contributed to increased funding for EPAs ToxCast program. Right now, the European Union is preparing to phase out all cosmetics with ingredients that have been tested on animals, with a complete ban by April 2013. As a result, cosmetic companies that sell their products in European Union countries are urgently seeking non-animal approaches to replace their existing animal testing methods.

Thanks to this new collaboration and other efforts, we look forward to the day when all cosmetics will be cruelty-free. In the meantime, please take the pledge to only purchase cosmetic and household products that have not been tested on animals.

In taking stock of the disasters of the last decade―whether it’s the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004, Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf Coast in 2005, the earthquake in Haiti in 2010, or the 2011 Tohoku earthquake, tsunami, and radiation release―The HSUS and Humane Society International have followed a clear and simple strategy. We get to the strike zone quickly, we make intelligent assessments of what needs to be done, and we do it. Then we commence planning for long-term recovery, which we always support through additional investments of time, personnel, and funding.

Today, we continue to make such investments in Louisiana and Mississippi, we continue to make such investments in Haiti, and we continue to make them in Japan, where animal welfare organizations are still dealing with many animal-related issues and needs. When we as an organization get involved, we stay involved, for a longer horizon than many people initially anticipate, because the needs of animals and those who care about them remain, long after the immediate crisis subsides.

The situation in Japan raised difficult challenges, from the severity of the disaster, to the poor response of the authorities to the needs of animals, to the radioactivity that bedeviled rescue efforts after the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. There were also difficulties that could be deemed intercultural, making it hard for our responders to deliver as well as they wanted to during the early phases of response. Sensitive to cultural distinctions and differences, we reached out to local institutions and advocates to develop a long-term response that empowers Japanese organizations and builds animal care and welfare capacity in the stricken areas.

For Humane Society International, the needs of companion animals in Japan remain a high priority. We’ve made grants to construct a second shelter in the strike zone, to house displaced pets at the Miharu-Machi shelter as well as and those pets still being brought out of the Fukushima “hot zone,” and to support veterinarians and others in the coastal cities of Iwate Prefecture, who are providing ongoing relief to animals and people displaced by the disaster. We’ve hired a Japanese representative to coordinate our further collaboration with Japanese organizations working to help animals.

We’re also planning a 2013 conference on radioactivity and disaster animal response work, to advance understanding and further the development of best practices for responders and others. The abandonment of untold numbers of animals in the forbidden zone after the nuclear plant accident was a horrible tragedy and so demoralizing to so many. The animal protection field and government authorities need to do better next time around.

It is one of the ironies of our work that our donors’ generosity in times of disaster frequently opens up opportunities to do lasting good in the areas where we deploy, and this turning of a horrible circumstance into a long-term buildup of animal welfare capacity is always our goal. When you support our domestic or international disaster response efforts, you can be sure that we’ll commit ourselves to tangible and visible outcomes that will serve animals for years to come.

We’ve been fortunate enough to receive tremendous support for our disaster work from numerous individuals, and in the case of our Japan response, we owe a great debt of gratitude to GreaterGood.org, the Annenberg Foundation, and the Pettus Crowe Foundation.

Sue Wallis, a Wyoming state representative and the most visible booster for horse slaughter in the United States, took it on the chin the other day in Missouri, as local residents strongly opposed her proposal for a horse slaughter plant near the Mountain Grove community of nearly 5,000. There were about 300 angry residents who packed the town council meeting at the Mountain Grove Senior Center and wanted nothing to do with such an enterprise in their town. They knew that profits would be slim, and that they’d also be getting too large a share of pollution problems, reduced property values, and animal cruelty bound up with this industry.

The community's resounding rejection of the proposal put the lie to Wallis’s prior claim that “the folks in Missouri are 100 percent on board with what we’re trying to do and how we’re trying to do it.”

Kathy Milani/The HSUS

Some people want to become firefighters, to help people in the developing world, to open up a legitimate business, or to serve their country, in one form or another. As for Sue Wallis, she just seems to want to help kill horses. It’s hard to know at any given time whether she is operating as an elected official, a rancher, an investor, or a prospective manager of a slaughter plant. For her, it seems that all roads lead to an equine abattoir.

The message Sue Wallis got the other night came from local people who were being asked to live with a horse slaughtering plant in their midst, and it was consistent with what we know of public opinion on the issue. In poll after poll, the majority of Americans―urban, suburban, and rural―have signaled their disapproval of horse slaughter, especially for sale of the meat in the global marketplace.

Representatives of the horse slaughter industry need to stop their excuse-making for horse owners who abandon their animals, or who only want to profit from them by selling them to a kill buyer. The horse slaughter business is predatory, cruel, and marginal. Even communities trying to attract business want nothing to do with it, despite the efforts by a handful of politicians who see just a bundle of tissue, sinew, bone, and hair rather than living, feeling animals who have played no small role in the history of our nation.

When public attitudes change, billions of animals can benefit. When laws change, millions of animals, sometimes hundreds of millions, face better lives. But sometimes it’s just one animal in desperate need–and a group of people working together to help her.

Here is just such a story in the aftermath of last week’s tornados. Our Animal Rescue Team is in Kentucky helping pets affected by the devastating storms, working with local group Fur Ever Friends. We’re also setting up an emergency shelter in Laurel County to take in additional animals.

 

Yesterday, National Public Radio aired a compelling story on how dogs, horses, and other animals make our lives better and even improve our health―a theme I discussed at length in my book, The Bond: Our Kinship with Animals, Our Call to Defend Them. The piece, called “How Animals and Humans Heal Each Other,” reported on a number of instances that prove the point, including a young boy with autism helped by therapeutic horseback riding, and shelter dog-walking programs that have benefited the volunteers’ health as well as helped dogs get adopted.

Photo by Paul Horton
Yogi, the 2011 Valor Dog of the Year, helped
his owner after an accident.

While it’s exciting to see more scientific attention given to this beneficial connection between people and animals―and even talk of the biochemistry that underlies this connection we have with other creatures―there are even more plain and obvious examples of how animals help us. For the fifth year in a row, The Humane Society of the United States is celebrating extraordinary examples of this bond with our Dogs of Valor Awards. We’ve chosen 10 stories of heroic canines who alerted people to house fires, defended their families from domestic violence or intruders, helped people suffering from serious medical emergencies, or stayed by their owners' sides when stranded in extreme weather conditions.

Take a look at these 10 inspiring stories and vote for your favorite to win the “People’s Hero” award by this Friday, March 9 at 5 p.m. Eastern (or you can vote on Facebook). Our celebrity judges, NFL wide receiver Braylon Edwards and author and dog trainer Tamar Geller, will also choose a Valor Dog of the Year to be announced on March 11. Have your pets ever come to the rescue for you and your family, or have your pets helped improve your health and well-being? You can share your story on my Facebook page.

I went hiking at Shenandoah National Park in Virginia yesterday, and the last creature I expected to see was a black bear. I knew I’d see plenty of deer―and some turkey vultures, and some mice and chipmunks and squirrels scampering on the rocks and between the trees, months ago stripped of all their leaves.

I was pretty certain that the bears, just as March turned, would still be in their dens, and I’d have to come back some weeks later if I’d have any chance of seeing one.

But it’s been a mild winter, and there were some flowers and buds poking out of the ground. And by golly, there were bears that did more than poke their heads out of their dens, too. So just as I was leaving the park, I caught a glimpse of this little fellow right by the side of the road. I’ve seen bears in Banff and Yellowstone, and in others settings outside of national parks, but each time, it’s a thrill to see one in the wild.

You spend hours traveling and hiking, but this will be the most lasting memory of this trip―this beautiful creature nervously looking back at me and then scampering deep into the forest and out of my sight.

Controversy sometimes brings out the best or the worst in people, and it’s definitely brought out the worst in Daniel Richards―the defiant, intemperate, and out-of-touch president of the California Fish and Game Commission. He’s been widely condemned―including by two of the state’s largest newspapers―for shooting a mountain lion and then acting as a braggart by submitting the photo to a prominent California hunting journal, as a sort of digital trophy of his escapade.

But Richards compounded his public relations problems with a mocking letter to state lawmakers who asked him to resign, and in public comments on KFI-AM in Los Angeles―where he took swings at The HSUS, the lieutenant governor, and the president of the California Senate. 

iStockphoto

If there was any doubt about Richards’ inability to lead the commission after the lion controversy came to light, those doubts have vanished. He’s not fit to serve. The Department of Fish and Game is at a pivotal time, as it must continue to make the transition away from an agency that primarily serves hunters, to a one that broadly serves the people of California and all of those interested in wildlife. Richards is an old-school hook-and-bullet man, appointed to the Commission by former Gov. Schwarzenegger because he was an avid hunter. Richards had no credentials for the wildlife post, except that he was a member of a bunch of different hunting groups.

It’s been a little more than week now since HSUS’s California state director, Jennifer Fearing, came upon the infamous photo in Western Outdoor News of a grinning Richards bear-hugging a mountain lion he’d shot out of a tree after a guided hound hunt in northern Idaho. That photo has now been reproduced all over the nation, including in today’s Wall Street Journal.

I was involved with both California ballot measures in the 1990s that resulted in voters rejecting mountain lion hunting, so I immediately recognized this photo as an affront to the people of the state. There is no other hunting-related policy issue that has been the subject of two statewide public votes. Even if Richards didn’t agree with the voters’ judgment to ban lion hunting, and even if lion hunting is in fact legal in Idaho, as president of the Commission he should have exhibited some respect to the electorate he serves and restrained himself from killing a lion for the heck of it. But apparently his selfish desire to shoot a big cat―which he said was a lifelong ambition―trumped his sense of public responsibility. 

There’s more to serving in a prominent statewide position than mere obedience to the law. We expect more of our public officials than that least common denominator approach. For him to shoot a lion while representing a state that bans the activity is akin to the head of a statewide animal welfare commission going to Puerto Rico and participating in a cockfight, and then saying it was all well and good because the practice is legal there.

But it turns out that Richards’ whole gambit to Idaho may not have been quite right with the law. As a state appointee, there are ethics rules he’s obligated to honor. One rule is not to accept any gift exceeding $420. And as it turns out, the hunting guide in Idaho who ran the ranch where the lion was shot told a reporter that he gave the hunt to Richards―which, at the ranch, is listed to value $6,800, well more than the maximum gift value. According to a report from Paul Rogers in the San Jose Mercury News, Richards didn’t reimburse the guide for the hunt within 30 days, and that may be a violation of ethics rules.

The NRA and U.S. Sportsmen’s Alliance are bellyaching that Richards is being unfairly targeted for a legal hunt. But these are the same groups that demanded the resignation of Richard’s predecessor, Judd Hanna, simply because he took a serious look at the effect of toxic lead shot on wildlife. So they worked to pressure Hanna to resign for working to help wildlife, but they want to protect this guy who revels in killing a type of animal off-limits to hunters in the state he serves.

If Richards doesn’t resign, the Assembly and Senate should advance resolutions to oust him. He’s not the leader on wildlife issues that California deserves.