News for Florida animal advocates

Last night, ARFF Coordinators Bryan and Carla Wilson spoke before the St. Augustine City Commission about the miserable lives of horses forced to pull carriages on the streets of the historic city.
ARFF’s presentation was covered by the St. Augustine Record and by Jacksonville’s “Action News” Ch. 46. Before the meeting began, the television news ran […]

This week the Sun-Sentinel newspaper released an extraordinary database of U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service records providing information about live python shipments into the United States.
In the first half of 2009, over 40,000 pythons were imported into Miami!
Most of these snakes were bred in captivity, but 3,375 of the Ball pythons and 91 of the […]

It wasn’t your usual group of protestors. The Orlando Sentinel covered ARFF’s protest last weekend outside the Sanford Orlando Kennel Club. The photograph accompanying the article in Sunday’s paper featured activists holding signs reading, “Dog Racing Kills Thousands” and “Racing to Death.” Across the street, a figure in a long, black hooded gown and mask […]

In the classic Disney film Dumbo, there is a heartbreaking scene in which the young elephant visits his mother who has been unjustly locked up in a circus trailer. The mother elephant sings a sweet song as she strains against the chains to touch her son (a clip of the scene is available on YouTube […]

Pet store puppies are notoriously overpriced and often suffer serious medical problems. It’s a mystery to us why some people are willing to pay $500, $1000 or more for a puppy that most likely came from a cruel puppy mill. It’s even more puzzling why someone would take a chance and steal a puppy from […]

On ARFF’s website, we maintain a list of escapes, attacks and other troubling incidents involving pythons, tigers, monkeys and other exotic “pets” in Florida. Lately, it’s been a challenge to keep up with the news.
Friday afternoon, state wildlife officers removed an 18-foot-long, 400-pound Burmese python from a home in Apopka due to concerns that the […]

The Destin Fishing Rodeo begins October 1. During this year’s month-long event, each Saturday will be “Shark Saturday,” when anglers will compete to kill the largest shark. The winner will take home $250 and the ocean will lose several mature, healthy bull sharks, hammerheads and tiger sharks.
Shark fishing is controversial. Sharks are essential to the […]

Under the Animal Welfare Act, research facilities are required to file annual reports with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) stating how many regulated* animals they used, if any painful experiments were conducted and if pain-relieving drugs were provided to suffering animals.
The problem has been that these reports were only available by filing a Freedom […]