WAYNE PACELLE
PRESIDENT & CEO
Wayne Pacelle is the president and chief executive officer of The Humane Society of the United States. Pacelle took office June 1, 2004, after serving for nearly 10 years as the organization's chief lobbyist and spokesperson.
During his tenure as HSUS president and CEO, Pacelle has spurred major growth for the organization, which is now the nation’s largest animal protection organization with nearly 10 million members and constituents, annual revenue of $130 million, and assets of $200 million. The growth has partly been achieved through successful mergers with other animal protection organizations. In 2004, Pacelle and Michael Markarian (president of The Fund for Animals and now an executive vice president of HSUS) helped engineer a merger of The HSUS and The Fund for Animals, the national organization founded by Cleveland Amory. In 2006, Pacelle was the architect of a merger with the Doris Day Animal League, founded nearly 20 years ago by iconic actress Doris Day and also one of the major American animal protection organizations.
Since 1990, Pacelle and Markarian have directed more than 15 successful statewide ballot measure campaigns. Those successes include initiatives to ban the use of bait and dogs in hunting bears, cougars, and bobcats in Colorado (Amendment 10 in 1992), Massachusetts (Question One in 1996), Oregon (Measure 18 in 1994) and Washington (Initiative 655 in 1996); to ban the use of cruel traps in California (Proposition 4 in 1998), Colorado (Amendment 14 in 1996), Massachusetts (Question One in 1996) and Washington (Initiative 713 in 2000); to outlaw cockfighting in Arizona (Proposition 201 in 1998), Missouri (Proposition A in 1998) and Oklahoma (State Question 698 in 2002); to ban mourning dove hunting in Michigan (Proposal 3 in 2006); and to outlaw the use of gestation crates for housing breeding sows in Florida (Amendment 10 in 2002) and gestation and veal crates in Arizona (Proposition 204 in 2006)
He also led successful campaigns to defeat ballot measures hostile to animal protection in California (Proposition 197 in 1996), Oregon (Measure 34 in 1994), Arizona (Proposition 201 in 2000) and Oklahoma (State Question 698 in 2002). Pacelle has served on the national advisory board for the Initiative and Referendum Institute, and is a frequent speaker on the initiative and referendum process.
Pacelle has worked for the passage of countless state laws to protect animals and more than 15 federal statutes to protect animals—including laws to ban the sale of videos depicting animal cruelty (1999), to protect great apes in their native habitats (2000), to halt any interstate transport of fighting animals (2002) and to make interstate transport of fighting animals a felony (2007), to halt commerce in big cats for the pet trade (2003) and to establish federal standards to include pets in disaster planning and response (2006). He has also been the architect of a large number of amendments to halt funding for programs to harm animals, including a program to halt funding for the mink industry and the slaughter of American horses for human consumption.
He has regularly testified before U.S. House and Senate committees on animal protection issues, on subjects relating to the banning of "canned hunting," providing adequate funding for the Animal Welfare Act and other wildlife and animal protection programs, halting the trophy hunting of threatened and endangered species, combating cockfighting and dogfighting, cracking down on puppy mills, stemming the exotic pet trade, halting bear baiting, protecting Yellowstone’s buffalo and dealing with Chronic Wasting Disease.
Pacelle's work on animal issues has been featured in thousands of newspapers and magazines across the country. He has been profiled in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post, and has appeared on almost all of the major network television programs—from "The Today Show" to "Good Morning America" to ABC's "Primetime Live."
In addition, Pacelle is an experienced writer with numerous pieces published in a variety of newspapers, journals and magazines including Human Dimensions of Wildlife, Campaigns & Elections, and George Wright Society. He now writes an occasional column for Bark magazine. He has had Op-Ed pieces published in dozens of major dailies, including The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Baltimore Sun, Dallas Morning News, Detroit Free Press, St. Petersburg Times, Seattle Times and San Francisco Chronicle. He has written chapters in a number of books dealing with animal issues and the initiative process.
Pacelle is founder of Humane USA, the non-partisan political arm of the animal protection movement, and the founder of the Humane Society Legislative Fund, a 501(c)(4) social welfare organization that lobbies for animal welfare legislation and works to elect humane-minded candidates to public office. Working with both organizations, Pacelle has helped to defeat some of the strong anti-animal welfare politicians in the United States, including Rep. Richard Pombo of California (2006) and Rep. Chris John of Louisiana (2004). In 2006, he co-founded the National Federation of Humane Societies, a new trade association principally representing local humane societies across the nation. He serves on the board of the National Federation.
Prior to joining The HSUS, Pacelle served as the executive director of The Fund for Animals. Pacelle also served as associate editor and, later, president of the board for The Animals' Agenda magazine, and as an instructor for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Refuge Training Academy. He also served or currently serves on the board of the The HSUS Wildlife Land Trust, Humane Society International, and a number of other boards.
In 1996, Campaigns & Elections named him "a rising star in politics," largely for his achievements in crafting, qualifying and passing statewide ballot initiatives. In 1997 the Los Angeles Times labeled Pacelle as "one of America's most important animal rights activists." Pacelle was named NonProfit Times' "Executive of the Year" in 2005 for his leadership in responding to the needs of animals affected by the Gulf hurricanes.
Pacelle received his B.A. in History and Studies in the Environment from Yale University in 1987.
