PETA Offers to Pitch in to Help With Grand Haven Lighthouse’s Repairs—With a ‘Catch’

For Immediate Release:
December 15, 2025

Contact:
Hannah Nelson 202-483-7382

The Grand Haven Lighthouse Conservancy is seeking donations to repair windows in the fog house that blew out during extreme weather, and PETA has offered to help. PETA Founder Ingrid Newkirk sent a letter today to Conservancy President Dave Karpin offering to help lighten the loadof the repairs if PETA is permitted to place a pro-fish banner on the lighthouse, urging viewers to leave sea life in peace and off their plates. PETA will also lend its famous Fish Empathy Quilt for display and provide free vegan fish sandwiches once the lighthouse opens to the public.

“Grand Haven is one of the vegan-friendliest beach towns in America, so many residents would be delighted to see their beloved lighthouse take a stand for sea animals,” says Newkirk. “PETA urges the Conservancy to accept our offer to shed light on our important message of empathy for fish and pay to do so.”

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat”—points out that Every Animal Is Someone and offers free Empathy Kits for people who need a lesson in kindness and free Vegan Starter Kits for anyone thinking of making the switch. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow PETA on X, Facebook, or Instagram.

PETA’s letter to Karpin follows.

December 15, 2025

Dave Karpin

President

Grand Haven Lighthouse Conservancy

Dear Mr. Karpin:

I’m writing on behalf of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals—PETA entities have more than 10.4 million members and supporters worldwide, including over 174,000 in Michigan—regarding your fundraising efforts to repair storm damage and restore the outer south pier lighthouse. PETA would be happy to contribute something toward repair costs if you’d allow us to place an eye-catching public interest message on the lighthouse, such as a banner showing a beautiful fish and reading, “I’m ME, Not MEAT.” Please allow me to elaborate.

This win-win offer would illuminate an important message for residents and visitors to this beautiful historic landmark that fish are sensitive animals with individual personalities who feel pain and fear just as we do. They learn from one another, can recognize themselves in mirrors—the “gold standard” of animal intelligence—and have better memories than most humans for their age, yet more of them are killed for food each year than all other animals combined. And killed in painful ways! More and more people are recognizing that fish don’t deserve to be seen as swimming vegetables and treated cruelly. PETA’s ad beautifully reflects this awareness.

As you may know, Grand Haven was named among PETA’s Top Vegan-Friendly Beach Towns in 2022. We hope you’ll continue that legacy and that of the more than a century the lighthouse has served as a guiding light by using it to help protect these wonderful, vulnerable animals. Once the lighthouse is open to the public, we’d be happy to offer delicious vegan fish sandwiches and loan you our Fish Empathy Quilt, a vibrant, creative depiction of marine life that features more than 100 unique quilt squares contributed by people all over the world—including some famous ones—for example, New Yorker cartoonist Harry Bliss and French oceanographer Jean-Michel Cousteau. Thank you for your consideration. I look forward to hearing from you.

Very truly yours,

Ingrid Newkirk

Founder