Species Unite

Elephants, great apes, dolphins, and whales are incredibly complex, social, and intelligent creatures, but our legal system considers them to be “things,” meaning they have no more rights then a can of beans does. For too many years these animals have been taken from the wild, held captive, lived for decades in confinement, tested on, tortured, abused, isolated, or neglected.  Kevin Schneider is Executive Director of the Nonhuman Rights Project, an organization that is fighting to secure actual legal rights for these animals. Their lawsuits demand recognition of the legal personhood and fundamental right to bodily liberty of great apes, elephants, dolphins, and whales that are being held in captivity across the United States. Not out of concern for their welfare, but with respect to their individual rights.  Since 2013, the Nonhuman Rights Project has filed lawsuits on behalf of four captive chimpanzees and four captive elephants, including Happy, the saddest looking elephant in the state of New York. Happy has spent the past 13 years living in isolation at the Bronx Zoo. The Nonhuman Rights Project is fighting for her freedom, so that she can be released to an elephant sanctuary where she’ll have room to room and other elephants to spend her days with. In todays conversation Kevin shares why the Nonhuman Rights Project will not stop until these animals are considered persons in the eyes of the law and why it matters, not only for the animals, but for us humans too.  Kevin Schneider is Executive Director of the Nonhuman Rights Project, an organization fighting to secure actual legal rights for these animals through a state by state, country by country, long term litigation campaign. What that means is that their lawsuits demand recognition of the legal personhood and fundamental right to bodily liberty of these animals – the great apes, elephants, dolphins, and whales - that are being held in captivity across the United States. With the support of scientists, they argue that the common law courts must free these self-aware autonomous beings to appropriate sanctuaries, not out of concern for their welfare, but with respect to their individual rights. Since 2013, the Nonhuman Rights Project has filed lawsuits on behalf of four captive chimpanzees and four captive elephants, including Happy, the saddest looking elephant in the state of New York. Happy has spent the past 13 years living in isolation at the Bronx Zoo Lately, Happy’s case has been receiving all sorts of attention from the public, the press, and politicians alike, with a recent statement by New York City Council Speaker Corey Johnson, urging the Bronx Zoo to release Happy and Patty (the other isolated elephant at the zoo) to a sanctuary. The Nonhuman Right’s Project has just been assigned a judge in the Bronx to hear Happy’s case. Kevin is a man who clearly loves his work and is incredibly passionate about the fight for rights for these magnificent beings. He shares why the Nonhuman Rights Project will not stop until these animals are considered persons in the eyes of the law and why it matters, not only for the animals that they are fighting for, but for us humans too.

On Sunday, June 23rd the winter racing season at Santa Anita racetrack in Southern California finally came to a close. And on Saturday June 22nd the 30th horse died in racing or training at Santa Anita this year. That’s a lot of horse deaths. But there are a lot of horse deaths every year. In 2018, 493 thoroughbreds died in racing or training. And so, there’s been a lot of talk about reforming horse racing. But the reforms that have been put in place aren’t really working: horses are still dying every week. Patrick Battuello has been reporting on animal rights issues since he launched the Animal Rights blog for the Times Union (Albany, NY) in 2009. In 2013, he founded the organization, Horse Racing Wrongs. They aren’t interested in reforms. Instead, they are dedicated to a a complete abolition of horse racing, period. And with all these deaths, I can’t see how more people aren’t going to get behind them.

Mike Wolf spent four years working undercover on factory farms. He has seen thousands of animals living in deplorable conditions and witnessed abuse that I think few of us can even imagine. He’s now Director of Investigations for the animal protection organization, Compassion Over Killing.  Mike has led investigative efforts into meat, dairy, and egg facilities. He has overseen multiple investigations that have gone viral, sparking a national conversation about the treatment of farmed animals, and ultimately, impacting meaningful change. Among the investigative efforts Mike has led are a 2015 investigation into Hormel supplier Quality Pork Processors, exposing the dangers of a cruel USDA high-speed slaughter pilot program; and a 2016 Tyson Foods investigation that offered the first hidden-camera look inside broiler breeder factory farms and provided hard-hitting evidence that drove unprecedented trials and convictions for cruelty to chickens. Mike also has a strong passion for vegan fitness, and hopes to show how easy it is to gain vegan muscle as a member of PlantBuilt’s Powerlifting team. Since Mike and I met at his home in Arizona this spring, Compassion Over Killing has released another investigation. This time it was Martin Farms, a dairy farm in Pennsylvania that is a supplier for Nestle. The footage that they released is shocking to say the least. It’s absolutely horrific and extremely difficult to watch but I beg you – watch it. Share it. It's the only way that change happens. As hard is it is for us to sit through and watch these videos – think about the animals that are actually living through this. Watch the video.

Delcianna Winders is an animal law attorney, scholar, and professor. She has recently joined the Lewis and Clark Law School for Animal Studies where she will lead the newly formed animal law litigation clinic focused on the legal protections and rights of farmed animals. This is the nation’s first-ever clinic focused exclusively on animal law litigation, and with its creation, Lewis & Clark Law School becomes the first law school in the world to host two separate clinics devoted to animal law. (The existing animal law clinic, founded in 2008, focuses on policy.) Delcianna has practiced animal law for more than a decade in a variety of settings and has taught the subject for nearly as long. As Vice President & Deputy General Counsel at the PETA Foundation, Professor Winders led a team of lawyers, veterinarians, and scientists to successfully transfer over a hundred individual animals from appalling conditions to reputable sanctuaries. She originated the legal theory underpinning the recently filed first-ever lawsuit brought by a horse and also developed and brought litigation that successfully ended the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s decades-long policy of secretly and illegally issuing Endangered Species Act permits to roadside zoos and circuses.  She is leading a team of future lawyers in the fight to change a system that has perpetuated enormous amounts of unnecessary suffering toward animals throughout the US. Animals everywhere are very lucky to have Delcianna on their side. 

Kathy Stevens is the founder of the Catskill Animal Sanctuary, or CAS. It’s based in upstate New York and she founded it in 2001 with a mission to rescue farmed animals, ignite social change to end their exploitation, and to champion vegan living. CAS has rescued and been haven to more than 5000 animals over the past two decades and currently has over 300 incredibly happy residents.  Kathy is also the author of 2 books: Where the Blind Horse Sings and Animal Camp: Lessons in Love and Hope from Rescued Farm Animals, and she is one of the best voices on veganism that I have ever had the pleasure to have listened to.  

He has spent the past two decades fighting to create a better world for animals and it all started by accident. While he was in grad school in the 90s, he worked security at a hospital at night. One night he heard some horrible cries behind closed doors and he proceeded to investigate. And, what he saw changed his life forever – horrific experiments taking place on live kitten’s brains. He took photos and contacted PETA, and thus began a seven-year stretch as an undercover investigator. He worked in fur farms, factory farms, circuses, primate labs - really in every industry where that terrible things are done to animals under massive secrecy. And in all of these industries, the only people who are really checking on anything are the animal undercover investigators.   Matt’s footage has created awareness and sparked huge change in many of these worlds. In order to get the footage, he like all other undercover investigators, had to work horrible jobs with long grueling hours and minimal pay all while having to perform jobs that harmed, exploited, or killed the very animals he has dedicated his life to protecting. He has witnessed the worst of humanity yet somehow he’s positive, hopeful, and all love and light. Since his undercover days, he has worked for many organizations - all in the fight for animal rights, freedom, safety, and welfare. He’s an advocate, an activist, and a hero. Animals everywhere are lucky to have this man on their side.

Chrissy Beckles is the founder of the Sato Project, an organization that has been fighting to save the dogs of Puerto Rico for close to a decade. They truly couldn't have a better leader than they do in Chrissy. Not only is she one of the toughest, most resilient human beings I've ever met, but she's also got real skills in the ring. She's a Golden Gloves champion boxer, and she uses every one of her skills in the fight to save these dogs. There are 250,000 stray dogs living on Puerto Rico, and many of them are starving, emaciated, diseased, sick, wounded, and abused. The conditions for these animals are dire across the island and were made much worse in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria. Chrissy originally went to Puerto Rico in 2008, because her husband - a stuntman, was working on a movie there. She went down for a weeklong vacation from her busy life in NYC. At the time, she had a big corporate job and spent her remaining hours training in the ring. So, a little getaway sounded like a good idea. Before she arrived, her husband had warned her that some of the dogs near where they were staying were in pretty bad shape. She was expecting to see a bunch of sad skinny strays roaming around, but it was far worse than she ever could have imagined. In fact, what she saw changed her life forever. There were hundreds of dogs in beyond deplorable conditions. As soon as she arrived and saw the state that these dogs were living in, she knew that she had to do something. She spent that vacation running around the island helping as many dogs as she could. When she got back on the plane to go home, she said to herself, "You know what? I need to do more." Which became kind of her mantra for the next 13 years. Currently, she lives in Puerto Rico full time and has saved and is still saving thousands upon thousands of unwanted dogs. Hurricane Maria almost knocked them out. It undid much of the progress that The Sato Project had made in the years previous. But, just like in the ring, Chrissy got up and went back in. Almost every minute of her days is spent saving these dogs and giving as many of them as possible a life of freedom, safety, and love. The Sato Project (and 26 other organizations) are also involved in an enormous effort to spay and neuter 100,000 dogs on the island, which will make a huge impact on the stray problem that has overtaken the island.   Little did Chrissy know that when she took that first trip to Puerto Rico many years ago, her life would be forever changed. And, as you will hear, she is beyond grateful for that. So are thousands of dogs.

Susan Wagner is a hero to horses everywhere. She is the President and founder of Equine Advocates, a horse rescue in Chatham New York. They rescue horses from horrifically abusive situations and have saved hundreds that were literally en route to the slaughterhouse. For decades, they have been an enormous force in the fight against horse slaughter.  We don’t slaughter horses on American soil anymore – the last horse slaughter plant closed in 2007, instead we send 100,000 horses a year to horrific deaths in Mexican and Canadian slaughterhouses. The horses are from every industry, including: quarter horses, racehorses, draft and plow horses, summer camp horses, wild mustangs, and even backyard pets – the slaughter pipeline doesn’t discriminate. It’s gruesome, terrifying, and way too popular.  The horses are sent to auction by their owners and are placed in filthy, over crowded pens with a ton of other horses - many of whom are sick and injured. From there, many are purchased by kill buyers – who are specifically at the auctions to fill their trucks with enough horses to head either directly to the slaughter plants or they’ll take them to a feed lot to fatten them up pre-slaughter and then transport them to the Mexican and Canadian plants. The horses can spend up to 30 or 35 hours on these trucks, packed in without food or water. Once they arrive at the slaughter plant, they are soon after stunned and then killed. The process is cruel and often the stunning doesn’t work because the horses are afraid and duck and dart their heads so that the guns miss them, so a few moments later when they are hung by their back leg and have their throats slashed, they are still totally conscious. It is a barbaric and cruel industry – so horrible that we don’t allow it in the US yet somehow, we are totally fine with shipping tens of thousands of our horses over the borders to go through these agonizing miserable deaths.  Susan founded Equine Advocates in the 90s, after having spent 15 years working for the racetrack. During her time at the track, she had no idea that the slaughter industry even existed – neither did many other people back then, it was a secretive world and that unless you were directly involved it was a complete unknown. It wasn’t until she left the racing world and got a job at the NY zoological society that she learned that we slaughter horses that was the moment that she changed everything.  She started Equine Advocates from her apartment in Queens in 1996, rescuing and saving abused and slaughter bound horses while working to change laws and policy all over the US. In 2004 Equine Advocates established a 140 acre sanctuary in Chatam, NY. There are 82 horses who have permanent homes at the sanctuary, most of them came from horrifically abusive situations, or were on their way to the slaughterhouse or both.  It’s like they all won the lottery – they live safely, in beautiful surroundings, with everything they need – including a ton of love. The lucky horses that have made it to Equine Advocates come from every industry including the horrible world of PMU. PMU horses are horses used to make Premarin – a hormone replacement drug made by Pfizer that women have been taking since the 1940s for menopause. It was discovered years ago that it causes cancer and a whole lot of other terrible things, but there’s still a huge market for it. In order to make it, horses are kept pregnant kept in tiny confined stalls with concrete floors. It’s a living hell – they can’t move or lie down, they can’t do anything except eat, drink and urinate. Their urine is captured to make the drug. Shortly after the horses give birth, the babies are taken away from them soon after so that they can be impregnated again and produce more of the drug. The foals are either brought to feed lots, fattened up, and slaughtered or they become Premarin horses. It’s a bizzaro, unnecessary, and horrible business, but it seems, if there’s a market for it big drug companies don’t have a problem with all the abuse behind it. I think a lot of women still don’t know what’s involved in this drug. Susan has rescued a ton of PMU horses and their off spring and has also been a big opponent of the Premarin industry. Actually, anywhere that horses are being abused or sent to slaughter, Susan is out there fighting.

Dr. Andrew Halloran is the director of chimpanzee care at Save the Chimps in Fort Pierce, Florida. Andrew has spent the past 20 years working to improve and save the lives of chimpanzees, not only chimps in captivity here in the U.S. with, but chimps in the wild as well in Sierra Leone. He has truly dedicated his life to these apes, and he's got incredible stories, a wealth of knowledge and a huge heart. 20 years ago, Andrew was right out of college, living in New York City in a little apartment with a bunch of roommates, working at a bookstore, not really knowing what he was going to do with his life. He’d had a life long fascination with apes, but never thought it was something he'd end up doing until one night when there was an AOL chat room, which was a thing in the 90s  - where you could write in and talk to Koko the gorilla. Koko was the famous gorilla that spoke sign language. People would write in and Koko’s interpreter would respond with whatever Koko had signed. The responses were somewhat inane and nonsensical, but Koko’s caretaker would then link them to something else and explain why that answer made sense. Except to Andrew it didn't make sense. He thought why are we trying to teach apes how to be more human instead of getting a better understanding of apes? Right then and there he decided that's it. He knew what he wanted to do and shortly after the Koko debacle, he moved to Florida, started a Masters program and got a job at an animal park working with chimpanzees. Eventually, he earned his PhD, became a primatologist, and spent 10 years at that animal park before moving on to academia as well as a decade long project in Sierra Leone, focused on chimps in the wild and the loss of habitat. He’s been at Save the Chimps for the past few years. It’s an incredible sanctuary, founded by Dr. Carol Noon in 1997.  At the time, our space program was still using chimps for research and in '97 they decided they were going to finally retire the chimps and gave them to a lab in New Mexico, called the Coulston Foundation; which had more animal welfare violations than any lab in the country and was a living hell for animals. Dr. Noon sued the Air Force on behalf of the chimpanzees and got permanent custody of the 21 chimps, she saved them from Coulston and Save the Chimps was born. A few years later, when the Coulston Foundation was on the verge of bankruptcy, they offered to sell their laboratory lands and their buildings to Save the Chimps and they donated their remaining 266 chimpanzees as well. Save the Chimps then built the 200-acre sanctuary in Fort Pierce.   The chimps live on 12 large (2 to 3 acres) islands with each island housing around 20 chimps. All of the chimps that live at Save the Chimps came from laboratory research, the pet trade, the entertainment industry and the original space chimps. Most spent years or decades living in horrific conditions, in confined metal cages. Many of them never saw other chimps, and were tested on for decades. There are a few cages on display on the property, they are set up so that people can see where these chimps came from. They look like exactly what they are - tiny metal prison cells. In 2015, the U.S. department official wildlife made chimps endangered which meant that the NIH would no longer fund research done on chimpanzees; which shut down all the biomedical research, but because of lack of sanctuary space and just overall slowness with how all of this works, there's still 700 chimps sitting in labs just languishing. They are waiting for homes or waiting to be moved or at least, that’s the hope. The other chimpanzees at Save the Chimps come from either the entertainment industry or the pet trade and in both cases, the chimps are purchased from pet dealers when they're babies. They're two or three months old, and they're tiny and they're adorable. But as soon as the chimps turn four or five years old, they are too much for the owner to handle. They get big, and can be aggressive and destructive - because they are chimps, not humans.  Sadly, many of them don't end up in incredible places like Save the Chimps. They end up in terrible places like road side zoos, breeder facilities, and metal cages. I went down to Save the Chimps and spent the afternoon with Andrew.  It was magical. To see these chimps who had gone from living in isolation in tiny horrible metal cages to now living in communities on these islands, in nature and having friends and families and communities to share their days with was absolutely incredible. Andrew is a wealth of information and knowledge and wisdom and every single chimp here and in the wild is lucky to have this man on their side.

Jan Creamer is the president and co-founder of ADI, Animal Defenders International, an organization that has been around since the nineties when Jan and her husband Tim Phillips founded it, and since then Jan and Tim have changed the lives of countless animals all over the globe. One of ADI’s enormously successful campaigns is Stop Circus Suffering. Thanks to Jan, Tim, and ADI, the use of wild animals in circuses has been banned in 45 countries thus far. From Serbia to Scotland to Singapore, wild animals no longer have to live the torturous lives of constant confinement, transport, abuse, and nonstop suffering. In order to get these bans passed, ADI spends years doing undercover investigations in each country. Once they have enough evidence showing the terrible lives these animals are forced to endure, including being stuck in tiny enclosures, without room to move, for their entire lives, they present it to the people, the media, and the government. The government then makes it illegal to use wild animals in circuses and the ban becomes law. But, that isn’t enough. Animal Defenders International stays in each country until every single circus hands over their animals. They hand them over to ADI (sometimes with resistance) who then moves them to temporary sanctuaries, brings them back to health, and then eventually relocates them to permanent sanctuaries all over the world. It’s and absolutely incredible feat that they have accomplished. There’s never ever a good reason to have a wild animal in a circus. Aside from the fact that they're abused and treated horribly, it is absolutely inhumane and cruel to force them to live lives on the road, in small cages and trucks and trailers. Most of them are in spaces not much bigger than their body, and that's where they spend 95% of their time. The time not confined is when they are forced to perform, which none of them want to do and that's usually where a lot of the beatings and abuse takes place. Tigers are in small barred covered cages for 22 hours a day. Elephants are chained and can’t move more than a couple of feet for their entire lives. And all of these animals are in transport constantly. Every day or few days, they're traveling somewhere new on the backs of trailers, trains, and trucks. ADI's conducted undercover studies in all of these countries for years, and every time that they're behind the scenes, they film violence and abuse at every circus on the planet. It doesn't matter what country, what they claim their laws are, the abuse is the same across the board. Jan, Tim, and ADI have truly changed the way that the world views animal entertainment. They’ve shifted culture all over the planet. They aren’t stopping either; they’ve just built an ADI sanctuary in South Africa, and have many more countries on their list. There are still too many that don’t yet have nationwide bans, including the US.