Donald Trump’s sons reportedly took a break from their roles as their father’s surrogates in the hotly contested presidential election last week to pursue their most favored leisure activity: killing wild animals in far off places for their heads and hides, including the rarest species in the world.
The Michigan state legislature’s leading anti-animal politician—a zealous crusader for the trophy hunting and trapping of wolves and a serial exaggerator about wolf encounters in the Upper Peninsula—lost by a substantial margin in a Republican primary for the U.S. House seat in the state’s northernmost congressional district.
Today is International Tiger Day, and there’s no better time to take note of a sobering and perplexing figure: there are approximately double the number of tigers living in captivity in the United States than exist in the wild. This magnificent species has lost at least 50 percent of its habitat since the 1990s and the total wild population has dwindled to about 3,500 tigers remaining across Asia.
With Discovery Channel’s “Shark Week” in full swing and right on the heels of last week’s introduction of a new congressional bill restricting the trade in shark fins, the Obama administration has taken an additional action to help sharks.
Through determination, innovation, and creativity, our society is solving some of the biggest challenges facing animals. Non-animal tests for cosmetics, chemicals, and household products are faster, cheaper, safer, and more reliable than laboratory experiments on animals. Computer-generated imagery is making exciting movies and TV commercials without the suffering and abuse of captive exotic wildlife. Eco-tourism appeals to millions of visitors and is a bigger boost to the economy in African nations than trophy hunting.
Rhode Island last week banned the trade in shark fins, joining ten other states and three Pacific territories in sending a message that this cruel product is not welcome within their borders. These state policy actions are helping to dry up the demand for shark finning—the barbaric practice of hacking the fins off sharks, often while they’re still alive, and throwing the mutilated animals back overboard to languish and die.
Through determination, innovation, and creativity, our society is solving some of the biggest challenges facing animals. Non-animal tests for cosmetics, chemicals, and household products are faster, cheaper, safer, and more reliable than laboratory experiments on animals. Computer-generated imagery is making exciting movies and TV commercials without the suffering and abuse of captive exotic wildlife. Eco-tourism appeals to millions of visitors and is a bigger boost to the economy in African nations than trophy hunting.
It’s been nearly a year since a Minnesota dentist bled out and killed Zimbabwe’s Cecil the lion. In the wake of it, there was a bright spotlight shined on trophy hunting. More than ever, the world is seeing trophy hunting in its true light: as a senseless hobby of the 0.1 percent who spend their fortunes traveling the world in head-hunting exercises.
The House of Representatives today debated H.R. 2576, the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act, a compromise bill produced after months of negotiation between key parties in the House and Senate to modernize and reform the 40-year-old Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). The House will vote on the bill tonight and the Senate is expected to take it up as soon as tomorrow.
If Donald Trump, Jr. gets his way, there could be a slayer of elephants and leopards and other rare wildlife appointed as Secretary of Interior in his father's administration.
Michelle Riley/The HSUS
