The effort of both animal welfare organizations as well as animal rights organizations have paved the way into making laws that refer to animals both domesticated and wild.  It includes the legal, biological and social natures that statutory and case law has that covers animals that don’t include humans.

It focuses on animal cruelty, animal control, product testing and laboratory animal welfare as well as use of animals for education.  The legislations of different countries have taken a stand in making wild animal laws as well in order to protect the animals in the wild from unnecessary killing, injury, taking or selling of wild animals whether endangered or not.  It applies to land and water.  With wild animal laws, it is also an offence to destroy, damage or obstruct access to places that wild animals use for shelter, breeding and protection.

Some wild animal laws also cover certain methods of killing or taking of wild animals.  For example, in Great Britain, it is a serious offence to use a self-locking snare, bow, explosives and other gadgets that could cause bodily harm to the animal or to take and kill the wild animal.

The intentional harming or killing of wild animals is also part of the wild animal laws.  In certain areas of the US and other countries, hunting of protected animals is prohibited to ensure that the dwindling population will soon grow in number so that the species would not be extinct.  For the welfare of animals in the wild, wild animal laws protect and keep them from danger.