At Black Beauty Ranch, titles like “caregiver” and “maintenance technician” don’t do the people who hold them justice, and they don’t capture the dozens of unique tasks the team carries out every day: figuring out how to get pine sap off a goat’s horn (rub it with peanut oil), learning how to “drag”...

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...

In an important grizzly bear recovery zone and wildlife corridor in Montana’s Yaak Valley, another 315 acres of vital habitat for grizzly bears and other wildlife are now a permanently protected safe haven. You can take pride in your support of a land trust that helps keep such wildlands safe for...

WASHINGTON—The National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine published a report yesterday analyzing the use of primates in experiments funded by the National Institutes of Health and examining “opportunities for new approach methodologies to complement or reduce reliance on NIH-supported...

It seemed like a good idea at the time: Buy a house with a two-acre property, let our energetic herding dog have the run of the place and spend blissful summer days digging side by side in the dirt with her. And it was blissful, watching Mattie carve out her napping spots behind the ferns and tall...

Today, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced it would not be relisting wolves in the Northern Rocky Mountains under the Endangered Species Act, after the Humane Society of the United States, Humane Society Legislative Fund, Center for Biological Diversity and Sierra Club petitioned the Fish...

Every morning, the teams at Black Beauty Ranch spread out across 1,400 acres to care for the nearly 650 animals who call the sanctuary home. It’s not an easy task. The sanctuary is home to around 40 species, meaning caregivers need a high level of knowledge about all sorts of animals. Insights into...

What does it take to keep the nearly 650 animals at Black Beauty Ranch satiated, medicated and hydrated? A whole lotta produce, plus a dash of creativity. Here’s how sanctuary staff provide balanced diets, guided by the veterinary team.

Black Beauty Ranch offers a fresh start to the domestic and exotic animals who roam its 1,400 acres. Whether they were rescued from roadside zoos, research laboratories or the exotic pet trade, some struggle to acclimate to life as wild animals. While providing the necessities that support their...

Somewhere toward the end of the last ice age, we formed an alliance with wolves: Maybe the ancestors of dogs got food scraps while our own ancestors gained protection from predators and other humans. These social species eventually collaborated on a vast scale, possibly even hunting woolly mammoths...

Teddy was never meant to have a name. He was born a number, just one of tens of thousands of dogs—mostly beagles like him, chosen for their trusting, docile nature and compact size—bred in the United States for use in experiments each year. Teddy was meant to live and die in a laboratory, without...

WASHINGTON—Wildlife conservation organizations sued the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service today for missing its deadline to decide whether gray wolves in the northern Rocky Mountains warrant federal protection under the Endangered Species Act. The deadline was set following a May 2021 petition filed by...

Four conservation and animal protection groups today notified the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that they plan to sue over the agency’s denial of their petition to protect gray wolves in the northern Rocky Mountains under the Endangered Species Act. “It’s beyond frustrating that federal officials...

In a new statewide survey of 1,500 likely Colorado voters, weighted to Republicans and Western Colorado voters, nearly two-thirds said they believed that Colorado’s gray wolves should not be trophy hunted or trapped after they are restored to Colorado. The poll comes just as Colorado Parks and...

BOZEMAN, Mont.— Four conservation and animal protection groups sued the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service today for denying their petition to protect gray wolves in the northern Rocky Mountains under the Endangered Species Act. “We’re back in court to save the wolves and we’ll win again,” said Collette...

Today, the New York state legislature passed a bill that ends inhumane wildlife killing contests, in which participants compete to kill the most, the heaviest and the smallest animals for cash and prizes. In 2018 and 2020, the Humane Society of the United States released undercover investigations...

It was a rude awakening: Just as my thoughts drifted into a pre-sleep jumble, a skunk pounced onto my nighttime reading. Not just any skunk, but a giant one flashing her black-and-white tail in a series of pungent leaps. Back and forth she went, bed to floor to bed, before my eyes caught up with my...

WARNING: This page contains graphic content. In the spring of 2020, an HSUS investigator noticed something unusual: Just as some annual in-person killing contests for coyotes, foxes, bobcats and other animals were being canceled because of COVID-19, groups devoted to online killing contests were...

They were like moths to a flame or, more accurately, butterflies to a native plant. No sooner had I unloaded two joe-pye weed perennials from my car last August than three tiger swallowtails dive-bombed the pots, as if to validate my purchase. If only my fellow shoppers knew what they were missing...