The Cult of the Environment has a furbaby wing:

As the District and its highly populated suburbs grapple with their expanding deer populations, Fairfax City is planning a new approach: tranquilize and capture all the female deer in the six-square-mile city, take them to a surgical table and sterilize them to keep them from reproducing. The entire process, from “darting” to release, takes about 90 minutes. If Fairfax City receives clearance from the state Department of Game and Inland Fisheries, officials said it will be the first jurisdiction in Virginia to try the sterilization approach. […]
The process begins with shooting female deer (does) with tranquilizer darts, which are equipped with tracking chips so the deer can be found after they are shot. DeNicola said it will be him, a graduate student and a veterinarian to handle the deer, with a police officer assisting with security. A tranquilized deer will then be taken to the Fairfax police headquarters sallyport, where a surgical table will be set up. DeNicola showed the council a slide show of how the deer are opened up, its ovaries removed, and then sewed back up. DeNicola said the deer typically come out of the anesthesia after about an hour, and after a short period to get its bearings, it is taken back to where it was found and released.

We are surrounded by crazy people.

Humane Watch;

The founding of Earth First! was reportedly to create a group more extreme to draw fire away from other environmental groups. “The people that are easily named extreme make the people who were extreme seem suddenly reasonable,” said a former Sierra Club executive director.
That’s what groups like PETA do for HSUS. As Michael Spector wrote in The New Yorker in 2003, “It has been argued many times that in any social movement there has to be somebody radical enough to alienate the mainstream-and to permit more moderate influences to prevail. For every Malcolm X there is a Martin Luther King, Jr., and for every Andrea Dworkin there is a Gloria Steinem. Newkirk and PETA provide a similar dynamic for groups like the Humane Society of the United States.”

How much is that moral superiority in the window?

In reality, many shelters and rescue groups have become unregulated pet shops, and yet in many states like my own, “overpopulation” shelter numbers are going up because dogs are being brought in from out of state.
The general public doesn’t know any of this.

Related: Thousands of international strays are finding a new home in Canada

Good advice on combating animal extremists for all of us in the animal industry, from an animal researcher. Still, I’d advise she arm herself.

“You have improved the lives of millions of people and animals. Nearly every biomedical advance in the world was, and still is, supported by your hard work and tender hearts. You are heroes! So, why are you hiding? The activist agenda relies on your invisibility to deceive the world into believing that you devalue life, when the truth is that your love for life defines you professionally and personally. Society is longing to know this truth and I believe that your visibility can dismantle the activists’ attack on love and progress. I believe that your visibility can convert war to peace. I believe that your visibility can unite enemies and breed compassion for all living things. I believe that your visibility can change the world…and I want you to start believing it too.” – Cindy Buckmaster

Importing strays from Asia; (link updated)

Living in a country where it is difficult to get a banana through customs, (especially since 9-11) and where livestock importation is strictly regulated and animal protection groups seek ever-tighter regulation of dogs from breed enthusiasts along with commercial breeders, it is a sick and intolerable paradox that poorly bred, often diseased, foreign-bred dogs enter our country by the thousands with the barest of regulation – often on airlines that fly them to the US at no charge to help out the ’cause.’ Seemingly, the only unregulated operators in the animal world today are the ‘animal dealers’ working in the animal protection groups that fundraise on overpopulation while importing dogs from overseas. Indeed, the only thing that puts the madness into perspective is the fact that importing groups and the national animal rights groups that support them are still fundraising on the issue of ‘pet overpopulation!’

Humane Watch;

In 2004 the FBI declared animal rights terrorism to be a top domestic threat. In response to this extremism, in 2006 Congress passed the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, which upgraded the Animal Enterprise Protection Act of 1992. We’ve learned that the New York City Bar Association is now pushing a resolution at the American Bar Association meeting this week calling on the Justice Department to cease enforcing the law.
The timing couldn’t be worse from a P.R. point of view. The recent event in New Mexico seems to support tough anti-terrorism laws. The Humane Society of the U.S. and other activists tried to use legal channels to stop horse slaughter, and that may not work (it has succeeded in delaying things, though). So some vigilantes decided to do their own (illegal) thing and light a fire.

Breitbart;

They lead Americans to believe that their focus is on rogue, unscrupulous dog breeders, but in a recent interview, the ASPCA admitted that they consider even law-abiding dog breeders to be “puppy mills.” Animal rights activists hold the belief that bringing new, pure-bred dogs into existence is unethical so long as there are dogs in shelters. Thus, they seek to put every law-abiding dog breeder permanently out of business by any means necessary.
Their public relations war against dog breeding has raked in countless millions from unsuspecting donors who are unaware of the fact that almost none of this money actually goes to the care of dogs. The numbers of abused animals are inflated and exaggerated to the point where you would think that puppy mills were an epidemic. In reality, almost all dog breeders are hard-working, rural Americans, who take very good care of their animals.
Recently, the activists have turned to a disturbing, new tactic of singling out individual breeders and publishing their names, their addresses, and photographs of their breeding establishments. Where do they obtain such information, one might ask? The answer: None other than our own government, courtesy of the United States Department of Agriculture.

The New York Times is always the last to know.

PETA, considered by many to be the highest-profile animal rights group in the country, kills an average of about 2,000 dogs and cats each year at its animal shelter here.
And the shelter does few adoptions — 19 cats and dogs in 2012 and 24 in 2011, according to state records.

Of course they kill them – the ultimate goal of PETA (and HSUS) is the eradication of domestic animals from human society. That’s why “emotional pain” is cited as criteria for euthanasia.
Meanwhile, in Los Angeles… Animal Services GM Brenda Barnette Says Shelters Need Puppies to Increase Revenue

According to its tax return, events such as glitzy galas ended up running a net loss of $60,000 for [Humane Society Of The United States] in 2011. But that hasn’t stopped the group from thinking up new ways to hobnob with society’s elites while pet shelters struggle. One such event, “Veg Appetit,” was held at a swanky Los Angeles museum last week.

It’s a good thing there isn’t a “People for the Ethical Treatment of Activists”.

Despite $35,000,000 in annual revenues and millions of “animal-loving” members, PETA does not even try to find them homes. PETA has no adoption hours, does no adoption promotion, has no adoption floor, but is registered with the State of Virginia as a “humane society” or “animal shelter.”

Pamela Anderson’s breasts were unavailable for comment.
H/t EBD

An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile hoping it will eat him last;

HSUS singled the egg industry and spent millions of dollars on propaganda and ballot campaigns to try to ban common hen houses.
[United Egg Producers] decided to cut a deal with HSUS to pursue federal litigation that would create a mandate for farmers to move from conventional cages to roomier furnished cages over a variable timeframe.
One of the supposed benefits is that the UEP got HSUS, which previously had only advocated for “cage-free” eggs, to agree to take a cage system as acceptable enough.

Oops.