Michael Markarian: Animals & Politics

There Oughta Be a Law: Q&A with Cheryl Woodcock

I hosted a nationwide conference call with thousands of animal advocates this weekend to announce the winner of the Humane Society Legislative Fund’s first-ever “There Oughta Be a Law” contest. Animal rescuer Cheryl Woodcock of Baldwin, N.D., joined the call, and I gave her the news that her proposal was selected by our panel of judges—Reps. John Campbell (R-Calif.) and Jim Moran (D-Va.) and myself—out of more than 3,500 other entries from all 50 states.

The winner of HSLF’s 2009 “There Oughta Be a Law” contest,
Cheryl Woodcock, with her four foster kittens who were
found in a Dumpster.

Cheryl’s winning idea: a tax credit for spaying and neutering pets. It’s a timely and innovative proposal that incentivizes personal responsibility and encourages pet owners to do their part to help reduce pet overpopulation. “Cheryl’s Law” could become part of the solution toward ending the euthanasia of three million healthy and treatable dogs and cats each year in America’s animal shelters, and reducing the financial burden of animal care and control on local communities.

HSLF will bring Cheryl to Washington, D.C. to lobby for her bill. I had a chance to visit with her and want to share with blog readers a bit about her work and her winning entry.

Michael Markarian: Tell us about yourself and your animals.

Cheryl Woodcock: I am married with six kids. We live on 80 acres. We raise sheep, and Chesapeake Bay retrievers. We have three Scottie dogs, many farm cats, and a sheep herding dog, all of whom are spayed or neutered. Many of our cats and our sheep herding dog are rescues from the city pound. We have even rescued a few house birds. We also have horses, chickens, and calves. Currently, I work for two vet clinics and make homemade dog treats that I sell at some pet stores and at craft shows. Animals are my passion.

MM: What’s it like being an animal advocate and rescuer in rural North Dakota?

CW: Baldwin is a town of 736 people—a mostly rural population—although we have 18 families who live right in the town of Baldwin. We have a post office and a GREAT school. The school has grades K-8 with 15 students, two teachers, and a teacher’s aide. We fight a battle with the state legislature every two years—they try to close small rural schools and we fight to keep our schools open.

A few years ago, I was asked to help our local pound by raising an orphaned kitten. He needed to be bottle-fed. I took him home and he has been with me since. Right now, I have four kittens who were about two days old when they were tossed in a Dumpster at a gas station. A worker at the gas station found them and called the police. The police took them to the pound and I got a call from one of the animal wardens. I stopped at a store, bought formula and a bottle, and went to see my new friends. They were very frail and very, very cold. I really didn’t expect to see them all make it through the night. I had to feed them every two hours, day and night, for the first few weeks. My female Scottie dog, Maggie, helped care for them, by cleaning them for me. Luckily I was able to take them to work with me—I work for two vet clinics. They are growing and they just FINALLY started eating on their own. I will be looking for good homes for them in a week or so.

I am the person in the neighborhood who gets a call and takes the sickly animals from neighbors. I have gotten two sickly lambs and a calf and they have survived—for me. I love the challenge and the satisfaction of caring for them and watching them grow and flourish. I have even had baby lambs in my house when they were sick and too young to be outside. One lamb even walked around my house in a doggie diaper. I try to find homes for as many cats and dogs as I can. The city pound has a volunteer who is great at finding homes or rescue groups for the dogs who need homes. I am all about animals. I love animals.

MM: You have a pet treat business as well?

CW: Yes, the name is Farmer Tillie’s Homemade Dog Treats. I wanted to make quality wholesome dog treats for my Scottie dogs. I sell them in a few pet stores and at some craft shows. My dogs totally enjoy it when I make treats. They get to sample them. I have many satisfied returning customers.

MM: How did you hear about HSLF’s “There Oughta Be a Law” contest, and what made you enter?

CW: I was on Facebook one night, when I was up feeding kittens, and saw the ad for the contest. I thought I should enter. I was mad at what the abandoned kittens had to go through. I decided to enter because of the kittens and all the animals I see at the pound who look so lost and need homes. I hate it when animals have to be put down when there are no homes for them. It’s a better solution than them starving or freezing to death, but if there was an incentive for people to get their animals spayed or neutered, maybe this issue could become a thing of the past.

MM: Why is spaying and neutering dogs and cats so important to you, and how can a tax credit help?

CW: The reason I am so passionate about this issue is because of the tiny baby kittens I have taken care of. There are always abandoned animals at the city pound. Those who don’t get adopted or rescued get put to sleep. I hate seeing that as much as I hate seeing abandoned baby animals. I think if there was a tax credit for people to spay or neuter their animals, more of them would get spayed or neutered and there wouldn’t be so many abandoned animals. I think, in this day and age, with everyone looking for a way to save money, a tax credit would really make them think about it.

MM: Are you looking forward to your trip to Washington?

CW: I am TOTALLY excited about winning a trip to Washington, D.C. I have never been to that part of the U.S. I think it will be great to be able to see the White House, the Lincoln Memorial, and the Vietnam Memorial Wall. It’s all so much a part of our history.

MM: Who are your federal legislators in Congress?

CW: Senators Kent Conrad and Byron Dorgan, and Representative Earl Pomeroy. I would love to work with them in getting a bill passed!

Reckless Killing of Yellowstone’s Celebrated Wolves

When the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service this year removed wolves from the protections of the Endangered Species Act, it paved the way for the same reckless sport hunting and persecution that put these animals on the endangered species list in the first place. And now we’ve learned that the first sport hunting season on wolves to occur in the lower 48 states since the 1980s has claimed the lives of some of Yellowstone National Park’s most celebrated wolves and has shattered years of critical research by wolf biologists.

The de-listing of wolves has claimed the lives of
Yellowstone’s most celebrated wolves.

Just weeks after Montana’s wolf hunt began, about half the members of Yellowstone’s famed Cottonwood wolf pack—including two radio-collared females known as Wolf 527 and her daughter, Wolf 716—were killed by hunters outside the park. Yellowstone’s wolves are famous to the world thanks to television documentaries on National Geographic, PBS, and the BBC. As one of the very few unexploited wolf populations in North America, their behavior, life history, travels, and genealogy have been carefully studied by scientists since wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone in 1995.

But not anymore. Kim Murphy reported in the Los Angeles Times on the impact the wolf hunt has had on scientific research:

“Whether the pack exists anymore or not, to us the pack is gone,” said Doug Smith, the biologist in charge of the Yellowstone reintroduction program that helped bring wolves back from the brink of extinction in the Northern Rockies. Cottonwood “was a key pack on the northern range,” he said, giving researchers a window into the existence of animals that had little or no interaction with humans.

We knew the de-listing of wolves would have tragic consequences. But even Montana state officials were shocked by the ease with which wolves were gunned down by hunters, and they suspended the hunt along a section of Montana’s backcountry near the northern border of Yellowstone.

Wolf hunting advocates in Montana and Idaho argued that the hunts were needed to control predation on livestock, and they trotted out their usual bromides about scientific wildlife management. But what they’ve done instead is roll back years of science, and target wolves who weren’t any threat to livestock at all—wolves who were feeding on elk and were part of Yellowstone’s natural ecosystem. In fact, Montana’s wolf hunting season overlapped with its elk season, and it seems the Cottonwood wolves were attracted to the gut piles left by elk hunters just outside the park’s borders.

More than anything, it demonstrates that the decision to take wolves off the endangered species list was unscientific and premature. Federal courts have rejected the government’s de-listing proposals six times, but it wasn’t enough to save Wolf 527 or Wolf 716. While it’s open season in Montana and Idaho, a lawsuit by The Humane Society of the United States has provided a stay of execution for wolves in Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin.

Many environmentalists and animal advocates around the country voted for President Obama because they just couldn’t stomach Sarah Palin’s retrograde policies on wolves—now they’ve been saddened and let down by the Administration’s de-listing decision. It’s time to call off the wolf killing before it sets wolf conservation back any further and destroys more of their close-knit families.

A Loss for Alaska’s Wild

In Alaska, some people use airplanes to shoot wolves. But Dr. Gordon Haber used airplanes to help wolves and study the species.

Dr. Gordon Haber was an important voice for wolves in
Alaska.

I was heartbroken to learn that Dr. Haber died last week in a plane crash in a remote area of Denali National Park, after embarking on a single-engine flight over the northern end of the park to monitor his beloved Toklat pack. The pilot, Dan McGregor, suffered severe burns but survived. 

Dr. Haber had been studying Denali’s wolf packs for more than four decades, and had been a critically important voice for wolves in Alaska where the state professional wildlife biologists were aligned in an unholy way with the hunting lobby. He brought knowledge and understanding about one of the world’s most misunderstood and wrongly persecuted predators. He was particularly critical of Alaska’s state policies of mismanaging wolves, through trapping and airborne hunting, to artificially boost populations of moose and caribou for trophy hunters.

My colleague John Balzar interviewed the renowned wolf biologist in 1994 for a Los Angeles Times story on Alaska’s wolf killing program, and here’s what Dr. Haber said at the time:

We are shredding their social structure—the very thing that makes them wolves. We’re not talking about just having four-legged canines survive out there, but wolves. And what makes them wolves is their very sophisticated social structure. That’s what sets this species apart.

Wildness and wild animals have lost a true champion. We can honor Dr. Haber’s memory by fighting for the protection of wolves everywhere—from Alaska, where the state continues to wage its war on wolves, to the halls of Congress, which must pass the Protect America’s Wildlife (PAW) Act to stop the unnecessary and unscientific aerial gunning of these creatures.

It’s Animal Cruelty, Not Animal Planet

I had the privilege of sitting in the U.S. Supreme Court this morning as the nine justices debated whether to uphold the federal Depiction of Animal Cruelty Law, which Congress passed in 1999 to bar the commercial trafficking in videos of illegal animal torture for profit. The justices asked thoughtful questions about the balance between freedom of speech and the governmental interest in stamping out deplorable cruelty to animals. Principal Deputy Solicitor General Neal Katyal did an outstanding job defending the anti-cruelty statute and making the government’s case that the measure is narrowly constructed to stop inhumane and illegal conduct, not expression.

Today, the U.S. Supreme Court considered a landmark case
regarding the commercial sale of videos showing
illegal acts of animal torture.

But the most interesting turn of events came later on the high court steps, where proponents and opponents of the law gathered to offer their comments to reporters. For some time leading up to the hearing, the man convicted under the law for peddling several dogfighting videos, Bob Stevens, has been described by the press and by his own attorneys as a documentary filmmaker, someone who is not involved in dogfighting but is rather just a journalist seeking to inform others about the issue—as if he doesn’t represent the dark underworld of dogfighting, but rather represents Animal Planet or National Geographic. This despite the fact that Stevens says at the beginning of one of his own videos, “Japan Pit Fights,” that he flew his own dogs to Japan to participate in staged combat.

When Stevens’ attorney, Robert Corn-Revere, was questioned after today’s hearing about whether the man was in fact a reporter or a dogfighter, here’s what he had to say:

Mr. Stevens is not a dogfighter, he is not a dogfight promoter, he is a pit bull enthusiast. And yes, he has dogs who have been involved in fights.

So he fights his dogs, but he’s not a dogfighter? It sounds like his own version of what the definition of “is” is.

The fact is the law includes a broad exemption for depictions with any “serious religious, political, scientific, educational, journalistic, historical, or artistic value”—it’s just that selling videos of animals being maimed and tortured to people who are titillated by the violence and the bloodletting doesn’t qualify. We’ve already seen a huge resurgence in “crush videos”—where scantily clad women crush mice, kittens, and other small animals to death with their bare feet or high heels—readily available for sale again over the Internet due to Stevens’ constitutional challenge. If this important anti-cruelty law is not upheld, we can be sure that dogfighters like Stevens, too, will retreat from their dark corner and cause more and more animals to suffer for their snuff films.

Court Upholds Law Protecting People and Pets

While the U.S. Supreme Court tomorrow will consider a landmark case on the commercial sale of videos showing illegal acts of animal torture, another decision just issued by a federal court in Louisville could also have a meaningful impact on animal protection policies nationwide. The court upheld as constitutional nearly every component of Louisville’s comprehensive animal care and control ordinance, which protects pets and their owners in the metro area.

 
A federal court upheld Louisville's comprehensive animal
care and control ordinance.

The controversy began in November 2005, with two fatal attacks by pit bulls in Louisville, and city lawmakers reacted by proposing a pit bull ban. The city’s animal control ordinance was set to expire anyway, resulting from the merger of the Louisville and Jefferson County governments, so lawmakers decided to take the opportunity to address more wide-ranging problems, such as Louisville’s overpopulation of stray dogs and cats.

HSUS and other groups that oppose breed-specific legislation argued that a ban on pit bulls would be ineffective at addressing dangerous dog problems, and that other factors, such as the level of training and socialization provided by the dog’s owner, have a greater impact on aggressive behavior. To their great credit, lawmakers opted to pursue a measure that was not breed-specific but instead placed primary responsibility for a dog’s behavior on owners, and encouraged owners to consider spaying and neutering their dogs in order to decrease the likelihood of biting and aggression. 

The new law passed in 2007 not only took a proactive approach to dangerous dogs, but also strengthened other areas of the law—protecting dogs from continuous tethering, imposing certain requirements on dog owners and kennels to provide basic necessities to their dogs, disclosing information to consumers who purchase animals, and incentivizing the spaying and neutering of pets through differential licensing fees. Given that Louisville’s shelter euthanasia rate was three times the national average, something had to be done to address particularly acute and escalating animal control problems.

In their zeal to prevent any restrictions on animal use, however, the Louisville Kennel Club, local hunting organizations, and other plaintiffs filed a broad and haphazard lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of nearly two-dozen provisions of the law, including both newly enacted provisions and provisions that have existed in the Louisville animal control ordinance for years. The Kennel Club sought to invalidate the entire ordinance, which would have deprived the Louisville metro government of its ability to provide critical public safety protections for its citizens, divest the county’s animal control department of virtually every one of its functions, decriminalize acts of cruelty to animals, and put the county back on track toward becoming one of the most prolific dog and cat killing jurisdictions in the nation.

On Friday, the federal district court resoundingly rejected the Kennel Club’s challenge to the law. The court did not strike any of the language of the ordinance, and enjoined implementation of only one aspect of the law in a very narrow class of cases—the forfeiture of animals where a court has determined that there is probable cause that a violation of the law has occurred, but the owner is not able to pay a bond to cover the costs of care for the animal pending trial, and the owner is eventually acquitted of the offense. The court did not strike the bond requirement, nor the provision requiring forfeiture of animals to the metro government in certain cases after an owner is found to be in violation of the animal control ordinance.

The Kennel Club’s effort to invalidate key provisions of the ordinance was rejected over and over again in the court’s opinion. Important sections of the animal control law challenged by the Kennel Club and upheld by the court include the:

• prohibition of cruelty to animals;
• provisions preventing animal nuisances;
• restrictions on tethering animals in a cruel or neglectful manner;
• provisions concerning impoundment and license revocation;
• restrictions on sales of dangerous and potentially dangerous dogs;
• provisions granting animal control the authority to seize animals of owners violating the ordinance;
• requirements for veterinarians to report public health information, such as vaccination records and animal bites, to the government; and
• definitions of “dangerous dog,” “potentially dangerous dog,” “proper enclosures” for unaltered dogs, “nuisance,” “attack,” “restraint,” and “cruelty.”

Notably, the court also resoundingly rejected the Kennel Club’s challenges to the enforcement authority of the director of Louisville Metro Animal Services, discarding the claims of “arbitrary” and “selective” enforcement. Responding to the allegation that the director intends to conduct warrantless searches in enforcing the ordinance, the court stated that the Kennel Club and other plaintiffs “are doing battle with a bogeyman of their own conjuring.”

Other municipalities have adopted more sweeping ordinances, such as pit bull bans or mandatory spay and neuter. Louisville policymakers, after a long and unusually deliberative legislative process, adopted a comprehensive but measured approach, striking a balance between the governmental interests in public health and safety and the interests of animal owners. And the court, in upholding the core provisions of the measure, sent the message that the protection of animal welfare is an important governmental responsibility.

A Game-Changer for Shelter Pets

There’s no question that we as a society need to do more to help homeless dogs and cats find loving families, and we are even seeing the issue of pet adoption enter the public policy arena. In California, for example, Assemblyman Cameron Smyth (R-Santa Clarita) introduced a bill to allow a tax deduction for adopting an animal from a shelter, and Assemblyman Ted Lieu (D-Torrance) offered a resolution declaring September 2009 as “Adopt a Shelter Pet Month.”

But today we are celebrating the greatest investment of resources the animal protection movement has ever made to end the euthanasia of millions of healthy and treatable dogs and cats. The Ad Council, The Humane Society of the United States, and Maddie’s Fund have launched The Shelter Pet Project, a national public service advertising campaign urging pet lovers to make shelter adoption their first choice. You can read about the pathbreaking campaign for pets on Wayne Pacelle’s blog, and watch the first two TV ads—“Ditched” and “White Collar”—here.

A Double Whammy for Animal Shelters

The economic downturn is having ripple effects in nearly every part of American life, but the impact on animal shelters has been especially acute. Struggling families are relinquishing more dogs and cats to shelters, as they find they can no longer afford the costs of pet care, or they are evicted from their homes and cannot find pet-friendly housing. At the same time, municipal governments are cutting local services, and charitable giving is on the decline, so both public and private shelters have less funding. It’s a double whammy for animal shelters—greater demand but fewer resources.

Animal shelters play a critical role in our communities.

The problem may become more severe in California, as a budget deal between Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and state legislators will reduce the funding available to hold stray dogs and cats in the state’s municipal animal shelters. But some communities are taking a more forward-looking approach and trying to sustain—rather than cut—critical services.

In Lincoln County on Oregon’s central coast, the county animal shelter is scheduled to close its doors on June 30, 2010, because funding will run out. But this November, voters will decide on a new property tax that would allow animal care and control operations to continue uninterrupted. If approved, Measure 21-134 will provide funding for another five years to support the animal shelter and animal control services in the county.

With tea-party protests around the country, it’s hard to imagine voters approving a new tax. But it’s even harder to imagine what life would be like with no animal shelter and no animal control services. Without an animal shelter, homeless pets will have no place to go to find new, loving homes. Stray animals will be left to the mercy of the streets, and without animal control services, they will continue to breed and overpopulate. As their numbers grow, disease will become rampant and pose a very real threat to animal health and human health.

In fact, cutting funds for animal care and control is penny-wise and pound-foolish. Without a functioning animal shelter, other costs to the community—demands on law enforcement, county health officials, and nonprofit rescue groups—will grow. Measure 21-134 would cost the average Lincoln County property owner less than a nickel a day, while the potential costs of dealing with dog bites or a rabies epidemic would certainly be much greater.

Most people wouldn’t imagine living in an area with no school, no hospital, no police, no road maintenance, or no trash collection. An animal shelter, too, is a community institution, and shouldn’t be allowed to go under. It’s not just a quality of life issue for citizens, but a critical service in a nation that cares about animal welfare—a nation where we want to see pets cared for and adopted, not suffering and dying on our streets.

Get the Lead Out

When mourning dove hunting season begins next week—in most states except Iowa and Michigan which have resisted the entreaties of the gun lobby, and nearly all of the Northeast where the gentle songbirds have long been protected—hunters will once again discharge enormous amounts of toxic lead shot into the environment.

Mourning dove hunting season begins next week in most states.

The soft, heavy metal has been known as a toxic substance for, oh, more than 2,000 years. Lead has been banned from water pipes, paint, gasoline, glass, pottery and a host of other items in order to protect people, especially young children.

But hunters—at least some of them—have held out. The most backward thinking of the bunch continue to spew lead shot and lead ammunition by the ton across our precious outdoors, and argue for the “right” to do so.

Now, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has announced that in lieu of meaningful action on lead it wants to open yet another tedious nationwide inquiry into hunters’ views about it. That’s too bad because the incremental process of ridding our environment of extraneous lead has already dragged out for too many years.

A nationwide ban on lead shot in migratory waterfowl hunting was adopted in 1991 after biologists estimated roughly two million ducks died each year from ingesting spent lead pellets.

California recently banned lead shot in endangered condor territory because condors were dying of lead poisoning. These majestic birds who are struggling for their very survival on the planet were doing only what comes naturally to condors, eating leftovers—that is, eating the gut piles that hunters leave behind. Except that these gut piles contained lead from ammo. And surely they were also eating carcasses of animals who were wounded by hunters and left to die.

Some 23 states require nontoxic ammunition on more than 1.3 million acres of hunting areas and game habitats. These prohibitions were prompted by the devastating lead toll on an estimated 100 bird species, including bald eagles.

Last year, lead-contaminated deer meat was removed from food bank shelves and pregnant women were warned against eating such meat. More recently, Delaware announced regulations prohibiting hunters from using lead shot while dove hunting.

Really, what more needs to be said? There are plentiful nontoxic alternatives, which are only fractionally more expensive.

Unfortunately, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has announced that for its next move, it wants to conduct a “National Mourning Dove Hunter Attitude Survey on Nontoxic Shot.” These songbirds are the most heavily hunted migratory bird in the nation. And the agency says that attitudes of dove hunters will “help us make nontoxic shot policy decisions.”

Gauging the opinions of dove hunters can’t be a bad thing—it just doesn’t seem necessary in light of the overwhelming scientific evidence that cumulative lead deposits pose a significant risk to ground-feeding mourning doves and to other wildlife that directly and indirectly ingest toxic shot, including birds of prey and other animals who scavenge on downed birds.

For every dove shot and bagged, hunters discharge an average of eight shots according to a long-term study conducted by the U.S. Geological Survey and the Fish and Wildlife Service. Densities of greater than 860,000 pellets per hectare have been reported in dove fields, which are usually crop-growing soils. 

You’d think that hunters themselves would be clamoring to stop the systematic poisoning of our environment—which only diminishes their supply of game birds and other animals. After all, are they conservationists or just willful polluters?

While many rank-and-file sportsmen would gladly pay a couple dollars more for a box of nontoxic shells, the hunting industry leadership—like the National Rifle Association and U.S. Sportsmen’s Alliance—again stand in the way. These are the same groups, according to Ted Williams, who protested the ban on lead shot for waterfowl hunting in 1991, and called it “the latest scalp in a well-organized, scarcely recognized series of flanking attacks upon the right to keep and bear arms.” Despite the doom-and-gloom rhetoric, hunters know two decades later that was a good decision for waterfowl, and didn’t lead to the end of duck or goose hunting.

What’s good for the goose is good for other birds, too. The new Obama Administration needs to turn away from old habits and not allow the wishes of hunters to delay sound scientific management of our precious outdoors. A good start would be to cancel this unimportant hunter survey and just get the lead out for the sake of fish and wildlife—and everyone who cares about our wildlands.

A Chance to Change

I spent yesterday at the Liberation Christian Center in the Englewood neighborhood of Chicago’s south side, where Michael Vick spoke to at-risk youth and urged them not to get involved in dogfighting. When the Michael Vick case broke two years ago and brought a new level of attention to the cruel and shockingly widespread practice, around the time we worked to pass legislation in Congress establishing felony-level penalties for animal fighting, I wouldn’t have imagined that I’d eventually see Vick share the pulpit with other reformed dogfighters turned HSUS anti-dogfighting advocates, telling kids from personal experience not to go down this dead-end path.

Vick spoke with Chicago’s at-risk youth yesterday to urge them to not get involved in dogfighting.

I typically write on this blog about passing laws to protect animals from cruelty and curb the worst abuses, and that’s been a major focus of HSUS and HSLF when it comes to dogfighting and cockfighting. Backed by our legions of supporters, we’ve engineered most of the state and federal laws on the subject, and have pounded a constant drumbeat to upgrade the penalties and to see these laws enforced. We have encouraged, trained, supported and provided crucial intelligence to law enforcement to bring offenders to justice. We were at it long before the Vick case broke, but the heightened awareness brought by his celebrity helped us pass tougher animal fighting laws in 24 states and in Congress just since Vick’s arrest in 2007.

One of the reasons for stronger laws is to punish the people who refuse to play by society’s rules, and to remove people from society when they pose a larger threat to the community as a whole. It’s especially relevant with animal cruelty, as people who lose their empathy with animals can soon graduate to other violent crimes. Another reason is to have a deterrent effect and prevent people from breaking the law in the first place: The risk of a long incarceration is more likely to sway someone than a misdemeanor fine, especially when thousands of dollars in gambling profits are at stake at an animal fight, and a slap on the wrist is viewed simply as the cost of doing business.

But it’s also a core objective at HSUS and HSLF to give people a chance to change and to cast aside behaviors harmful to animals in favor of more compassion and empathy. Michael Vick served nearly two years in prison, and told the young people at Englewood that he had a lot of time to reflect on the way he had lived his life. He said that he knows what he did to animals was wrong, and that he now wants to be part of the solution, not part of the problem. He said that if he can steer 50, or 100, or 1,000 kids away from dogfighting, then he can help more animals than he harmed.

HSUS and HSLF are in the business of change—changing laws and changing behavior. The law worked when it came to Michael Vick. He did his time, and he’s now doing a type of community service, working with HSUS to make amends for the wrong he did. His example has the potential to change thousands of lives if he sticks with it, sparing dogs the suffering of being torn apart for entertainment, and sparing young men the loss of their freedom and their empathy for other creatures. I was inspired by how many kids in the church were so moved by Vick’s words and his life story—every young man I spoke with yesterday said he has seen dogfights occur in his neighborhood, and that hearing from Michael Vick has shown him a better way.

We need strong laws against cruelty, but the laws can only go so far. We also need community-based outreach programs like the HSUS End Dogfighting campaigns in Chicago and Atlanta, where our anti-dogfighting advocates have street credibility and can reach young men with a message of kindness and compassion. Working with HSUS and members of the clergy, former dogfighters and former gang members talk to at-risk youth on inner-city streets, interrupt dogfights in progress, and show kids that pit bulls are friends, not fighters. Through our pit bull training classes, we tackle the problem at both ends of the leash—working with the dog, but also working with the dog owner. And when those lives are changed for the better—both human and animal—it’s a 100 percent victory for all of us.

Missing the Mark on Anti-Cruelty Law

This fall, for the first time in more than 15 years, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in a major animal protection case. The high court will decide whether to uphold a 1999 federal law that bans the commercial sale of videos depicting extreme and illegal acts of animal cruelty, such as dogfighting and other deliberate and malicious acts.

This fall, the Supreme Court will hear arguments to decide whether to uphold a federal anti-cruelty law.

The legislation at issue was introduced by Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-Calif.) and targeted a shockingly widespread, underground subculture of “animal crush” videos, where scantily clad women, often in high-heeled shoes, impale and crush to death puppies, kittens and other small animals, catering to those with a sexual fetish for this aberrant behavior. In the last decade, this federal law has helped to dry up the sickening “crush video” industry, and has also been used to prosecute people who profit from the sale of contraband dogfighting films.

Some reforms are so evident that there really is not a debate in society about the right course of action. No one could possibly think that trafficking in videos of women crushing small animals to death for sexual pleasure, or of people forcing two dogs to tear each other apart for entertainment and gambling, is a protected form of free speech.

But some groups—like the National Rifle Association, Safari Club International, and the Outdoor Writers Association of America—have joined ranks with dogfighters, pornographers, and others in their efforts to overturn the law, and legalize the peddling of animal torture videos for profit. Apparently, they have been misled into thinking that their own hunting activities might somehow be banned under the statute, and are lining up with the worst of the worst to strip Congress of its rightful authority to ban the interstate trafficking in commercial depictions of animal cruelty. Even today in his regular column in The Hill, David Keene, the founder of the American Conservative Union and a now defunct hunting rights organization, repeats the canards of the NRA and Safari Club.

The truth is there is nothing in the Depictions of Animal Cruelty Act that could possibly affect lawful sport hunting. Indeed the statute only criminalizes depictions of animal cruelty that are illegal, and it doesn’t cover lawful practices such as hunting. The law specifically exempts any material that has political, social, or artistic value—say, an outdoor column or hunting website—and only affects videos that are sold in interstate commerce for commercial gain. This is essentially the same test for stopping the production and sale of certain forms of human obscenity. No one is going to try to take away someone’s snapshots or home movies of their latest hunting excursion.

The decision by a few extremist hunting groups to stand side-by-side with dogfighters and animal crush aficionados puts them at odds with the 26 state Attorneys General who have asked the high court to uphold this law because it’s vital to protect animals and the larger community from violence, drug trafficking, and other crimes that flow from the morally deadened hearts of people who perpetrate malicious cruelty. Would the nation’s top law enforcement officials—many of them from big hunting states—come out in favor of this law if it actually somehow impacted lawful hunting? 

The desultory tactics of people who peddle fetish films of extreme animal cruelty have apparently led the hunting groups to stray down the trail of opposing this law. Most hunters, like most other Americans, have zero tolerance for malicious acts of animal cruelty. This federal law is no more ambiguous than state anti-cruelty statutes, many of which do not specifically exempt hunting, but which are never used against lawful hunting practices. It’s a common-sense standard. 

As the Attorneys General’s brief makes clear, there are strong arguments that commercial depictions of animal cruelty, like child pornography, should not be entitled to any First Amendment protection at all. The makers and sellers of these videos are not expressing a viewpoint—they are simply profiting from extreme cruelty. We wouldn’t allow people to sell videos of people actually abusing children or raping women, and the same legal principles are at hand with malicious acts of cruelty, which are illegal in every state and a felony in nearly all.

The NRA and Safari Club leadership have repeatedly demonstrated they are out of step with rank-and-file sportsmen and the American public, by defending inhumane and repugnant practices such as “canned hunts” of captive exotic animals, the trade in bear parts for their gall bladders, the trophy shooting of threatened polar bears in the Arctic, and even poaching and puppy mills. Their intervention in this case is not only based on a gross misreading of this important federal anti-cruelty law, but also shows that their refrain about representing traditional values is cheap and false rhetoric and nothing more.