About SPECIEES

SPECIEES was founded and is run by Allison Lance and Danielle Thompson, two long-time activists. Allison came up with the idea for SPECIEES when volunteering with another organization, Animal Balance. Animal Balance went to areas with unique ecosystems (Galapagos Islands, Samoa, Dominican Republic) and tried to control the damage done to these ecosystems by imported domestic animals, mainly cats and dogs. They would sterilize these animals and educate the local populations about the health benefits of sterilizing their pets. They also explained about the damage that these domestic animals caused to the surrounding indigenous wildlife.

But what about the unwanted animals that roamed freely? These animals in particular, who weren’t fed on a regular basis, could be the ones to do the most damage. This is when Allison recognized a need for these animals to be relocated out of the area and adopted by people who would give them the love and care that they need.

And with this thought, SPECIEES was born!

About SPECIEES’ Founder

In her twenty-year career as an activist, Allison Lance has gone from protesting, incarceration (no felonies), campaigner leader, and ships’ crew, to organizing volunteers. She worked as a senior staff member for 10 years at a non-profit organization, and when not out on campaign with the organization as an activist, she performed a wide variety of administrative support functions, everything from answering telephones to signing checks to interacting with celebrities to dealing with government embassies and everything in between.

You can read what Captain Paul Watson wrote about her experience below.

Samurai of Compassion

by: Captain Paul Watson

According to Japanese Samurai tradition, a warrior is defined as someone who possesses a resolute acceptance of death. What that means is that they do not back down nor surrender to fear. Their life is defined by the courage of their beliefs and the integrity of their actions.

Allison Lance has devoted her life to the protection of the most defenseless and disenfranchised sentient beings on this planet - the non-human citizens of the land, the sea and the sky.

She understands the meaning of diversity of life, of interdependence of species but most importantly she possesses empathy for those who cannot speak for themselves.

And thus for two decades she has been an advocate and a warrior for the animals. With Allison there is no hesitation and no compromising and she has always been the first to dive into the waters of conflict - literally.

She has taken on a mob of angry Japanese dolphin killing fishermen and left them cowering before her righteous rage. She has stood on the deck of shark-fining poachers and berated them for their crimes as they stood sheepishly, eyes cast down before her. She has stood before a Grand Jury and defended her right as an American to be an activist in accordance with the founding principles of the United States and refused to surrender to the authoritarian dictates of the anti-constitutional Patriot Act.

Allison has swum with whales, liberated dolphins, stood as a sheperdhess to the baby seals, freed farm and lab animals from their bondage and from death, barricaded the doors of cruel fashion in Beverly Hills, and she has gone face to face with armed hunters in the wild, openly assaulting their man hoods, goading them dangerously and forcing them to retreat in embarrassment from her accusations.

Allison possesses a spirit driven by a passionate outrage against cruelty and injustice, a passion so fierce that only the companionship of her animal friends keep the fires that stoke her actions under control.    

When a warrior is undeterred by threats of injury, death and internment than he or she can change the world.

If Allison has any faults it is her lack of ego. She prefers to be a grunt than a leader although in action she has always been a leader although it is a title she is not comfortable with.

While she will not recognize it, her actions have been and continue to be an inspiration to others.

There is no greater accomplishment than living a life that has meaning, Allison bears the scars of two decades of fighting for compassion on the front lines against overwhelming power, achieving small victories relative to the immense scale of the challenges she faces. But she knows that small victories are like bricks, and with enough bricks a wall of compassion can be erected and from behind that wall a movement can be rallied, and when eventually the forces she has helped to inspire triumph she will have created a legacy that will live long after she has passed on.

About SPECIEES' Executive Director

Danielle Thompson grew up in the Midwest on the shores of Lake Michigan.  In kindergarten she mounted a campaign to save the ants from being squashed and has since worked for human rights, promoted veganism,  informed people about cruel and toxic dolphin meat in Japan, campaigned for both farmed and wild animals and most recently helped to sterilize nearly 200 dogs and cats in the Galapagos Islands with Animal Balance. She studied political science and philosophy at the University ofWisconsin and animal and environmental law at Lewis and Clark Law School.   She is thrilled to join SPECIEES and work to protect both wild native animals and dog and cats in fragile island eco-systems.

Danielle likes to spend her time outdoors and surrounded by animals.  To this day she is uneasy when she isn’t living near water.   She is ecstatic to be back in the Pacific Northwest.