The Humane Society of the United States is the nation's largest animal-protection organization, with nearly 7 million constituents. The HSUS was founded in 1954 to promote the humane treatment of animals and to foster respect, understanding, and compassion for all creatures. Today our message of care and protection embraces not only the animal kingdom but also the Earth and its environment. To achieve our goals, The HSUS works through legal, educational, legislative, and investigative means. The HSUS's efforts in the United States are facilitated by our ten regional offices; we are not, however, affiliated with any local animal shelters or humane organizations. Our programs include those in humane education, wildlife and habitat protection, farm animals and bioethics, companion animals, and animal research issues. The HSUS's worldwide outreach is supported by our global family of affiliated organizations. 

History & Organisation

Founded in 1954, The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) envisions a world in which people satisfy the physical and emotional needs of domestic animals; protect wild animals and their environments; and change their relationships with other animals, evolving from exploitation and harm to respect and compassion. 

During the last 47 years, The HSUS has emerged as the world’s largest animal protection organization, encompassing ten regional offices; four affiliates; an international arm; 250 staff members, including veterinarians, wildlife biologists, lawyers, animal behaviorists, and other professionals; and seven million members and constituents. One in every fifty Americans supports The HSUS. 

Regional Offices 

The HSUS’s system of nine regional offices has served as many as 46 states. Regional offices extend The HSUS’s national programs into the community and serve the needs of local interests and constituents. The recent series of spay/neuter education clinics on Indian reservations in the Western United States is one example of the regional offices’ work within communities.

Humane Society International 

• In 1992 Humane Society International, The HSUS's international arm, began working around the world to protect animals. HSI has worked to reduce the suffering of millions of animals destined for slaughter as food in developing countries worldwide with the UN Food and Agriculture Organization through workshops and print materials to promote humane slaughter. 
• In 1997 HSI and HSUS staff join with staff from other organizations to provide training in how to handle stray animals to Taiwanese veterinarians and animal welfare workers. This led to Taiwan passing its first animal protection law in 1998. 
• HSI provided training and other assistance in the establishment of a humane animal control program in Nassau (Bahamas) in 1998. 
• In both 1992 and 1999, HSI offered the Neo-tropical Wildlife Rehabilitation Symposia in Costa Rica to address the problem of animals and birds confiscated in the illegal wildlife trade. Workshops in Peru focused on the care, management and rehabilitation of captive wildlife. 
• Between 1996 and 2000, HSI secured protection for endangered and threatened species and helped establish groundbreaking companion animal management legislation in Australia. 
• In 1998, as a result of tireless lobbying by HSI and others, the European Union voted to phase out the use of driftnets by EU fishers by the year 2002. 
• In 1998, by invitation, HSI educated members of the British House of Commons on the use of pregnant mare’s urine for hormone replacement therapy and on the link between animal abuse and violence to humans. 
• When, in 1998 and 1999, the United Nations Food & Agriculture Organization sought standards for humane handling, transport, and slaughter of farm animals in developing countries, HSI helped provide written guidelines, developed a poster, and supported regional training workshops in Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean. 
• Starting in 1998 and progressing through 2000, under an historic agreement with the Government of the Republic of China, HSI provided a series of workshops to train Taiwanese animal control officers, shelter workers, and veterinary inspectors in skills needed to address stray animal problems and implement new animal control legislation. 
• Begun in 1998, HSI’s Scholarship and Internship programs have enabled extensive foreign participation in specific training events in the United States. 

HSUS Major Programs

The HSUS initiates major programs to protect America's most beloved companion animals, dogs and cats, but we also work to promote the protection of all animals, wild and domestic, through investigation, rehabilitation, public education, political and consumer advocacy, and litigation. 

HSUS Wildlife Program

The HSUS is dedicated to protecting all wildlife from cruelty, exploitation, and loss of habitat.

We lend a strong and credible voice on behalf of wild animals wherever decisions are made that significantly affect individual lives, populations, or species.

We work to preserve wild lands, to protect the inherent right of wild creatures to live out their natural lives in their natural habitats, and to improve the quality of life for wild animals being held in captivity.

The following is a list of The HSUS’s major campaigns and achievements relating to wildlife:

Wildlife 

• In a landmark case, The HSUS’s 1968 lawsuit secured permanent protection for the wild horses of the Pryor mountain range of Montana and Wyoming. 
• In 1971 The HSUS helped pass the Wild Horse and Free-Roaming Burro Act. 
• The HSUS helped pass the African Elephant Conservation Act in 1988. 
• The HSUS successfully lobbied for the passage of the Rhino and Tiger Conservation Act of 1994. 
• In both 1997 and 1999, The HSUS defeated Maryland bills to legalize the taking of snapping turtles with hook and line, bills promoted by the duck hunting lobby. 

Marine Mammals 

• The HSUS-supported Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972 passes. 
• In 1982 The HSUS was an integral part of the successful campaign to ban commercial whaling internationally. (The ban was implemented in 1986.) 
• An HSUS law suit halts the commercial slaughter of North Pacific fur seals for their fur in 1985. 
• In 1990 worked to create the Dolphin-Safe label. 
• The International Dolphin Conservation Act of 1992 passes, in response to an HSUS-spurred consumer campaign. 
• The HSUS helped pass the first state-wide ban on the capture or display of whales and dolphins in South Carolina in 1992. 
• In 1994 The HSUS joined with Free Willy producers Richard Donner and Lauren Shuler-Donner and Earth Island Institute to found the Free Willy Keiko Foundation (now Ocean Futures). In 1996 the foundation moved the seriously ill orca Keiko from a Mexican marine park to a state-of-the-art facility The HSUS helped build at Newport’s Oregon Coast Aquarium. In 1998 Keiko was again relocated to a sea pen in Iceland, where he is being rehabilitated to prepare him for release into the wild. 

Wild Birds 

• The HSUS-supported Wild Bird Conservation Act was passed in 1992. 
• An HSUS lawsuit halted the killing of laughing gulls at Massachusetts’ Monomoy Island National Wildlife Refuge in 1997. 
• In 1999 The HSUS forced the federal government to withdraw an extended hunting season for snow geese and conduct a more extensive environmental study. 

Hunting and Trapping 

• The HSUS worked with the legislature to secure a ban on steel traps in New Jersey (1984) and succeeded through ballot initiatives in banning trapping in Arizona (1994), California (1998), Colorado (1996), and Massachusetts (1996). 
• The HSUS advanced initiatives to ban bear baiting and hound hunting in Colorado (1992), Massachusetts (1996), Oregon (1994), and Washington (1996). 
• We fought off attacks on the ban on mountain lion hunting in California and worked for the ban on the hound hunting of mountain lions in Oregon and the hound hunting of bobcat, lynx, and mountain lions Washington (all in 1996). 
• We thwarted attempts to institute bear hunting in Florida (1992), Maryland (1996), and New Jersey (both 1998 and 1999). 
• A 1998 HSUS-led assault led to an end of the use of Compound 1080 and sodium cyanide in California. 
• An HSUS ballot initiative eliminated the statutory requirement that hunters occupy five seats on the Massachusetts Fisheries and Wildlife Board in 1998. 
• In 1999 an HSUS-backed ban on canned hunting was passed in Oregon. 

Fur 

• Initiated the Shame of Fur campaign in 1988. 
• The HSUS lobbied against the U.S. government’s $2 million annual subsidy to the mink industry. In 1995 Congress eliminated the subsidy. 
• In 1998 The HSUS released the results of international investigation into the killing of millions of dogs and cats in Asia for their fur. The fur is traded in the United States and across the  globe. 
• Fur Free 2000™, The HSUS’s consumer-driven, activist oriented campaign to end the use of animal fur in the new century, is launched in 1998. 

Immunocontraception 

• In 1988 The HSUS began applying the fertility-control vaccine PZP to wild horses, thus pioneering the use of immunocontraception for nonlethal population control. The vaccine is used, as an alternative to hunting, at numerous sites across the country to control deer populations and is used in zoos on more than sixty species to control reproduction. 
• The HSUS began working with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and the U.S. Park Service in 1991 to replace lethal population management methods with immunocontraception. The U.S. Park Service is currently using PZP as a management tool, and the BLM is preparing to do the same. 
• In 1993 The HSUS applies PZP to wild deer on Fire Island, New York—the vaccine’s first field trial on deer.
• In 1997, The HSUS began applying immunocontraception to the elephants in South Africa’s Kruger National Park to help find a non-lethal method of addressing the park’s growing elephant population. 

Urban Wildlife 

• In 1995 The HSUS formed its Wildlife Land Trust, protecting habitats across the country. Hunting, trapping, logging, and other practices that cause harm to wildlife are strictly forbidden on lands protected by the Trust. 
• The HSUS established a Wildlife Rehabilitation Training Center for professionals in this growing field in 1995. The center became a year-round facility as of April 16, 1999
• 1998 The HSUS Urban Wildlife Sanctuary Program launched.