͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ​[link removed] [[link removed]]
Monthly Accomplishments and Update
Animal Wellness Action, the Animal Wellness Foundation, and the Center for a Humane Economy
January-March 2025
Summary
* Our all-out campaign to stop the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s plan to kill as many as 470,000 barred owls has stalled the program, and we are working to make that permanent, with the effort boosted by a bipartisan group of lawmakers, representing the entire political spectrum in the House, demanding that outcome.
* During the last five weeks, and with colleagues at Showing Animals Respect and Kindness (SHARK), we have disrupted seven cockfighting operations in four states, with four live cockfights disrupted in Texas alone, causing cockfighters to scatter and triggering investigations, arrests, and prosecutions.
* On the scourge of dogfighting, we are seeing meaningful action in the wake of our demands of federal authorities to eradicate the practice. That latest action, netting former NFL player running back LeShon Johnson, is just the latest in a string of federal actions creating panic in the ruthless world of dogfighting.
* At our urging, a bipartisan set of lawmakers in Congress is renewing their call for the creation of an Animal Cruelty Crimes section at the U.S. Department of Justice to drive more prosecutions on a broad set of crimes against animals. The FBI director and the attorney general have already said they’ll not tolerate cruelty on their watch; they can create the new section without relying on Congress to pass legislation.
* Adidas had 20 shoe models featuring kangaroo leather when we started our Kangaroos Are Not Shoes campaign, and now the company appears to be down to just two models of soccer shoes made from the marsupials. While we demand that Adidas entirely halt its procurement of kangaroo parts, we are turning up the heat on two Japanese brands — ASICS and Mizuno. Our goal: no kangaroo skins anywhere in the athletic shoe sector.
* We are defending gray wolves from maneuvers by Congress and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to remove critical federal protections. We are highlighting the policies of some states in allowing people to run down wolves with snowmobiles, sic packs of dogs on them, and use neck snares to trap them. Federal protections are needed when the states fail so badly to be stewards of rare wildlife.
* The Center for a Humane Economy is working with key partners in Africa to restore elephants to Angola and to reduce human-elephant conflicts in Botswana and neighboring nations, promoting eco-tourism and safe spaces rather than trophy hunting.
PROTECTING ALL FOREST OWLS
Key lawmakers in Congress call for nixing the barred owl kill plan, opening an additional front of action as we work to block assault on the North American raptors.
U.S. Reps. Troy E. Nehls, R-Texas, and Sydney Kamlager-Dove, D-Calif., penned a letter [[link removed]] with 17 of their House colleagues to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum asking him to scuttle a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service plan [[link removed]] to oversee the shooting of nearly half a million barred owls over the next 30 years to reduce social competition with spotted owls.
“In the spirit of fiscal responsibility and ethical conservation, we urge you to halt all spending on this plan to mass kill a native, range-expanding North American owl species,” wrote lawmakers in the widely covered public statement [[link removed]] . Meanwhile, a briefing schedule has been set in our federal lawsuit, being heard in a U.S. District Court in Seattle, and that schedule reaches into November 2025, suggesting that the court proceeding is going to delay any killing plan.
The original plan was to start shooting this spring in California, Oregon, and Washington. During this period, we are working to put a permanent stop to this plan to issue an unprecedented number of permits to kill barred owls, which have long been protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. Doomed to fail, the scheme will create chaos and cruelty, including by opening 14 units of the National Park Service [[link removed]] — including in Olympic, Crater Lake, Redwoods, and Yosemite national parks — to owl hunting. Rural Oregon state lawmakers wrote to the DOGE opposing the plan here [[link removed]] .
ANIMAL FIGHTING IS THE PITS (Cockfighting)
We upended cockfighting operations in seven counties just in the last month
Our field investigators, working in tandem with colleagues from Showing Animals Respect and Kindness (SHARK), have now disrupted seven cockfighting operations, including six live cockfighting derbies, in the last five weeks. This extraordinary set of rapid-fire investigations and interdictions came as a result of tips from concerned citizens, deployment of our investigators, expert use of drones, and then notification of local sheriffs with foolproof evidence that an animal fighting derby was in progress.
The latest one in Hunt County resulted in 21 arrests [[link removed]] after our investigator alerted authorities [[link removed]] to the crime. The largest gathering of cockfighters occurred in Titus County, Texas, with more than 200 cockfighters present for a Saturday afternoon derby [[link removed]] with hundreds of birds. We uncovered a second derby in nearby Ellis County just days later, with law enforcement entering the property and causing 150 cockfighters to scatter into the woods. Other disruptions, which you can read about on our microsite, EndCockfighting.org [[link removed]] , occurred in two other counties in Texas and also in North Carolina, Oklahoma [[link removed]] , and Tennessee. Meanwhile, our past work in Kentucky has stirred the Kentucky State Police [[link removed]] to take a more aggressive role in interdicting fighting derbies.
On the legislative front, Maryland Governor Wes Moore is poised to sign into law a measure to place limits on the number of roosters on a single property, striking at cockfighters who pretend to be fowl enthusiasts rather than animal traffickers. California may follow suit. Meanwhile, we’ve defeated all three bills in Oklahoma [[link removed]] to weaken the state’s strong anti-cockfighting law, and we are active in a raft of other states promoting strong laws and working to fend off well-financed efforts to roll back felony penalties for animal fighting.
And we are poised to see our allies in Congress reintroduce the Fighting Inhumane Gambling and High-Risk Trafficking Act (FIGHT) Act to give law enforcement and private citizens enhanced tools to destroy animal fighting in America. The FIGHT Act has nearly 800 endorsing agencies and organizations, including the National Sheriffs’ Association, the National District Attorneys Association, the American Gaming Association, and the United Egg Producers.
ANIMAL FIGHTING IS THE PITS (Dogfighting)
For years, we’ve been demanding that DOJ and other key federal law enforcers eradicate animal fighting rings, and the agency has responded with a step-up in action against dogfighting. Former NFL running back and kick returner LeShon Johnson is the latest dogfighter to be arrested [[link removed]] , with 90 dogs seized from his eastern Oklahoma operation [[link removed]] . His first indictment for dogfighting came in Oklahoma nearly 20 years ago.
Other federal cases include Florida’s Jose Miguel Carrillo, who was sentenced in February 2025 to seven years in prison for his involvement in a dogfighting conspiracy and for being a felon in possession of a firearm, and Frederick Douglass Moorefield Jr., a former Department of Defense deputy chief, who was sentenced in 2024 to 18 months in federal prison for his involvement in a multi-state dogfighting conspiracy. Moorefield was among two men charged with promoting and furthering an animal fighting venture. Also in 2024, four men from Georgia, Florida, and Alabama were indicted for participating in a large-scale dogfighting event in April 2022, and authorities uncovered a dogfighting ring in Tyler, Texas, where nearly 60 dogs were found in poor condition, indicating their involvement in fights. Earlier this year, Vincent Burrell, of Georgia, was sentenced to 475 years in prison after being convicted.
ANIMAL CRUELTY AND ITS CONSEQUENCES
We are working to create an Animal Cruelty Crimes section at the U.S. Dept. of Justice
With the introduction this year of the Animal Cruelty Enforcement Act in the U.S. House — led by Reps. David Joyce, R-Ohio, Joe Neguse, D-Colo., Juan Ciscomani, R-Ariz., and Steve Cohen, D-Tenn. — we’ve stepped up the call to create an Animal Cruelty Crimes section, a team of prosecutors focused on animal cruelty within the DOJ. We are also pushing for a dedicated policing unit within the FBI, too.
We now have an extraordinary opportunity to create these new sections, with the ascension of animal advocate Pam Bondi as U.S. attorney general. As former Florida attorney general, she worked with us to ban greyhound racing in Florida, which at the time had two-thirds of all U.S. tracks. In announcing the unsealing of the federal indictment against LeShon Johnson, Bondi made it clear that fighting animal cruelty will be a priority. “The Department of Justice will prosecute this case to the fullest extent of the law and will remain committed to protecting innocent animals from those who would do them harm,” said Bondi in the statement [[link removed]] . FBI director Kash Patel is also an ally: “The FBI will not tolerate criminals that harm innocent animals for their twisted form of entertainment. The FBI views animal cruelty investigations as a precursor to larger, organized crime efforts, similar to trafficking and homicides. This is yet another push in the FBI’s crackdown of violent offenders harming our most innocent.”
KANGAROOS ARE NOT SHOES
Adidas use of kangaroo skins plummets
During the last two years, we worked successfully to secure commitments from Nike, Puma, New Balance, Diadora, and Sokito to end their sourcing of kangaroo skins. Adidas though has been an outlier, refusing to swear off its role in the largest wildlife slaughter in the world. But as our Kangaroos Are Not Shoes [[link removed]] campaign has gone viral [[link removed]] , Adidas has quietly been shrinking its footprint when it comes to commerce in kangaroo skins. When we started our kangaroo campaign in 2020, the company was selling upwards of 20 models of soccer shoes made from kangaroos. Now the company appears to have just one or two models remaining.
While we work to secure a pledge from that company to divorce itself from this trade, we are stepping up our efforts to pressure ASICS and Mizuno — two Japan-based companies — to make the switch to more humane and sustainable fabrics. Meanwhile, Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., and Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., have a bill to ban any domestic trade in kangaroo parts, with Senators Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., and Cory Booker, D-N.J., expected to follow suit.
PROTECTING WOLVES
We are already mounting our defense of wolves against unwarranted assaults
Thankfully, the spending bill approved by Congress in March did not contain any language to remove federal protections for wolves, but we are gearing up to block legislation [[link removed]] from Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., and other lawmakers to do so through an act of Congress.
Meanwhile, we’ll soon see the reintroduction of the Snowmobiles Aren’t Weapons Act to ban the use of motorized vehicles to chase down, ram, and even crush wildlife on our federal lands. It hardly seems possible that anyone could oppose such legislation, but antipathy for wolves among some ranchers and trophy hunters [[link removed]] runs deep, and we’ll have our hands full to pass this critical legislation. Congress passed a federal Airborne Hunting Act half a century ago restricting the use of aircraft to run down animals by planes or helicopters, and we need a parallel bill to halt the use of land-based vehicles used to enable acts of sadism.
And our case continues in federal court against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service over its failure to assure minimum protections for gray wolves in the Northern Rockies, in violation of the Endangered Species Act and the Administrative Procedure Act.
PROTECTING ELEPHANTS & THE GREAT ELEPHANT CORRIDOR
We are working to protect elephants in southern Africa
The Center for a Humane Economy announced a groundbreaking initiative [[link removed]] in southern Africa to relocate African elephants from Botswana to Angola. Working with the Botswana-based Elephants Without Borders (EWB) — a cross-border research organization focused on elephant conservation and management — the plan will relocate elephants from Botswana and other neighboring nations to Angola [[link removed]] , where a long civil war triggered the wipe-out of elephants and most other wildlife. The collaboration, which also includes the Halo Trust and the Global Councils [[link removed]] of Animal Wellness Action and the Center, marks a significant step in creating the Great Elephant Corridor, which will establish a safe migration route for elephants across multiple countries and promote ecotourism as an alternative to trophy hunting.

Wayne Pacelle [[link removed]] Wayne Pacelle
President
Animal Wellness Action
[[link removed]] DONATE NOW [[link removed]]
[[link removed]] WEBSITE [[link removed]]
[link removed] [[link removed]] [link removed] [[link removed]] [link removed] [[link removed]]
Animal Wellness Action | 611 Pennsylvania Ave SE #136 | Washington, DC 20003
If you would like to manage your subscription or contribution history, please log into your self-service portal here. [[link removed]]
If you need to you can unsubscribe here: unsubscribe: [link removed]
You can also click here to donate [[link removed]] .