Community Corner

The Animals' Lawyer

The group that recently filed a lawsuit to protect birds getting trapped in netting under the Petaluma River bridge has spent more than 30 years fighting to protect animals in zoos, circuses, on farms and in communities all over the country.

From an unassuming office in downtown Cotati, a national nonprofit is fighting critical battles to protect animals around the world, from wild tigers kept in tiny cages at roadside zoos to coyotes trapped and shot by farmers.

Since launching in 1979, the Animal Legal Defense Fund has quietly, but diligently advocated on behalf of animals, using not boycotts, fake blood or loud protests, but the letter of the law.

The organization is behind the recent lawsuit against the California Department of Transportation over netting under Highway 101’s Petaluma River Bridge that activists say has killed more than 100 swallows and last year’s lawsuit against Petaluma Farms over what they contend is false labeling.

Find out what's happening in Petalumawith free, real-time updates from Patch.

It also recently sent a letter to the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors urging them to discontinue their contract with the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Wildlife Services, which they say is causing the unnecessary killing of mountain lions, bobcats, coyotes and other animals. 

“We’re not going to convince everyone to behave responsibly when it comes to protecting animals or the environment because there are people that just don’t care,” said Stephen Wells, the executive director of ALDF.

Find out what's happening in Petalumawith free, real-time updates from Patch.

“Then there are some industries that profit from the status quo of how animals are treated and are disincentivized to treat animals more humanely. Ultimately it’s the law that sets the standard.”

Animal League Defense Fund was started in 1979 by Bay Area attorney Joyce Tischler, at the time a recent law school graduate with a passion for animals. Environmental law was already booming, but animal law was virtually unknown and Tischler helped recruit fellow attorneys who wanted to put their legal knowledge toward protecting those who could not advocate for themselves.

Today, ALDF has a $5 million annual budget, more than two dozen employees and 180 student chapters in universities around the country. Its cases now number in the hundreds, and include many victories such as the fight to save feral burros targeted by the U.S. Navy in China Lake, Calif. in the early ‘80s, banning a veal company’s practice of confining calves in order to keep their flesh pale and soft and creating animal abuser registries.

A more recent victory involved Ben the Bear, a circus bear spent six years living in a tiny cage with a concrete floor after being purchased by a North Carolina roadside show. ALDF, together with PETA and several local activists, filed a lawsuit using a little known North Carolina law.

It took several years, but the courts finally ruled in favor of Ben. The brown bear now lives at an animal sanctuary while the operator is banned for life from owning wild animals.

“We have fundamentally changed what we know about animals in the last 40 years,” said Wells, who joined ALDF in 1999 and took over as executive director in 2006. “We now know that animals are emotional, sensitive, self-aware, all these things we thought were uniquely human things.”

Wells grew up in Chicago surrounded by animals, but it wasn’t until he went to Alaska to work on the Exxon Valdez spill in 1989 that he fully understood just how vulnerable animals are. Many people in Prince William Sound and the surrounding communities joked about how the spill was the “best thing that had ever happened” to the region because it suddenly brought high-paying jobs, Wells said.

“Here I was in Prince William Sound, one of the most beautiful places in the world, yet when we were ferried to the islands, you would get overwhelmed by the stench of oil and everything dead; dead shellfish, dead birds, seaweed that was so choked in oil,” Wells said. “It was incredibly life changing for me and a wake up call me that those of us who feel strongly about the environment and animals have to speak up.”

Awareness about the plight of animals has come a long way in recent decades, but the laws haven’t exactly caught up, viewing animals as private property or as things that are here only to serve their human masters, Wells said.

ALDF is working hard to change these perceptions, but know that when letter writing campaigns, op-eds and other traditional means of swaying public discourse don’t work, there’s always the law. 

Follow Petaluma Patch on Twitter | Like us on Facebook | Sign up for our daily newsletter | Start a conversation with a blog


Get more local news delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for free Patch newsletters and alerts.

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here