Nestled among honking geese, hooting primates, scurrying lizards and lowing cows, the Black Beauty Ranch pollinator garden is “a different kind of place,” says Master Gardener and volunteer Cynthia Holifield. Before Holifield began her work seven years ago, staff despaired of the barren space behind...

Here lies Lucy: expert pilot, supermodel, squirrel eviscerator, custom homebuilder, attentive mother and devoted mate. RIP. If she were human, Lucy might be commemorated this way, her life story etched in granite. She might take her place in a family plot beneath her favorite lookout, a weeping...

In 2019, Sara Shields, in southern India for workshops with Humane Society International colleagues, drove into the countryside near Bangalore to visit industrial chicken operations. At the first farm she stopped at, she saw hundreds of white-feathered birds in long open-sided barns with burlap...

Factory farm animals, locked in extreme confinement, suffer some of the worst cruelty imaginable. Egg-laying hens are confined in cages so small they can’t even flap their wings. Mother pigs in the pork industry are locked in metal “gestation crates,” which prohibit them from turning around for...

Do your homework So you’ve decided to add a new pet to your family. First, you should answer some questions: What kind of pet will be the best fit for your household? Do you have enough time to devote to the daily needs of a dog? Is there someone in your household who is allergic? What about a non...

When we think of “aggression,” we may think of a variety of motivations and impulses deriving from our own experience as humans. Fortunately, aggression in cats is easier to make sense of and typically derives from two impulses: fear and mistrust. These are the most likely scenarios to cause fear...

The disaster responders could tell when they were getting close to their destination. Driving south to Antakya—a city revered for its cultural history and home to 400,000 people—they saw a few damaged buildings. But as they approached the city, almost every building was crumbling. Once inside...

As the year comes to an end, animal advocates celebrate the passage of three new animal protection ordinances and resolutions in Montclair. Most notably, Montclair prohibited the retail sale of dogs and cats in pet stores. Montclair joins 136 municipalities in New Jersey that have enacted humane pet...

The shocking number of animal cruelty cases reported every day is just the tip of the iceberg—most cases are never reported. Unlike violent crimes against people, cases of animal abuse are not compiled by state or federal agencies, making it difficult to calculate just how common they are. However...

Contents What is the Humane Society of the United States’ Animal Rescue Team? How/when does the team get called in to help? What sort of situations are you typically called in for? How do you use your mobile veterinary unit? If you hear about a situation where animals need help, can you just go? Can...

Contents How many animals are used in experiments each year? Which animals are used in experiments? What kinds of experiments are animals used in? What kinds of institutions use animals in experiments? Where do laboratories get the animals they use in experiments? What is life like for animals in...

NEW YORK—Today, animal welfare groups commended Gov. Kathy Hochul for signing the Puppy Mill Pipeline Bill, groundbreaking legislation that will stop the flow of cruelly bred puppies to New York pet stores by ending the retail sale of dogs, cats and rabbits in pet stores across the state. Championed...

In October, the Supreme Court heard a pork industry challenge to California’s Proposition 12, the world’s strongest law to protect farm animals. The Humane Society of the United States and its allies defended the law, which requires that mother pigs , egg-laying hens and calves raised for veal in...

JACKSON, Mississippi—The Humane Society of the United States is assisting the City of Crystal Springs with the rescue of approximately 176 cats from an alleged large-scale neglect situation. Mississippi Animal Rescue League also assisted on-scene. Law enforcement served a search and seizure warrant...

As my beloved seedlings languished untouched on the display table, I improved my sales pitch: “Would you like a late-flowering thoroughwort to help migrating butterflies refuel? What about an aster that’s the only pollen source for some bee species?” But unlike the animals who would devour these...

When people struggle, so do their pets: Millions of pet owners live in poverty, and the most common reason people surrender their pet to a shelter is rental limitations (i.e., their landlord doesn’t allow pets or charges an unaffordable pet fee.) Other pet owners may struggle to afford pet food...

Minnow It makes sense that her best friends are turkeys. Minnow spent the first five months of her life on a dog meat farm in South Korea before she was rescued by Humane Society International in 2015 and adopted by Abbie Hubbard, who worked at a Virginia shelter where the rescued dogs were flown...

Standing in the street and admiring each other’s gardens one day, Sherrie Pelsma and her neighbor made a discovery: They’d become hosts to a buzzing block party. “We could actually see the air traffic of bees and butterflies crossing the street between our two habitats,” recalls Pelsma. “I said,...

It’s a peculiar rite of modern homeownership: Plant a tulip bulb in autumn, cage or spray it to deter nibblers, admire its fleeting blooms a few months later, let it rot in soil ill-suited to its needs and repeat the whole cycle again the following year.

Maybe you’ve seen those videos of our Animal Rescue Team saving animals from hurricanes, floods and large-scale neglect situations. We HSUS staffers who toil in front of computer screens and aren’t directly involved in rescues have seen those videos too. And sometimes we feel a little left out and...