Cheers to the California Wildlife Center: Marine Mammal Rescue team for their hardwork and dedication to ensuring that each marine animal they work with receives the highest level of rescue and medical care for release back to their wild, free-ranging state. The Marine Mammal team is tasked with rescuing beached marine mammals along Malibu’s 27 miles of coastline and transporting them to a rehab center where they are cared for and then released. The Center’s Marine Mammal team answers hundreds of calls each and every year and care for many sea lion and seal pups until they are ready to be released back into their natural environment.  Last year, more than 1,300 starving, emaciated pups ended up stranded on Southern California beaches, including 200 in the Malibu area which the CWC team worked to save. 

We applaud this group’s hardwork and their dedication to fostering peaceful coexistence between humans and wildlife. They explain in their mission statement, “Coexistence begins with the understanding of how to share our communities with wild animals. In order to do this, we educate individuals about the animals in their environment and provide solutions to existing problems…” Check out their video below of a recent marine animal rescue.


 

Cheers to retailer Ikea for coming up with a clever way to help shelter animals find homes. 

The Business Insider has revealed that Ikea’s stores in Tempe, Ariz., and Singapore are placing life-sized cardboard cutouts of homeless cats and dogs on the couches, rugs and bunk beds of its showrooms. The cutouts all display a different barcode, which customers can scan with their phones for more information on the pet pictured.

“We thought it was a perfect way to show people what their home would look like with a pet in it,” Becky Blaine, Ikea Tempe’s marketing director, told Business Insider

So far the program is working. Of the six cutouts that have been featured at the Tempe store, all have been adopted, Blaine said. More cutouts of adoptable pets will be featured in the store beginning July 29.

The idea for the program at Ikea originated in Singapore, with a partnership between Ikea and Home for Hope, a coalition of pet adoption agencies that includes Save Our Street Dogs and the Animal Lovers League. 

The Tempe store partnered with the Arizona Humane Society to create its own pet adoption program.

To make the cutouts, the animals have their photos taken and then the photos are enlarged, printed on cardboard, and placed in various showrooms throughout the stores.

In our summer edition of Action Line, Friends of Animals touts the benefits and rewards of adopting from animal shelters in the article “Stop.Think. Adopt.” We believe shelters and rescue organizations are the only places from which to take home a new member of the family. 

However the article also takes on the issue of how misconceptions about rescue animals can be part of the homeless pet problem in America. The bottom line is it’s crucial to be prepared for the responsibility and lifelong commitment rescuing an animal entails and not to take the decision lightly. One of the major reasons there are so many homeless animals in America is because their previous owners realized they were not prepared financially to own a dog or cat. But if you are ready to take on the lifelong commitment, it can be one of the most rewarding experiences of your life.

Friends of Animals hopes other retailers everywhere are inspired by Ikea’s program and consider joining forces with their local rescue organizations to initiate a similar program.