How We Work
Since 1951, AWI has advanced its mission through strategically crafted policy and legal advocacy, educational programs, research and analysis, and engagement with policymakers, scientists, industry, educators, other NGOs, the media, and the public.
We seek scientifically grounded protections for animals in all settings, and robust enforcement of those protections.
Photo by Zane Michael Cooper
What We Do
Through the lens of animal welfare, we work to protect animals from suffering and/or extinction that result from human activities, including the following:
Use of animals for food, clothing, health products, experimentation, education, entertainment, companionship, or other purposes
Means used to breed, raise, capture, manage, transport, or kill them
Cruelty to or neglect of individual animals
Degradation and destruction of habitat
Christine Stevens, Founder of AWI
Christine Stevens has long been called the “Mother of the Animal Protection Movement” in America. For over half a century, she dedicated her life to reducing animal suffering both here and abroad. In the words of Dr. Jane Goodall: “Christine Stevens was a giant voice for animal welfare. Passionate, yet always reasoned, she took up one cause after another and she never gave up. Millions of animals are better off because of Christine’s quiet and very effective advocacy.”
Christine Stevens, AWI founder, with one of her beloved dogs.
Christine Stevens was a giant voice for animal welfare. Passionate, yet always reasoned, she took up one cause after another and she never gave up. Millions of animals are better off because of Christine’s quiet and very effective advocacy.
Dr. Jane Goodall
Christine Stevens, AWI Founder
Christine founded the Animal Welfare Institute to end the cruel treatment of animals in experimental laboratories. Inevitably, her work expanded to take on other animal welfare causes, including, preventing animal extinctions due to anthropogenic causes, reforming methods used to raise animals for food, banning steel-jaw leghold traps, ending commercial whaling, and much more. Christine supported wildlife management programs that were “win-win” situations—such as highway underpasses to facilitate wildlife movements, wildlife birth control, beaver bafflers to minimize or prevent beaver-caused flooding, and perching platforms that protect raptors from electrocution.
Leadership
AWI Board of Directors
- Rhema Bjorkland, PhD
- Jill Carey
- Caroline A. Griffin, Esq., Chair
- Mary Lee Jensvold, PhD, Secretary
- Alan E. Kessock, CPA, Treasurer
- Cathy Liss, Vice Chair
- Chris Miller, DVM
- William S. Stokes, DVM
AWI Scientific Committee
- Juan Carlos Cardenas, DVM
- Cristina Eisenberg, PhD
- Roger Fouts, PhD
- David Fraser, PhD
- Rich Reading, PhD
- Viktor Reinhardt, DVM, PhD
- Robert Schmidt, PhD
The AWI logo, created in 1975, represents animals in their appropriate, life-sustaining environments of land, air, and water, enclosed in interlocking hexagons, which symbolize bee architecture.