Next Wednesday, trophy hunters with a yen for slaying some of the world’s most endangered and threatened animals will gather in Reno, Nevada, for the annual Safari Club International convention. This is perhaps one of the world’s largest such gatherings, and it’s a grim affair. On offer will be more...

This year has seen incredible wins for animals despite a steady onslaught of Congressional threats and agency rollbacks. On the one hand, there have been attempts to roll back protections for wild animals, like native carnivores in Alaska, and attacks on the Endangered Species Act. The U.S...

As Joe Biden and Kamala Harris head to the White House, they bring with them a proven track record of protecting animals. In past years, we have worked with both the president- and vice-president-elect to strengthen laws on wildlife, marine mammals, farm animals, and so much more, and we look...

Since 2017, U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan has introduced a bill that would undermine America’s war on ivory trafficking by hindering the ability of states to create laws fighting this illegal trade. The full Senate did not consider the bill the last time, and more Americans than ever before now...

By Kitty Block and Sara Amundson A number of important bills are now making their way through Congress, and this week has been a particularly successful one for wildlife and especially for elephants, rhinos, wolves, wild horses, burros and right whales. Yesterday, the Senate Appropriations Committee...

Scientists and conservationists have long warned about drastic drops in African elephant populations because of habitat loss, conflicts with humans and poaching for ivory. Trophy hunters exacerbate the problem by mowing elephants down for fun. Yesterday, the International Union for Conservation of...

Today, the New York Times reported on Airbnb’s new featured offering of “animal experiences,” which will have an ethical focus and will ban any direct contact with wild animals. The announcement comes on the heels of a decision by TripAdvisor, reported just yesterday, to stop ticket sales to all...

Last month, Americans reacted with horror and outrage when an Idaho game commission official, Blake Fischer, circulated a photo that showed him smiling next to a family of baboons, including youngsters, he had killed on a hunting trip in Namibia. To most of us, it was unfathomable that anyone could...

Exactly three years after the killing of Cecil the lion sparked outrage among the American public, one more U.S. trophy hunter is making international headlines for killing an imperiled animal -- this time a giraffe. The news of this hunt comes just weeks after another American killed a lion...

Right now in Washington, D.C., a single urgent plot line threads together the fate of many animals: wild species threatened by trophy hunting or the commercial wildlife trade, the North Atlantic right whale, the nation’s wild horses, the former research chimpanzees waiting for sanctuary, the pets of...

Update 3/15/2022: President Biden signed the appropriations package into law. Humane advocates often look to the passage of animal-friendly legislation as the strongest measure of progress in our work at the federal level, and clearly, good laws are important. But a nation that cares for animals...

News has come out that another bull elephant was shot and killed in Tanzania, reportedly by an American trophy hunter from Texas. This is the third bull, believed to likely be another “super tusker,” beloved by locals, gunned down near the Tanzanian-Kenyan border, part of the Greater Amboseli Ecosystem, within the past six months.

President Joe Biden’s State of the Union speech marks a midway point in his term, and for us, an opportunity to assess the administration’s animal protection priorities. Like many animal advocates, we were buoyed by the legislative successes we helped to secure as 2022 closed. At year’s end, a...

An undercover investigation from the Humane Society of the United States and Humane Society International has ​ unearthed a thriving market for elephant ivory products in Massachusetts, as lawmakers there consider a bill that would ban the ivory trade within the state. Our investigators visited the...

What kind of world would this be if there were no regulation of the international trade in wildlife and wildlife parts? In a world in which commercial interests alone determined the fate of tigers, elephants and hundreds of other species threatened by trade, would these species really stand a chance...

The annual Dallas Safari Club convention is a sickening display of the havoc American trophy hunters wreak year after year on the world’s wildlife, with their penchant for killing endangered and at-risk animals. The pandemic has forced the 2021 convention to move online this year, but that doesn’t...

A canvas made of a whole elephant’s ear. Belts made with hippo skin. Elephant skin furniture. The annual Safari Club International convention in Reno, Nevada, had plenty on view that would shock and sicken the average person. But investigators for the Humane Society of the United States and Humane...

At the Safari Club International’s annual convention each year, wealth, privilege and power come together with a revolting goal: mowing down the world’s rarest and most beloved wildlife. This year’s event in Reno was no different. Trophy hunters heard speeches from guest of honor Donald Trump Jr...

Whenever I see social media posts by trophy hunters gleefully posing with the animals they’ve killed, I have a feeling of deep loss, for the individual animals slain, for those animals’ families and social networks, and for our planet. And I also feel a deep outrage, because to me those images stand...

So many of us were saddened this week to learn about the death of Beulah the elephant, who spent most of her 54 years in captivity and chains, working for a Connecticut-based traveling petting zoo. Beulah was just six years old when she was sold to the R. W. Commerford & Sons Traveling Petting Zoo...