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A new National Park Service proposed rule marks a substantial step forward for some of our nation’s most iconic wildlife species, including brown and black bears and wolves. The NPS rule would ban certain extremely cruel methods of trophy hunting and trapping on Alaska’s national preserves. We have...

By Kitty Block and Sara Amundson Today, we are releasing chilling footage of Andrew and Owen Renner’s now infamous – and illegal – black bear trophy hunt in Alaska last April, so you can see what grisly fate awaits the state’s native carnivores if the U.S. government goes ahead with a proposal to...

Today Gov. Kathy Hochul signed legislation to ban wildlife killing contests in New York state. This is a wonderful moment for wildlife, as New York has been the scene of more than 20 of these senseless spectacles each year. The contests targeted a broad range of animals including coyotes, foxes, bobcats, squirrels, raccoons, crows, rabbits and woodchucks. The new law, to take effect in November 2024, will prohibit cash-for-wildlife competitions in which the objective is to slaughter animals for money and prizes.

Arizona today banned all wildlife killing contests for coyotes, bobcats, foxes and other animals, joining a growing number of states taking action to stop these gruesome events in which participants vie for cash and prizes for killing the most or heaviest animals within a specific time period. The...

By Kitty Block and Sara Amundson Update: The bill to ban fur sales has also passed the concurrence committee and will now head to the governor’s desk for his signature. In two historic votes for animals, California lawmakers have voted overwhelmingly to ban fur sales and to stop the trophy hunting...

A man who, along with his teenage son, mercilessly slaughtered a hibernating mother bear and her two newborn cubs in their den, and then lied about it, will serve time in jail for the gruesome crime that shocked Americans when it came to light last August. Andrew Renner was convicted of eight counts...

Maryland legislators have just passed a bill banning wildlife killing contests—cruel events where participants compete to win cash and prizes for killing the most or the heaviest animals. The vote comes just over a year after we did an undercover investigation of such contests in the state that...

The Trump administration has just delivered a one-two punch to Alaska’s wildlife: it has announced that it will release a final National Park Service rule allowing some of the cruelest practices for killing black bears, wolves and other wildlife on national preserve lands in Alaska; and it has...

Washington has just outlawed wildlife killing contests—the seventh state to do so in the past six years. The Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission voted 7-2 this morning to pass a rule ending these gruesome spectacles where participants kill large numbers of wild animals simply for the thrill and...

Today, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced it will be proposing a rule that would ban predator control on the National Wildlife Refuge System. When finalized, this rule will be a huge victory for countless wildlife living on refuges. The National Wildlife Refuge System is home to thousands...

Massachusetts has just banned cruel wildlife killing contests, becoming the fifth state, after Vermont, California, New Mexico and Arizona, to take a firm stance against these gruesome events in which participants compete to win cash and prizes for killing the most or heaviest animals. The...

California has once again topped our 2018 Humane State rankings list, after overwhelmingly passing the strongest farm animal protection law in the world, and by enacting a law that bans the sale of cosmetics tested on animals -- the first U.S. state to do so. Oregon, which has some of the strongest...

Colorado has closed a loophole in its law to end all wildlife killing contests of furbearing animals, including coyotes, bobcats, swift foxes and prairie dogs. Although the state had already banned most such contests in 1997, a regulatory loophole permitted some events that limited the numbers of...

Each year, trophy hunters and trappers kill around 2,000 of Colorado’s bobcats, either for fun or to sell their furs overseas, usually in Russian and Chinese markets. The animals are hunted down with radio-collared dogs and shot at point-blank range, or they are trapped in cage traps with no...

There is an aggressive group of anti-coyote propogandists emerging in many communities, as a recent article in the Los Angeles Times on the presence of coyotes in a dozen or so California localities suggests. The belligerence of these propagandists, and their disdain for best practices for managing...

For the last few months, our Fund for Animals Wildlife Center in Ramona, California, has been home to two high-profile residents: a coyote found with plastic construction tubing wrapped around her neck, and a bear, Eve, who came to us severely underweight and completely bald. Today, I want to share...

In a welcome move, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has announced it will reevaluate its approval of cyanide bombs called M-44s – devices that state and federal agencies scatter around public and private lands to kill coyotes who are seen as posing a threat to livestock. These deadly devices...

Today, we released the grisly findings of three undercover investigations into wildlife killing contests in Virginia, including the largest contest held east of the Mississippi River. The heartbreaking callousness and carnage our investigators saw at the weigh-ins of the three contests, which took...

Florida, in the midst of an explosion in the population of green iguanas, is actively encouraging residents to kill the animals “whenever possible” around their homes or on public lands. This irresponsible directive from the state’s Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission is not accompanied by any...

Compassionate coexistence. It’s such a simple and worthy goal, yet it’s one of the areas in which the human aspiration to do right by wildlife still falls well short of what animals deserve. That’s why building global capacity and commitment for humane and effective approaches to resolving human...