I'm pleased to introduce my new Animals & Politics podcast. Click on the player below to listen, or you can click here. I am grateful to my friend Patrick Ferrise for hosting the first podcast. From time to time in this forum, you’ll be hearing from me about proud accomplishments of our elected leaders and regulatory officials on behalf of animals. But today I want to draw your attention to a couple of stories about government’s abject failures.
This morning I spoke to a group of animal welfare advocates from around the world gathered in Orlando, Fla., for The HSUS’s 20th anniversary Animal Care Expo, the largest trade show for animal care and sheltering professionals. Several leaders in the field looked back over two decades and reported on progress that has been made for animal welfare. I offered some observations on the advances for animal protection legislation over the past 20 years.
The congressional backroom budget deal that stripped gray wolves of their Endangered Species Act protections was a shameful example of politics at its worst. And now we’re seeing the impact, as the state of Idaho puts measures in place to begin the trapping and aerial gunning of wolves, according to the Lewiston Tribune, as soon as this week.
There are important bills in Congress to address some of the worst problems in animal research, such as the costly invasive research on chimps and the trafficking in stolen pets for research. But the state legislatures, too, have been working to address important laboratory animal welfare issues.
This week the Missouri House of Representatives voted to repeal most of Proposition B, the Puppy Mill Cruelty Prevention Act, just five months after Missouri voters approved common-sense standards for the care of dogs in large-scale commercial breeding facilities.
I just concluded a press conference on Capitol Hill with Congressman Roscoe Bartlett, R-Md., and other animal advocates to announce today’s introduction of the Great Ape Protection and Cost Savings Act.
Congress and the White House averted a government shutdown Friday night, but the casualties in the deal are endangered gray wolves. A provision snuck into the budget compromise and supported by lawmakers of both political parties will strip wolves in the Northern Rockies of their federal protections for the remainder of Fiscal Year 2011, clearing the way for Montana and Idaho to open sport hunting and trapping seasons on these creatures.
A government shutdown is looming if Congress and the White House don’t reach agreement on the budget crisis or pass another short-term extension to fund federal operations by midnight tonight. In a shutdown, “non-essential” federal workers are furloughed, while some “essential” operations continue. Several people have asked how a government shutdown would affect animals, either by suspending critical animal welfare functions or providing a temporary reprieve from government killing programs. Here’s a brief rundown on some of the effects that we expect a shutdown could have on animals:
As Congress focuses on cutting federal spending, we have proposed several ideas for easing the burden on taxpayers while simultaneously helping animals. There’s plenty of indefensible spending that should be curbed—such as massive subsidies for well-off operators of huge factory farms, taxpayer-financed poisoning of wildlife, rounding up wild horses to keep them in long-term holding pens, and warehousing chimpanzees in costly laboratories.
Today marks the release of Wayne Pacelle’s book, The Bond: Our Kinship with Animals, Our Call to Defend Them, published by William Morrow/Harper Collins. It draws on Wayne’s quarter-century of leadership in the animal welfare movement, and seeks to disentangle the contradiction between the love and celebration of animals in our society and the tolerance for businesses, enterprises and individual practices that harm pets, wildlife, and farm animals on a massive scale.
