Please don’t forget to make your year-end gift to Friends of Animals.

All of our accomplishments are because of you. If you aren’t a member yet, there’s no better time. Donate now, and help us right more wrongs. Your gift helps free more animals from cruelty and institutionalized exploitation around the world.

Here’s a short list of some of our 2019 success stories to chirp, bark, whinny and pant-hoot about:

● Passed the Big 5 African Trophies Act in the Senate in both Connecticut and New York. The legislation, drafted by FoA, would ban the importation, possession, sale and transportation of the trophies of elephants, leopards, lions, giraffes and black and white rhinos, all vulnerable, threatened or endangered species.

● Defeated yet another attempt to establish a bear hunt in Connecticut and advocated instead for legislation requiring non-lethal management, including requiring residents to take responsible non-lethal steps to prevent conflict.

●Introduced draft legislation to council members to ban the sale of fur in world fashion capital NYC and testified in support of it after a fur-ban bill was introduced by NYC Council Speaker Corey Johnson. We are working to get it signed into law within the next two years

● Increased the total number of cats and dogs we’ve helped spay and neuter through our low-cost certificate program to 2.8 million.

● Welcomed an unprecedented number of animals to our Texas-based sanctuary Primarily Primates, enabling the rescue of 11 primates including three chimpanzees from a failing sanctuary. Up to eight more chimps may arrive in 2020 if we can raise the funds for their lifelong care.

●Won lawsuits that: moved the queen conch back to fair and full consideration under the Endangered Species Act; set an Aug.5, 2020 deadline for designating habitat for the yellow-billed cuckoo; required the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to finalize its Endangered Species Act listing for the scarlet macaw; halted the policy change that had allowed the Bureau of Land Management to sell two dozen wild horses at a time with no questions asked and stopped a struggling Oregon facility from sending chimpanzees to a research lab in Iowa. The chimps are now in the care of a new-established sanctuary called Freedom for Apes in Oregon

●Published op-eds in local and national newspapers to raise awareness about barbaric leghold traps; single use plastics; the dangers of pesticides; cruelty of the fur industry; frequency of hunting accidents; immorality of trophy hunting of Africa’s Big Five and the trauma experienced by mammals in captivity.

●Supported legislation for a federal ban on trophy hunting (in addition to the CT and NY state bans); a plastic bag ban and a leghold trap ban in Connecticut, prohibiting animal-killing contests in New York and Arizona; a pesticide ban on municipal property in NYC and requiring bird-friendly glass on buildings in NYC and New York state.

● Continued sponsorship of the Chimpanzee Rehabilitation Project in Africa—an island sanctuary located in the River Gambia National Park. It is home to 129 chimpanzees, who live in relative freedom—without bars or cages—in four groups on three of the national park’s five islands.

Thank you for your help and let’s make 2020 even more successful, together.