PETA Animal Rescue Team Funds a Flight to Ravaged Puerto Rico

Gear, Supplies on Chartered Plane to Help Assist Animals Endangered by Hurricane Maria

For Immediate Release:
September 27, 2017

Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382

After a week of canceled flights and a waiting list for any viable ones a mile long, PETA’s Animal Rescue Team is finally on its way to Puerto Rico, where Hurricane Maria has caused catastrophic flooding, leaving an estimated 3.4 million people without power and endangering an unknown number of humans, dogs, cats, and other animals. The members of the team, who have chartered a plane to fly them to the devastated island, consist of staff members trained in animal emergencies—all equipped with supplies and rescue gear and some who recently returned from Hurricane Harvey rescue operations in Texas and Louisiana.

“In Puerto Rico, strays already had a hard life struggling to survive on the streets before the hurricane hit, so the storm has surely left many animals injured from flying debris and in grave danger of starving,” says PETA Senior Vice President Daphna Nachminovitch. “PETA’s Animal Rescue Team will do what it can, taking food and supplies and sharp sets of eyes to help in any way possible.”

PETA’s Animal Rescue Team has just returned from Texas, where its members waded through the floodwaters to find abandoned, lost, and injured animals. They helped save over 100 animals—including dogs, cats, chickens, and an armadillo—from areas of Texas and Louisiana hit hard by Hurricane Harvey, and they brought back 67 homeless companion animals to PETA’s Norfolk, Virginia, headquarters when overwhelmed local shelters needed to make room for incoming victims.

Among numerous other animal-rescue efforts over the years, PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to abuse in any way”—previously dispatched teams and rescued animals in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina as well as after the BP oil spill and following last year’s devastating flooding in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

For more information, please visit PETA.org.