Accountability is critical to our work. Just as we are accountable to our supporters and the animals we seek to defend, we work to hold elected officials accountable for their track records and their commitment to animal protection legislation.

Today we have published our annual Humane Scorecard to track key votes, co-sponsorships and other actions by federal lawmakers in support of animal protection. We hope you find it a valuable tool, and we’re heartened that many legislators work hard to achieve a high score.

By Sara Amundson and Kitty Block

It is the dream of a better world for animals that inspires our work, but it is action that will get us there, and that’s what made Friday’s events on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives momentous. All at once, in a single session, in one package—the America COMPETES Act (H.R. 4521)—the House voted to support half a dozen wildlife protection measures. As a result, we’re just steps away from achieving sweeping protections for hundreds of millions of animals worldwide.

By Sara Amundson and Kitty Block

By Sara Amundson and Kitty Block

By Sara Amundson and Kitty Block

The original “Tiger King” Netflix series was a pandemic phenomenon with a train-wreck fascination for millions of viewers and a whole cast of unsavory characters. But the sideshow weirdness of the personalities involved kept many viewers from focusing on the big cat industry’s epidemic of cruelty.

By Kitty Block and Sara Amundson

We begin our work in 2022 encouraged by the knowledge that a handful of significant animal protection laws at the state level have now taken effect across the country. That makes for a great start to a year in which we hope to extend the reach of our campaigns to help all animals.

By Sara Amundson and Kitty Block

Every year that passes sees hundreds of thousands of wild animals in the U.S. and around the world killed by trophy hunters, whose main motivation is to display whole animals or their body parts for bragging rights. Given all the threats facing wild animals, including habitat loss, environmental devastation and climate change, it is astounding that such a practice still exists today, which is why protecting animals from trophy hunting in the U.S. and around the world is a top priority for us.

On the surface, perhaps, the most important legislative packages approved in the U.S. Congress and signed into law this year—the American Rescue Plan Act (focused on COVID-19 relief) and the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act—may not have seemed relevant to the mission of animal protection. But the truth is that both contained sweeping gains for us, and this was no accident.