Abstract: This Handbook establishes the field of Global Animal Law, which engages with the legal status and protection of animals in today’s globalised world. GAL is an umbrella term for domestic, regional, and local law; for religious and indigenous prescripts; for state-made and privately generated standards; and for international soft law and the scarce international treaty law on the treatment of animals and animal species. GAL is not a ready-made, full-fledged, existing legal framework. Rather, it is both a fragmented and evolving body of law as well as a nascent and burgeoning body of scholarship – and it is (co-)constituted by a multitude of actors who think and do GAL. This introductory chapter renders our account of what GAL is and why we need it, what methodological considerations are involved in doing GAL, and how this Handbook may serve as a greenhouse for cultivating GAL.