The U.S. Forest Service has sparked a national outrage with its new plan to remove all of the horses from one of the nation’s most iconic herds—the Salt River horses—from Tonto National Forest in Arizona. 

The tragic death of Cecil the lion—senselessly shot by an American dentist with a bow and arrow and left to suffer for hours before being shot again—has exposed the pay-to-slay subculture of wealthy people who spend a fortune to kill the grandest, most majestic animals in the world. The public outrage shows no signs of slowing down.  

If you live in one of five states with no laws preventing the private possession of dangerous wild animals, there’s no telling what kind of safety threats are looming in your own neighborhood. Dozens of Milwaukee residents reported seeing a lion running loose, spurring a media frenzy this week. One blurry image captured on video in a resident’s backyard suggests this could be a young male or adult female African lion.

Yesterday was a mixed day of results for animals on Capitol Hill, with some setbacks and some progress on a number of different fronts for companion animals, wildlife, and farm animals. 

What good news there was came in the Agriculture Appropriations Bill that passed the House Appropriations Committee.

Today the House Foreign Affairs Committee unanimously passed H.R. 2494, the Global Anti-Poaching Act, sponsored by Committee Chairman Ed Royce, R-Calif., and Ranking Member Eliot Engel, D-N.Y.

Some anti-wolf politicians in Congress are once again pushing to force the removal of wolves from the Endangered Species Act and to block wildlife biologists, the courts, and so many members of the public from having anything to say about it.  It’s the worst kind of back-room deal-making, and we need your help now to stop it.

Longtime wildlife advocate Congressman Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., led a briefing today to expose the annual, irresponsible killing of millions of wild animals on behalf of a few special interests.

Many animal protection issues and challenges are not resolved quickly—they involve long-term fights that take years. The slaughter of horses for human consumption is one such example.

We and our allies have been working to block horse slaughter plants from opening in the U.S.; to stop the long-distance transport of these companion animals in cramped cattle trucks, bound for a brutal slaughter in Canada and Mexico; and to close down export markets for horse meat in the E.U.

There’s been a lot of action on animal protection policies in state legislatures so far this year, just a few months into 2015. Some major priority bills have been enacted to help crack down on cockfighting, puppy mills, and other large-scale cruelties. Other major issues are on the move, and have cleared key legislative hurdles. We’ve also garnered some key vetoes of bills inimical to animal protection. Here are a few brief dispatches on the progress for animals—and some roadblocks—in the states so far in 2015.

There is a crisis with captive tigers across the nation, and the Obama administration must do something about it.