“Direct Care” By Whom?

HSUS recently bragged that it is “consistently at the top among hands-on services provided by any humane organization.” That was right before we discovered that HSUS’s self-calculated “direct care” for animals plummeted last year compared to 2010. As we’ve dug a little deeper, we’ve had more questions about HSUS’s claim.

For example, most of the “direct care” HSUS counts is spay/neuter procedures. And that “direct” care may actually be provided by others—HSUS just puts on the PR to promote it.

HSUS also brags that it operates several wildlife and horse sanctuaries. Here’s a little background on them:

Black Beauty Ranch—a 1,300-acre Texas ranch originally operated solely by the Fund for Animals. The Fund merged with HSUS in 2005, and HSUS is now listed as a “partner.”

South Florida Wildlife Center—this was actually founded in 1969. From what we can see, this group (known as the “Wildlife Care Center SPCA of Broward County”) is still a separate organization from HSUS.

The Fund for Animals Wildlife Center—founded in 1984 in Southern California. Helps rehabilitate feral cats, cougars, birds, etc.

The Cape Wildlife Center—founded in 2000 and located in Massachusetts, currently run by the Fund for Animals “in partnership” with HSUS.

Rabbit Sanctuary, Inc.—located in South Carolina, it’s a legally separate group “supported by” the Fund for Animals.

Duchess Sanctuary – this Oregon horse sanctuary was apparently only “made possible” (HSUS’s words) because of $3.5 million in grant money to buy and manage the property from The Roberts Foundation, the Ark Watch Foundation, and the Ark’s founder. (Given that HSUS has $200 million in assets, couldn’t it spare a few million?)

The Doris Day Horse Rescue and Adoption Center—started in 2011, it’s a center on the Black Beauty Ranch that received a quarter of a million dollars in support from the Doris Day Animal Foundation, an independent group affiliated with HSUS, and operated by HSUS and the Fund for Animals.

We’re not sure how many HSUS resources go towards these groups. The Fund for Animals still files a separate tax return, which indicates to us that it’s still a separate group. The Fund’s latest return indicates that it spent almost $1.5 million on the two wildlife centers. The Rabbit Sanctuary is a separate group from FFA and HSUS, as well.

Records indicate that the Fund sent about $55,000 to the South Florida Wildlife Center and Rabbit Sanctuary in 2010. However, we don’t see HSUS giving money to either group that year. Yet Wayne Pacelle is off telling a TEDx crowd that “we run a rabbit sanctuary.” Um, not really—we’d have to say someone named Caroline Gilbert does.

Here’s what it seems like: Almost all of these “direct care” projects were started by groups other than HSUS and simply brought under HSUS’s umbrella through mergers/acquisitions. As far as we can tell, these sanctuaries are largely funded by HSUS affiliates.

Consider this disclaimer on the Fund for Animals’ website:

While The Fund and The HSUS are partners in these efforts, donations to The Fund for Animals are used specifically to support Fund programs, such as the direct animal care centers…

So it seems like these are “Fund programs”—not HSUS programs. (The Fund is a legally separate group, so it makes sense.) HSUS “direct care” programs only make up about 8 percent of its budget—and a lot of this seems to be directed toward non-sanctuary uses.

Is it really intellectually honest for HSUS to take credit in the manner it does? In its most recent tax return, HSUS says to reference the separate tax returns of the Fund for Animals and the SPCA Wildlife Center when it discusses the sanctuaries, writing that the Fund is “responsible for most HSUS animal care facilities.”

Think we’re splitting hairs? The Fund raises money on its own letterhead.  There seems to be potential for double- or triple-counting. In fact, in one blog post, Wayne Pacelle claims that 60,000 animals were “cared for by The HSUS”—but in that tally he includes 27,000 animals that received care from Humane Society International, a separate group. See what we mean?

We’re not going to knock whatever help HSUS provides for these projects. But there’s a lot of talk going on. Can’t HSUS do more?

HSUS Lawyers: Not an Endangered Species

Put yourself in the Humane Society of the United States’ shoes. You bring in over $100 million a year and you give only 1 percent of it to pet shelters—the real humane societies that take care of abandoned and abused dogs and cats (the animals you are all too happy to use in your ads). So what do you do with all that money?

Along with stuffing it away in hedge funds and your pension plan and, of course, rolling it back into more fundraising, you can afford your own law firm—50 in-house attorneys, to be precise. And all those lawyers need something to do, so you can have them sue over the smallest thing.

That’s the case in the Pacific Northwest. The Daily Astorian notes that HSUS has once again filed a federal lawsuit attempting to stop government authorizes from euthanizing a few sea lions in order to decrease pressure on the endangered salmon population.

Just what’s at stake here? Thirty sea lions out of a population of 300,000—0.01% of the animals. There’s no chance this will harm the sea lion population, which biologists estimate can sustain 9,000 deaths a year without issue. And in this case, the government is trying to protect another species—salmon. But no matter, HSUS is suing anyway.

Frankly, we’re not sure what difference killing 30 sea lions is going to have, but if that’s what the experts say, then so be it. HSUS, on the other hand, doesn’t have expertise on much besides the “conflict industry.”

So what’s the driving factor?

Is it HSUS naivety? Possibly. As the Daily Astorian astutely puts it, “wildlife management is not for the squeamish or those whose reality was formulated by Walt Disney cartoons of the 1950s.”

Is it a “blame humans first” philosophy? Maybe. HSUS’s problem seems to be that the government is favoring people (who are responsible for 17 percent of the salmon deaths) over sea lions (which are responsible for 2 percent). How “speciesist” of us—even if the seal management is driven in part to protect salmon.

Or is it to make hay out of a non-issue, keeping HSUS in the media and ginning up another potential fundraising pitch?

Ah, of course. Perhaps it’s a modified form of Occam’s razor—when in doubt, the option that involves HSUS raising more money is the most likely.  HSUS raises plenty of money off of seals. Salmon, however, don’t quite have the same wallet-opening draw. Even if you call them “sea kittens.”

They don’t call HSUS a “factory fundraising” machine for nothing. You need to perpetually manufacture controversy to keep the dollars flowing in. After all, 50 lawyers don’t just pay for themselves.

HSUS Howls Lack Grey Matter

Last week, HSUS CEO Wayne Pacelle took to his blog to vent about a new Hollywood flick called “The Grey,” starring Liam Neeson. The basic plot is that a plane crashes in the frozen wilderness and Neeson and six other survivors struggle to make it back to civilization, while being molested by a pack of wolves. Pacelle warned people to “stay away.” His gripe is that “The Grey”—a fictional movie—takes liberties with how grey wolves really act.

Pacelle’s solution is to watch “Babe”—a movie with talking animals—or “Bambi,” a Disney cartoon. Does anybody else see the irony here?

The political correctness coming from the animal rights movement is ridiculous. (PETA too voiced its criticism of "The Grey" for making wolves look bad—unsurprising, given PETA and HSUS have the same agenda.) By asking people to watch one form of animal fiction over another, Pacelle’s doing what he rails against. Deer are not like Bambi, and pigs are not like Babe. (Ask a hog farmer.)

Wolves are predators. Of people? Not so much. Of people’s livestock? Sure.

But let’s not forget: It’s just entertainment. It’s Hollywood, not a real-world debate on wolf delisting. It’s…fiction, not a documentary on animals.

Asking Hollywood not to play up the scary wolf stereotype is like asking Jackie Chan not to make martial arts movies. What next? Will HSUS tell elementary school libraries to stop stocking Little Red Riding Hood or Three Little Pigs?

It’s hard to believe the average viewer can’t make the distinction. And the movie itself is about much more than the survivors’ struggles with the wolves, but also about their internal struggles.

We have to wonder: Did Pacelle even see the movie? His boycott call came two days before the movie even opened. Pacelle’s post was full of vague, broad assertions but light on details. It’s doubtful he would have been invited to the premier. And it’s not like MegaVideo is still around.

Of course, all the bluster from HSUS and PETA isn’t doing much: “The Grey” was the top-grossing movie across the country last weekend. For all his talk about HSUS being mainstream, Pacelle's cries apparently fell on deaf ears (except for a few comments he printed from readers, including one saying she would misanthropically “root for” the wolves).

If the noble wolf is such a delicate creature, then why doesn’t Wayne Pacelle go live among them once his book tour is over? One man has already. Wayne is always playing up his “bond” with animals, so we’re confident he could fit right in.

Is Modern Man a Part of Nature, or Apart from Nature?

We’ve written before about the “humane paradox,” namely that the “protecting ‘all animals’” goal of the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) ultimately falls apart when some animals naturally harm other animals. Lions eat gazelles, after all—an act that surely violates the gazelle’s “right” to live and provides it a less than humane death.

An HSUS lawsuit filed last week against the National Marine Fisheries Service ups the ante even further: HSUS is objecting to the government agency’s chosen method of resolving the conflict between two endangered species.

The Bonneville Dam is on the Washington-Oregon border, about 150 miles up the Columbia River from the Pacific Ocean. Sea lions congregate there and feast on the salmon population.

The dam, naturally, has made it hard for the fish to get further upstream, despite “fish ladders” built to facilitate their travel. It’s easy pickings for the sea lions, but this puts them in competition with both four Native American tribes authorized to fish for salmon, as well as conservation efforts designed to protect them. The National Marine Fisheries Service has chosen to reconcile these competing interests by killing a few of the seals with the biggest appetites.

It’s debatable whether it’s necessary for the government to mark some of the “troublesome” sea lions for a euphemistic “lethal taking.” Still, the feds have only killed 27 animals under this program since 2008—or about 0.01 percent of the 265,000-strong California sea lion population.

HSUS, predictably, objects to every seal death. But one of its affiliated organizations is at least daring to ask the obvious: “[W]hen one endangered species is the main food source for yet another endangered species..how do you protect them both?”

How Many Animals Does HSUS (Actually) Care For?

The Humane Society of the United States hauls in $100 million per year, and has another $191 million in assets. So you might think this national “humane society” would be able to help millions of animals. After all, HSUS shares less than 1 percent of its budget with hands-on pet shelters, so the other 99 percent must be spent directly on caring for Garfield and Odie, right?

Not so fast: It’s true that HSUS runs a few animal sanctuaries—generally for horses and wildlife, though, not pets. But HSUS helpfully, at least in two recent annual reports, put exact numbers on the animals it claims to be caring for.

Could HSUS be doing more? We’ll let you decide.

Nine Lives and Humane Paradoxes

If you don’t read Wayne Pacelle’s blog, you’re not missing much. It’s good if you want a primer on PR “spin” (see: Michael Vick doing “a good job as a pet owner”) or tips on shameless self-promotion. But that’s about it.

Every now and then, however, there’s something worth commenting on. We had to go back to December for this one, but it’s worth a discussion.

Here’s the setup: A University of Nebraska report concluded that feral cats should largely be eradicated, and recommended how to do it— even including gunshots as one possible option. Why kill the local cluster of wild kitty-cats?

Feral cats … cause significant losses to populations of native birds, small mammals, reptiles, and amphibians; can transmit several diseases such as rabies and toxoplasmosis; and may be a general nuisance.

We’ll leave for another day the substantive debate about what to do with feral cat colonies, and the (fully justified) outrage at the idea of shooting cats in the head. There’s no end of opinions on that topic.

But Pacelle’s reaction is what interests us most. He writes:

The issues some people have with cats are nothing new. For more than a hundred years there have been periodic calls for the eradication of cats, emanating largely from those who are passionate about protecting wild birds.

The HSUS mission includes protecting both cats and birds, and the challenges in balancing such goals are not trivial.

Here’s our question: How can you protect both cats and birds—or both orcas and seals—or both sharks and fish?

Is this a new kind of “humane paradox”? Is there institutional arrogance in any claim to protect (as HSUS’s membership magazine’s title promises) “All Animals”? Or is Mother Nature just toying with Pacelle?

Dharma Passes the Hat

On December 7 of last year, “Dharma and Greg” co-star Jenna Elfman “tweeted” a photo taken after she taped a new "give $19 a month" TV ad for the Humane Society of the United States. Elfman made a radio PSA for HSUS in 2001 and lent an image of her lips to an HSUS-branded postage stamp in 2008, but this was her first on-camera work for the animal rights organization. It reportedly began airing late last week.

Last night the video production company that shot this fundraising ad posted a press release about it, but the release was removed early this morning. (Here’s Google’s cache, and our screen-grab for posterity.) In addition to the Jenna Elfman ad, the release also linked to videos of two more spots that may or may not be running nationally: one narrated by Wayne Pacelle, and another showcasing three children. (Note: We can’t control how long these movie files will be available for viewing.)

The Jenna Elfman fundraising ad is the most interesting of three to us. Not because it’s fronted by an actress, but because we counted 44 live animals in this ad, and all but two are dogs and cats:

More after the jump.