05 Sep 09

Wayne Pacelle works for the winged, finned and furry.

The head of the U.S. Humane Society has retooled the organization from 
a mild-mannered protector of dogs and cats into an aggressive group 
flexing its muscle on behalf of all animals.

But Newkirk wishes he would do more. "I am keen that he really go after 
the pet food manufacturers who still test on animals," she said. "Wayne 
has a slower approach."

Others believe he's downright radical. "When Wayne Pacelle took over, 
it ceased being an animal welfare group and suddenly became an animal 
rights group," said David Martosko, the director of research for the 
Center for Consumer Freedom. (Its website says the purpose of the 
nonprofit group is "to push back" against activists that have "meddled 
in Americans' lives.")

Martosko, a frequent foe of Pacelle, criticized him for not revealing 
the footage of the Chino slaughterhouse abuse as soon as the undercover 
investigator turned it in.

The organization presented the videotape to the San Bernardino County 
district attorney's office, which took several weeks to decide on 
charges. Martosko said Humane Society officials should have called the 
plant and alerted them to the abuses.

"That's like going to a criminal and saying 'stop,' " said Pacelle, who 
dismisses Martosko as "a pimp for the industry."

It's an uncharacteristic flash of rancor for Pacelle. He generally 
saves his biting comments for his blog on the Humane Society's website, 
where, preaching to the choir, he singles out members of Congress with 
the worst records on animal issues -- for example, upbraiding those who 
voted against legislation to prohibit the organized fighting of 
animals.



Many animal welfare activists spend their lives butting their heads 
against the walls of the mainstream: municipal governments, public 
shelter systems, zoos, corporations, ranchers, farmers. Surviving that 
fuels their passion and toughens their resolve, but it also leads to a 
kind of obsessiveness that sometimes comes off -- to those in the 
mainstream -- as craziness.

Their dedication can be cloistering. Their lives are about e-mail 
crusades, protests and the passels of animals they often embrace in 
their homes. The vegans among them sometimes avoid social gatherings 
and their groaning boards laden with distasteful meats.

Pacelle escaped much of that isolation because his love of animals is 
matched only by his fascination with politics. The dog-loving boy who 
riffled encyclopedia pages for entries on animals became the ambitious 
man who wants to win. Pacelle was the Humane Society's chief lobbyist 
for 10 years before he earned the chief executive position.

He had to lobby for that because people thought he was too young. "This 
is the best time to unleash me."

He is sometimes asked if he wants to go into politics.

"I am in politics," he said.

That approach infuriates his critics in the animal welfare movement.

"We have learned what we can expect under Mr. Pacelle's tenure," Nathan 
Winograd, director of the No Kill Advocacy Center and a well-known 
supporter of no-kill shelters, has written on his . "Platitudes, 
cliches, rhetoric, pretty words. But we cannot expect solutions."

Winograd contends that Pacelle wrongly continues the Humane Society's 
acceptance of the status quo: that shelters are overpopulated because 
the public is irresponsible.

Pacelle says he wants no-kill shelters. "But it's a community 
responsibility. The demonizing of shelter directors is mean-spirited, 
narrow-minded and naive."

His tenure has had its impolitic moments. He scored low marks for the 
Humane Society's handling of the Hurricane Katrina animal rescue, which 
the group ran from the Lamar-Dixon Fairgrounds outside New Orleans.

"We definitely weren't ready," he says.

"I turned the organization upside down to deal with the situation."

Pacelle does have his monkish side. He says he's too committed to his 
work to marry or raise children now. He travels constantly to cities 
where ballot initiatives, state campaigns and other anti-cruelty 
programs are underway.