On a longline fishing boat off the Galapagos Islands, a concerned biologist working undercover as a cook films a horrifying scene. As the camera rolls, a blue shark is dragged upside down out of the water, a sharp hook piercing it through the roof of the mouth and out through the side of the face...

WASHINGTON— In a long-awaited victory for sharks across the globe, the Shark Fin Sales Elimination Act passed the U.S. Senate Thursday night by a vote of 83-11 as part of the National Defense Authorization Act (H.R. 7776). This critical measure prohibits the commercial trade of shark fins and...

WASHINGTON – An undercover investigation by the Humane Society of the United States and Humane Society International revealed dozens of items made from imperiled wildlife for sale last week at the Safari Club International convention in Reno, Nevada. These items included elephant skin furniture...

It’s March 2021,  and then-White House press secretary Jen Psaki is holding a press conference. Newly elected President Joe Biden has been in office for less than two months, and the hard-charging White House press corps, always on the lookout for broken political promises, wants answers about the...

When a young Jane Goodall entered the forests of Tanzania to study wild chimpanzees, neither she nor those supporting her work imagined the influence she would have. Today, Goodall—Ph.D., DBE, founder of the Jane Goodall Institute , and United Nations Messenger of Peace —is recognized not only as a...

By Kitty Block and Sara Amundson We are on Capitol Hill today for the swearing in of the 116 th Congress, along with Humane Society of the United States and Humane Society Legislative Fund colleagues. We’re meeting with members of Congress, old and new, and gearing up for a new session of pushing...

Update 12/29/22: President Biden has signed the fiscal year 2023 omnibus appropriations package into law—a big win for animals! We’ve had remarkable success in our end-of-session push for critical legislation in the U.S. Congress, with the Big Cat Public Safety Act , Shark Fin Sales Elimination Act...

The animal protection movement made some great progress this week when the U.K. announced new legal recognitions for animals and a plan to improve animal welfare policies. Here, Claire Bass, executive director of Humane Society International/U.K . , explains what this means for animals. As the...

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...

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...

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...

The exploitation and abuse of big cats as props for paid public interactions at roadside attractions will soon be a thing of the past. As we recently shared, the Big Cat Public Safety Act , something we’ve been working on for over a decade, passed the U.S. Senate and just became law . It’s the...

By Kitty Block and Sara Amundson The 116 th Congress began work today on rooting out some of the worst forms of animal cruelty in the world, with House members reintroducing two important bipartisan bills. One would ban malicious acts of animal cruelty and bestiality, and the other would prohibit...

Update 12/23/22: President Biden has signed the National Defense Authorization Act into law, which removes the U.S. from the cruel shark fin trade and helps to combat wildlife trafficking. There have been some massive wins for animals recently in the U.S., as the Congress acts to pass some...