Not only is it hot—very hot—in Washington, DC, this month, but we’re quite literally involved in a blistering fight to preserve federal funding for crucial animal protection concerns.

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.