By Sara Amundson and Kitty Block
Images of a lion so thin that ribs, spine and hip bones were prominently visible. Inspection reports noting a lioness confined to a dark den with no light, ventilation or bedding, instead an accumulation of water, urine and feces. A male chimpanzee housed in isolation for nearly a year and a half, which must have been a torment for an animal of such a social species.
We watched with dismay this week as the House Natural Resources Committee passed the Grizzly Bear State Management Act (H.R. 281), sponsored by Representative Harriet Hageman (R-Wyoming), by a party-line vote of 20-19.
Update August 1, 2025: The Senate passed the FY 2026 federal funding bill for the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Food and Drug Administration with a bipartisan vote of 87-9. The bill awaits further action in the U.S. House of Representatives.
By Sara Amundson and Kitty Block
A decade ago, an American trophy hunter shot an African lion just outside Zimbabwe’s Hwange National Park with an arrow. Like many hunters before and after him, he was seeking a trophy, a part of his kill that he could lawfully import back home to the United States. He could hang it on his wall, and have a story to tell, too. To his family. To his friends. To fellow hunters at Safari Club International conventions.
By Sara Amundson and Kitty Block
Pangolins are sometimes called the “guardians of the forest” because they hold termite destruction at bay. Yet they are also the world’s most trafficked mammal, and so they bear the burden of being something of an ambassador species in the wider campaign against wildlife trafficking.
WASHINGTON (June 16, 2025)—The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service today proposed listing seven species of pangolins as endangered under the Endangered Species Act, a move that would strengthen trade and import restrictions within the United States and underscore the species’ critical conservation status.
By Sara Amundson and Kitty Block
It’s a long way from the arid desert habitat where a wild horse now named Smoke was born, but now Black Beauty Ranch, in Murchison, Texas, is home. The journey to our sanctuary has made all the difference for this handsome grey horse who has traveled all the areas of the sanctuary, bonding with the other mustangs. Smoke grazes peacefully watching over his friends who were once separated but are together again. No one can harm him here.
Congress should reject severe proposal that abandons bipartisan protections and ignores humane, proven alternatives
