Elberta Boy Wins PETA Award for Cleaning Up the Coast for Animals

For Immediate Release:
April 29, 2021

Contact:
Nicole Meyer 202-483-7382

A Hero to Animals Award is on its way from PETA Kids—PETA’s youth division—to 5-year-old Oliver Caver, who, after learning about the ways trash can harm marine animals, challenged his father to see who could pick up the most litter from local beaches. Since then, they’ve collected more than 3,800 pounds of debris. The Cavers also started Clean Horizons, an organization that encourages people to help beautify beaches, and even wrote a children’s book about their efforts called Litter, Litter, Please Come Here.

“Oliver Caver’s huge heart and hard work have made the Alabama coast a safer place for seagulls, turtles, and everyone else who swims, flies, or walks there,” says PETA Senior Director of Youth Programs Marta Holmberg. “PETA Kids recognizes his compassion, commitment, and all-around heroism for animals and hopes he inspires others to take action.”

PETA Kids—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to abuse in any way”—agrees with Oliver that trash is a menace to animals: Whales, turtles, and seabirds often mistake it for food, and if eaten, it can choke them or cause fatal stomach or bowel obstructions. Birds frequently get their beaks wrapped or wings entangled in discarded fishing line, and hooks can be swallowed or become embedded in their skin or beaks. For these reasons and many more, PETA Kids urges people never to litter and always to pick up any trash in their path.

PETA Kids opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETAKids.com or follow the group on Facebook or Instagram.