August 23, 2016

2016 has been another incredible year of SHARK’s work to save animals, but it has come at a heavy price; the funds to continue our work are almost fully depleted. The situation is so dire that we will be forced to suspend all field work after our campaign against US Senator Inhofe’s pigeon shoot fundraiser in early September.

In the case of most of the animals we defend, there is no group that will step in to fill the void. SHARK has typically worked on behalf of animals that are largely ignored by the animal protection movement.

 We have rescued dozens of wounded birds and documented the hell that they have been through. Only SHARK has been consistently on the ground at pigeon shoots 

SHARK spends nearly 100% of our time and money working to stop animal cruelty. It’s why we’ve been so successful at saving lives, but not so great at fundraising. But isn’t that what you want from an animal protection organization -  a group dedicated to the work of saving lives instead of spending most of their time raising money?  

This is Grace, a deer in New Jersey who was shot in the ace by a bowhunter. She suffered  for many months before SHARK got involved. We filmed her,  brought major media attention to her plight, and only after all of that did NJ's Fish and Game agency have the arrow safely removed

 In just the first half of 2016, SHARK has been on the frontline fighting for animals in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, California, Ohio, Iowa, Michigan, Washington, Nebraska, Wisconsin, Oregon, Wyoming and Maryland. We have been relentless in our mission to document and expose animal abuse, and have taken on new and vitally important issues that dramatically expand our mission to save lives. 

Please look at all the work our small but dedicated group of investigators have accomplished in just eight months. We’ve done more than many groups that sit on millions of dollars and spend a good portion of that money on bloated salaries and fundraising. That’s not SHARK. But if we are to continue making historic victories for animals, then we need you to support us now.

 

 

 

 

 

  

• We began 2016 by releasing a video from a canned hunt held in Pennsylvania, where cage-raised birds were hand-thrown into the air and shot for fun. We rescued two pigeons and two chukars who were given medical attention and taken to a sanctuary.

A grouse rescued from the PA canned hunt. She and three other birds were given medical care and sent to a sanctuary

• On January 30, 2016, SHARK filmed a worker at the Philadelphia Gun Club (PGC) torturing wounded pigeons used in a live pigeon shoot. The Bensalem police filed charges and the worker pled guilty to animal cruelty. This is a historic and long overdue event in the fight against pigeon shoots!

• SHARK spent an intense three weeks on the Columbia River, on the border of Oregon and Washington, to fight against the mass-slaughter of majestic cormorants. The video our people took was ground-breaking as never before has Wildlife Services, which slaughters more than 4,000,000 wild animals every year, been filmed while killing animals. 

A wounded cormorant falling to her death on the Columbia River. SHARK's efforts to fight for cormorants was unprecedented

• In February, SHARK teamed up with the Animal Legal Defense Fund (ALDF) in California to document what dairy farms are really like. We filmed cows in large pools of sloppy, quicksand-like mud, and dead cows piled upon each other. This is the hard truth behind the facade of California's "Happy Cows.”  

 

SHARK exposed the nightmare of what dairy farms are truly like

• SHARK ran a multi-month undercover video operation in Michigan and Ohio filming the notorious Wildlife Services killing deer. This video will be released soon.

• On March 10th, SHARK was in Minnesota to protest and document a 2,000 bird live pigeon shoot fundraiser for Ducks Unlimited (DU).  Many DU members from other parts of the country have seen our videos and are not renewing their membership with DU because of their disgust over this pigeon shoot.

• On Saturday, June 11, there was supposed to be a contest slaughter of cownose rays on the Patuxent River in Maryland.  Then something wonderful happened - because SHARK exposed last year’s slaughter, the sponsors of the this year’s event withdrew their support - so the event was cancelled!

 

SHARK's video from this 2015 ray killing contest was the reason it was shut down in 2016

• Two weeks after that we went back to Maryland for a different cownose ray killing contest. The video we took of the slaughter, which included a newborn baby ray being impaled with an arrow and dying a tragic death, was so powerful that even international media covered it and it has spurred action in the Maryland legislature to ban these barbaric killing contests.  

• In June SHARK scored back-to-back victories when a New Jersey rodeo and a Wisconsin pig wrestling event were cancelled.  Our undercover video of the NJ rodeo was so shocking that the venue promised never to allow the rodeo back. When the rodeo tried to fool the owners of the venue and sneak back in by pretending to be a dance event, we contacted the owners who immediately cancelled the event.

 

SHARK has documented vile human/animal fights, such as pig wresting and "scrambles" where even children are taught to abuse animals 

In the WI pig wrestling case, SHARK had sent a full team of investigators to a similar event in WI in 2014. Our documentation helped shut down that annual pig wrestling contest which had been going on for decades. When we heard that a new venue was going to have a pig wrestling event, we sprung back into action and the new event was shut down as well.

• In July, SHARK again teamed up with the Animal Legal Defense Fund to video document California’s largest feed lot from the air. While the footage obtained was very important, we obtained equally important footage of police misconduct as they attempted to stop us from conducting lawful surveillance. That footage will be released soon.

• In August, a SHARK investigator attended the Mississippi Valley Fair in Davenport, Iowa to film animal abuses for entertainment. That investigation will become public in the next few weeks.

• A week later, the SHARK team split up to cover both the California Rodeo in Salinas, California and the Frontier Days Rodeo in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Salinas and Cheyenne are two of the worst rodeos in our country. SHARK investigators in Cheyenne recorded the injuring and killing of a number of animals again, and will use this documentation to continue pressure on corporate sponsors/enablers of this horrendous cruelty. 

 

Who fights for innocent calves like this one? SHARK does. But we can't continue to do it without your help