- 1967
- Author, social critic, and animal advocate, Cleveland Amory founds
The Fund for Animals, headquartered in New York, with the mottos "We speak
for those who can't" and "Animals have rights, too."
- 1971
- Fund works for passage of federal Airborne Hunting Act, prohibiting the aerial
slaughter of wolves in Alaska.
- 1972
- Fund works for passage of the Marine Mammal Protection Act,
which protects polar bears, seals, whales, dolphins and other marine mammals.
- 1973
- Fund works for passage of the federal Endangered Species Act, the nation's
strongest wildlife protection law.
- 1974
- Harper & Row publishes Cleveland Amory's Man Kind? Our
Incredible War on Wildlife, a stinging and satirical attack on sport
hunting and commercial trapping in America. It serves as the primer for the CBS
documentary,
The Guns of Autumn.
Fund unleashes "Real People Wear Fake Fur" advertising campaign featuring
Doris Day, Angie Dickinson, Mary Tyler Moore, and Amanda Blake.
- 1975
- Fund successfully petitions U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to place 175 species on the
endangered list, including the grizzly bear, argali sheep, and African elephant.
- 1978
- Fund's Dexter Cate rescues dolphins from Japanese spearing on Iki Island.
Japanese officials imprison him in solitary confinement for three months.
Fund buys British trawler, converts to icebreaker, and renames it the Sea
Shepherd. It sails to Magdalen Islands to stop the clubbing of baby seals.
- 1979
- Fund's ice crew, led by captain Paul Watson, paints more than 1,000 baby seals
with harmless red organic dye, rendering the pelts useless to furriers.
Fund starts massive four-year airlift of burros scheduled to be shot by National Park
Service in the Grand Canyon.
- 1980
- Fund's Lewis Regenstein works with other leading conservation groups for the
passage of the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, the largest lands
protection bill ever passed by Congress.
- 1981
- Fund begins two-year rescue of burros -- slated to be shot by Navy -- from
China Lake Naval Weapons Center in California desert.
- 1983
- Fund begins three-year rescue of burros in Death Valley National Monument.
Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, responding to pleas from Fund president
Cleveland Amory, overrules Navy brass to allow Fund to rescue 3,000 goats from
San Clemente Naval Weapons Facility. Pioneering use of helicopter-launched net gun.
- 1984
- Wildlife Rehabilitation Center, in Ramona, California, is donated to Fund.
- 1985
- Fund lawsuit blocks the federal government and state of Minnesota from
instituting a sport hunting and commercial trapping season on wolves.
- 1988
- Fund wins massive federal lawsuit forcing the Bureau of Land Management to
abide by the terms of the Wild Horse and Free-Roaming Burro Act.
- 1989
- Fund lawsuit halts black bear hunting in California, sparing about 1,400
bears.
Fund activists throughout the country conduct field protests of hunting in forests
and wetlands.
- 1990
- After casting a national spotlight on the hunting of bison who wander from
Yellowstone National Park, Fund pressures state of Montana into banning hunt.
- 1991
- Fund lawsuits halt grizzly bear hunting in Montana and a massive elk hunt in
Arizona's Coconino National Forest.
- 1992
- Fund drafts, leads, and carries to victory a ballot initiative in Colorado to ban
spring, bait, and hound hunting of black bears. It's a severe defeat for the
National Rifle Association.
Fund wins massive lawsuit compelling federal government to speed the pace of
listing more than 400 rare species on the federal endangered species list.
- 1993
- Fund halts "research" kill of Yellowstone's bison.
Fund stops baiting of black bears on all national forests in Wyoming.
Fund rescues Fanny, an elephant confined alone in a small Rhode Island zoo
for 35 years, giving her sanctuary at our Black Beauty Ranch and her first
opportunity to meet another elephant and find a friend.
Fund stops the hunting of the rare Florida black bear.
- 1994
- Fund helps stop bear wrestling, cockfighting, and raccoon and opossum "shake-out"
seasons
in Kentucky.
Voters approved Fund-backed ballot initiatives in two states, stopping the use of bait to hunt
bears and the use of hounds to hunt bears and cougars in Oregon, and ending all commercial
trapping on public lands in Arizona.
- 1995
- Fund stops canned hunts of exotic species on Texas game ranches.
Fund helps defeat legislation in both Michigan and Minnesota that would have allowed sport
hunting of the gentle mourning dove.
Fund pressures Australian government to halt construction of a massive Eastern Tollway that
would have decimated one of the last remaining pieces of koala habitat and one of the last
remaining koala colonies in the country.
- 1996
- Fund lawsuit stops a proposed bison sport hunt on a U.S. Army base in New
Mexico.
Fund rallies Maryland residents to halt a proposed sport hunting season on the state's black
bear population of only 200 animals.
