Adopt a manatee for easter
The Save the Manatee Club has a new Easter public service message to help raise public awareness for manatee conservation efforts and you can adopt a manatee from the club.
Your support makes it possible to champion the protection of endangered manatees and their aquatic habitat. Without that protection, the manatees’ very survival is at stake.
In 2008, 337 manatee deaths were documented, including 90 in water-craft related deaths and a record-high 101 newly born and stillborn manatee deaths, according to theFlorida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.
Save the Manatee Club is the world’s leading nonprofit manatee conservation organization. Singer/songwriter Jimmy Buffett and former Florida Governor and U.S. Senator, Bob Graham, founded the organization in 1981.
The Save the Manatee Club’s Adopt-A-Mantee program can be a $25 tax-deductible gift that includes an adoption certificate with a color photo of a real, live Florida manatee, biography, membership handbook, a subscription to the Club’s official quarterly newsletter, The Manatee Zone, with updates on the manatee adoptees, and the bi-monthly e-newsletter, Paddle Tales.
For $35, each new member who joins the Adopt-A-Manatee program online also receives a plush manatee. Shipping is free.
“With the number of manatee deaths from watercraft so high, it is imperative we do all we can to protect the places that are crucial to the manatee’s very survival,” said Patrick Rose, Executive Director of Save the Manatee Club.
Funds from Save the Manatee Club’s gift adoptions help support ongoing efforts to increase public awareness and education and to aid with manatee research, rescue and rehabilitation efforts, and advocacy and legal action. There are 32 real live manatees to choose from in the Club’s three Florida Adopt-A-Manatee program locations which include Blue Spring State Park near Orange City, Homosassa Springs Wildlife State Park in Homosassa, and in the Tampa Bay area. View them all on the Club’s website at http://www.savethemanatee.org/Adoptees.htm.