Animal Liberation News

On February 15, activists gathered at the office of Merced County District Attorney Nicole Silveira to ask her to prosecute documented criminal animal cruelty and worker abuse at Foster Farms’ slaughterhouse in Livingston, instead of prosecuting the individuals who rescued two animals from just outside the facility. Two women are being charged with theft, with the trial set to begin March 7 at Merced County Superior Court.

Mink "liberation season" generally runs June through October in the US. This year, the season ran a little late, but turned out to be the largest in nearly a decade. Four mink "farms" across Ohio and Michigan were targeted by the Animal Liberation Front in November and December. Perhaps 16,000 mink were freed in the actions. Lion Farms, the largest mink farm in the US, is closing on December 23 as a result of the ALF action.

Responding to legal pressure from the Center for Biological Diversity, the federal government finalized a new rule on July 30 expanding critical habitat protection along the West Coast for critically endangered Southern Resident killer whales. The population of Southern Residents stands at just 74 orcas. The National Marine Fisheries Service designated 15,910 square miles of new critical habitat, expanding current protections in Washington’s Salish Sea south along the coasts of Washington, Oregon and California to Point Sur.

Conservation groups and whale lovers gathered on June 8, World Oceans Day, at Crissy Field Beach in San Francisco to honor the 12 dead whales that have washed up in the Bay Area this year and to call for greater protections. Attendees called for solutions to the three top threats to whales: ship strikes, entanglement in fishing gear and climate change. Against the backdrop of the Golden Gate, speakers at the event called for a mandatory 10-knot speed limits for ships passing through whale habitat along California’s coast.

The California Department of Fish and Wildlife reported on June 23 that a new wolf pack has established itself in southern Plumas County. Named the Beckwourth pack, the group of three wolves was first confirmed in May but not officially announced. Photographs of the three wolves composing the Beckwourth pack were captured on a trail camera. A preliminary DNA analysis shows one wolf is LAS12F, a 2-year-old female wolf born into the Lassen Pack’s 2019 litter.

Years of work by organizations including In Defense of Animals, PETA, The Humane Society of the United States, Direct Action Everywhere, and others have culminated in legislative victories to ban fur. City-wide fur bans were approved in Berkeley in 2017 and San Francisco in 2018. This October, California passed the nation’s first statewide ban on the sale of animal fur. The statewide ban goes into effect January 1, 2023. On November 29, in the long-time tradition of Fur Free Friday protests the day after Thanksgiving, DxE activists demonstrated at a Walnut Creek fur store on Black Friday, less than a week after the store’s opening.