An Unprecedented Year
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An Unprecedented Year SINCE 1954, THE HUMANE SOCIETY OF THE UNITED STATES (HSUS) has worked to create a more humane world through our programs and campaigns, regional offices, and global affiliates. We made an unprecedented leap forward in 2005 by joining with The Fund for Animals, which was founded by the legendary Cleveland Amory in 1967. Combining forces with The Fund represented a significant step toward uniting the entire humane movement in one powerful voice and streamlined our operations, freeing more resources for action on behalf of animals. This historic union also produced the youngest member of our family of organizations—the Humane Society Legislative Fund—and a new section devoted to major campaigns against factory farming, animal fighting and cruelty, the fur industry, and inhumane hunting practices, as well as the nation’s largest in-house animal protection litigation department. The year also saw unprecedented action—a massive mobilization to rescue animals left in the wake of natural disaster—and our staff and members rose to the challenge with unprecedented dedication and generosity. and helped offset costs to allow the sale Helping Pets and Their People of more than 100,000 copies for only 99 cents each. Our Pets for Life® program continued to In close cooperation with several provide a wealth of resources to help Massachusetts organizations, we put our caregivers solve the problems weight heavily behind an initiative to ban that too often separate them greyhound racing, prevent cruelty to service from their pets. We also dogs, and provide stronger penalties for produced new billboards, dogfighters in the state. Our staff was flyers, and print advertisements instrumental in collecting more than 115,000 to raise awareness about the signatures, the first step to get the measure abuses inherent in on the November ballot. the commercial And five years after passage of mass dog the Safe Air breeding industry Travel for for our Stop Puppy Animals Mills campaign and Act—which launched a special fund required to help place these airlines to materials. report the loss, We worked with Pets injury, and Incredible to develop death of pets the Training Your Adopted Dog during travel— DVD to assist families with new we were successful in our efforts to pass a pets. To help animal shelters final rule. Airlines now must report any across the country distribute complaints to the Department of the DVD, we provided funding Transportation’s Aviation Consumer for 7,000 free sample copies Protection Division. —3— Our tenth annual National Animal Shelter Supporting the Animal Appreciation Week in November again high- lighted the work of local shelters, and we held Sheltering Community a Super Shelter Stories contest with prizes from sponsors including Patrick McDonnell We began working with the Humane Alliance of Mutts® comics, King Features Syndicate; Spay/Neuter Clinic of Asheville, North Carolina, Banfield, The Pet Hospital®; Southwest to create a nationwide network of 27 new Airlines®; and Hill’s® Science Diet®. spay/neuter clinics. And through an HSU and Humane Society ongoing partnership with the Press (HSP) published the first University of North Carolina at two books in our new Shelter Charlotte, we developed the Shelter Management series for animal Diagnostic Survey to help animal care and control professionals: shelters operate more effectively. Volunteer Management for We also launched a new partnership Animal Care Organizations and with New York-based Neighborhood Fund-Raising for Animal Care Cats to support feral cat colony Organizations. We redesigned our management with an online course www.AnimalSheltering.org and and outreach to local trap-neuter- www.HumaneSocietyU.org websites return programs. We worked with with more features and launched Almost 1,400 sheltering Energize, Inc., to develop Everyone Ready™, a a new monthly e-newsletter for the professionals received invaluable training at free online program offering training and sheltering community, The Scoop. Animal Care Expo 2005 resources in volunteer management that has Animal Sheltering® in Atlanta, Georgia. reached more than 600 participants from 11 magazine intro- countries. And our Animal Services Consultation duced the first program completed seven shelter evaluations full-color issue, in 2005 and launched an internship program. and we expanded Humane Society University (HSU) the magazine provided training for nearly 3,300 animal to 52 pages care and control personnel during the year, of informative conducting more than 30 workshops, adding articles. We also produced the year’s 10 online courses, and launching both an Shelter Pages® directory of products online graduate certificate in organizational and services for sheltering leadership program with Duquesne University’s professionals. School of Leadership and Professional Advancement and our Pets for Life behavior certificate program with the support of the Protecting Wildlife Kenneth A. Scott Charitable Trust. Our youth education affiliate, the at Home and Abroad National Association for Humane and Environmental Education (NAHEE), developed Our Protect Seals campaign the seventh workshop in our Teach Kids to to stop Canada’s annual commercial Care professional development series for seal hunt continued to build momentum sheltering professionals, and during the year during the year, with more than 400 this series reached more than 800 participants. restaurants and several distributors— Almost 1,400 people attended our Animal including Publix, the largest employee-owned Care Expo 2005 in Atlanta, Georgia. More than U.S. supermarket chain—joining our boycott of 40 educational workshops and a sold-out Canadian seafood until the slaughter ends for exhibit hall continue to make Expo the largest good. Greenland barred all imports of Canadian animal care and control conference in the seal pelts in early 2006, closing a major market country. As part of our Safe Cats™ campaign to to Canada, and we led demonstrations at keep cats safely confined, we also organized a Canadian embassies and consulates around conference for sheltering professionals in the world. We also kept pressure on Red Montana. Lobster—a major purchaser of Canadian —4— Bearing Witness I GREW UP IN A SMALL NEWFOUNDLAND FISHING VILLAGE, my house S U S bordered on one side by a deep bay leading into the Atlantic and on the H E H T others by mountains and forest. In that wild landscape, animals were part Our Protect Seals campaign against Canada’s of my daily life—the comical sheep who would spend the night in our commercial seal hunt gained momentum with demonstrations around the world. yard, the friendly moose who lived among our cherry trees, the families of whales who swam through the bay. seafood—-to stand with us against the hunt But my most powerful early memory of an animal is of a seal. I was and sent new outreach materials to 10,000 five years old. I’d turned on our television, and staring out at me was a producers, directors, and film professionals, fluffy white pup with luminous black eyes. My initial thrill turned quickly among others, to generate support. to horror as a sealer strode onscreen and brutally began clubbing her. I We arranged a partnership with vintage remember sobbing as I asked my mother what it was. She answered, “It’s clothing chain Buffalo Exchange to promote the seal hunt, and we’re against it.” I didn’t know then how significant our Coats for Cubs program, which that moment really was for me. distributes donated fur garments to wildlife Twenty years ago, most people thought the commercial seal hunt rehabilitators for use comforting the animals had been ended for good. But in the mid-1990s, the Canadian government in their care. We also directed People subsidized its return, paying fishermen per pound of seal they killed. As magazine readers to our the death toll skyrocketed, I swore I would do everything in my power to Fur-Free Pledge with stop the hunt. Over the past decade, it has become my life’s work. several full-page anti-fur I’ve observed the hunt for seven years, documenting horrific acts of ads. We took our message cruelty and exposing the images to the world. It’s almost unbearably hard of compassion directly to do. The pups, most less than a month old, are completely trusting and to designers, stylists, and defenseless. The seals’ celebrity trendsetters at cries as they are beaten New York City’s Fashion haunt listeners long after Week. To reach the next they have left the ice. generation of fashion Canadian law renders us designers, we launched the first annual Cool powerless to intervene. vs. Cruel student fashion design contest We stand on the floes promoting fur-free couture with the Art with the only weapons we Institutes of America. And we organized the can legally carry—our second Design Against Fur competition for cameras. I take some art design students. comfort in knowing that, for the sealing industry, We took I our anti-fur cameras are the most N A L I message to the M dangerous weapons we Y next generation H T A could have. K of designers / S U with our Last year I was S H Cool vs. Cruel E H student fashion honored to join The T design contest. S HSUS, and a few months later I stood in the midst of the hunt with my U S H new colleagues. I remember their courage facing sealers armed with E H T knives and clubs. I remember how we moved forward, filming the dead We focused our Hunting Issues campaign and dying seals the sealers left behind. And I remember one injured pup, on canned and Internet hunting—in which only three weeks old, raising her battered head. She had huddled next to paying customers shoot confined animals for a dead seal, trying to find protection in that small cold body.