Editor's note: Shortly after this issue went to press, Mexico banned animal testing for cosmetics. We've updated the number of countries with such bans in the copy below. When Julia Fentem began her career in toxicology around 1990, there was one government-sanctioned way of proving cosmetics safety...
Flying back and forth over Cape Cod Bay, a survey plane spotted a half dozen of the world’s rarest creatures: North Atlantic right whales. Such sightings are good news. The species hovers near extinction—by one estimate, fewer than 360 remain. Each time researchers locate a whale, they take pictures...
You don’t forget the images: the olive ridley sea turtle, a plastic straw lodged in his nose. The Rubenesque sea lion, neck cinched tight by a thick plastic packing strap. The Cuvier’s beaked whale, stomach split open to reveal more than 80 pounds of plastic waste—snack bags, rope, rice sacks...
A federal judge ruled yesterday that the National Marine Fisheries Service’s authorization and management of the American lobster fishery violates the federal Endangered Species Act. The court held that the agency failed to protect critically endangered North Atlantic right whales and that its...
Biologist Roger Payne heard about the stranded porpoise one night in 1964, while listening to a local radio station as he worked in a lab at Tufts University. Wanting to see for himself, he drove to nearby Revere Beach, north of Boston, and found the animal’s body. The porpoise had been mutilated...
The Humane Society of the United States, Humane Society Legislative Fund and the Personal Care Products Council issued the following joint statement today on the introduction of the Humane Cosmetics Act of 2021 in the U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives. “The cosmetics and personal care...
WASHINGTON—MOM’s Organic Market has become the most recent company to support the Humane Cosmetics Act, a piece of federal legislation to end the production and sale of animal-tested cosmetics in the United States. The legislation would, with certain exceptions, end all animal testing for cosmetics...
As a result of a successful lawsuit by several environmental and animal organizations, a federal judge today ordered federal fishery managers to issue a new rule for critically endangered North Atlantic right whales no later than May 31, 2021. The Center for Biological Diversity, Conservation Law...
WASHINGTON—Conservation groups filed a rulemaking petition today seeking additional ship-speed limits along the Atlantic coast to protect critically endangered North Atlantic right whales. In June a baby right whale was found dead off the coast of New Jersey, with propeller wounds across his head...