The spring of 2025 was rife with need – from Los Angeles area wildlife rescues and animal shelters still dealing with wildfire impacts, to our partners in Ukraine requiring urgent aid following missile attacks, to an earthquake in Myanmar killing thousands of people in the area of one of our oldest partners. This was in addition to the needs you help us address every day. Read on to learn how your clicks, trivia participation, shopping for a cause, and direct donations helped pets, people, and the planet this spring!

Life-Saving Medical Care for Pets

When the spring began, your clicks took on new meaning, as our Click to Give sites began offering new options. Those included clicks for Emergency Animal Medical care, supporting pets in war zones, and helping fly pets to freedom. In June, we also launched a new limited time click to support senior cats for Adopt a Cat Month. There will be new short-term click opportunities to come!

In addition to clicking for Emergency Animal Medical care, your direct donations helped raise more than $135,000 dollars that provided care for more than 50 pets! Those included Sema, a malnourished Ukrainian dog rescued from a bombed village. This scared pup found safety at Patron Pet Center, who you helped support as they treated him for parvo. He’s now got a second chance at a new life.

Another pup in dire straits was Bush, a stray who was rescued by a family at a Greek refugee camp. They did what they could to care for him, but with limited means, they had no way to help with a vet visit. He needed extensive medical care, too, for a variety of parasites and malnourishment. These days, thanks to you, he’s gained weight, more fur, and a new zest for life.

Aemond, meanwhile, was nearing blindness at just six weeks old due to severe infections in his eyes.

With your support, Saving Kittens Sanctuary removed one of his eyes but was able to save vision in the other. He had a wonderful happy ending after that, too, as his foster mom and dad decided to keep him.

Flying to a Brighter Future

When it comes to happy endings, you helped facilitate hundreds more through our Flights to Freedom, which send cats and dogs from overcrowded shelters to those with more space and the ability to find them homes much more quickly. Between four flights this spring, we helped fly more than 330 dogs and cats to shelters with more resources.

Among these journeys was an emergency flight that transported 132 cats and dogs from overcrowded Los Angeles area shelters still impacted by the severe wildfires earlier this year. At these shelters, limited resources, space, and adopters put the pets at serious risk. They safely landed at shelters in Oregon and Washington, where they got a second chance at their happy endings.

Urgent Pet Evacuations in Ukraine

As the war in Ukraine has raged on for more than three years, you’ve helped us support partners in hard hit areas. One of them, 12 Guardians, was struck by missiles this spring. With your help, we raised more than $30,000 to evacuate and care for their pets and others. We were also able to raise nearly $180,000 when you rushed to help partners whose pet food levels were nearly depleted. That was enough for 1.8 million meals!

Throughout the spring, you also helped us provide food, supplies, and comfort items to other shelters throughout Ukraine.

Essential – And Fun – Needs Met

Pets with special needs end up in shelters each year, and you helped make sure they had all the necessities. That includes baby formula we sent to shelters as part of a Mother’s Day fundraising effort. That helped more than 1,900 orphaned animals like Blue, a malnourished puppy brought into Tornado Alley Bulldog Rescue with an orphaned pup from another litter, Zippy. These days, they’re growing and living the fun and playful puppy life they deserve, thanks to getting the nutrients they needed!

For National Specially Abled Pets Day, you helped us cover the cost of 80 mobility devices for pets. Stray cat organizations got a hand, or a paw, too, with funds raised for thousands of cat houses, blankets, and other supplies.

It’s not always about medical and other basic needs, though. Comfort and stimulation needs are also essential for shelter pets! This spring, you helped us provide toys, treats, and blankets to shelters across the country, too. Those included a cactus scratching post that helped “hiss and spit” feral kittens channel their spiciness, as well as treats that helped calm a cat who gets a little bitey when he’s excited.

Aid to Unhoused Veterans and Their Pets

With more than 32,000 veterans experiencing homelessness last year, along with looming VA cuts, the need to help this population remains urgent. With your support, a Memorial Day fundraiser to get Good Packs to veterans and their pets raised enough for nearly 2,100 packs. The packs for people include items like toiletries, clean clothes, a reusable water bottle, and a blanket, while the pet packs carry a collapsible bowl, leashes, a toy, pet food, and treats.

Myanmar Earthquake Relief and Refugee Aid

At the end of March, a 7.7 magnitude earthquake hit Myanmar, killing more than 3,000 people, injuring about 5,000, and destroying buildings. The country has already been experiencing a humanitarian crisis, with civil war putting millions in need of humanitarian assistance.

We’ve been involved in aid work for Myanmar refugees for years through our support of the Mae Tao Clinic just over the border in Thailand. When the earthquake struck, MTC deployed medical teams in areas impacted by the earthquake, and your support helped that happen.

In addition to supporting MTC’s disaster relief efforts, we continued to support their dry food program, which provides tinned fish, rice, yellow beans, oil, salt, and seasoning to children who have fled Myanmar and study at the clinic’s boarding schools. You recently helped us surpass 1.5 million meals provided through this program!

Another service MTC provides is maternal health care to refugees and migrant workers. Through this, you’ve just helped them reach the milestone of safely delivering more than 45,000 babies. 

Planting Trees Amid Logging Concerns

This Arbor Day, the observance carried extra urgency due to President Donald Trump’s executive order aimed at increasing domestic logging by 25%. The Secretary of Agriculture also made an Emergency Situation Determination that called 59% of U.S. Forest Service lands an emergency situation, allowing logging projects to get expedited permitting and expedited environmental reviews.

With your help, we raised enough money in April to plant nearly 8,000 trees. This supports our work with partners like the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources’ Future Forest Fund, which plants trees in key areas of state forests.

Life-Saving Care for Sickened Wildlife

Animal shelters in the Los Angeles area were still in need of help this spring in the aftermath of wildfires, and wildlife rescues were much the same. This year, there were much earlier toxic algal blooms off the coast than usual, which is believed to be linked to runoff from the fires. These toxic blooms killed and sickened hundreds of sea lions, dolphins, and other marine animals, requiring extensive work by area wildlife rescues. We helped support their work to save these animals, who were suffering from symptoms like lethargy, seizures, and erratic behavior.

On the other side of the world, you helped us support organizations in Australia caring for birds suffering from lorikeet paralysis syndrome. Between October and June each year, thousands of lorikeets in certain areas of Australia end up in wildlife centers due to an inability to fly or stand, hindlimb weakness, and difficulty blinking or swallowing. With your help, the birds at these centers got life-saving care.

Conservation for Unique Species and Places

All seven sea turtle species are listed as endangered or threatened, and only 1 in 1,000 baby sea turtles survives to adulthood. This makes nest protection essential. Your support helped us team up with an organization in North Carolina that uses equipment to monitor nests, mitigates light pollution in their vicinity, and alerts beachgoers to nests so they don’t accidentally trample them.

Observing species is also important to their survival, and you’ve been helping us study species in a unique and threatened ecosystem for years. Our partner Greater Good Charities takes part in survey expeditions in the Madrean Sky Islands, a biodiversity hot spot in the southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico. The goal is to record the species there to ensure the area’s protection. One of the focuses of a recent trip was the Ditmars horned lizard, a little understood species that disappeared from scientists’ view for around 70 years before being found again. You helped ensure scientists learn more about it so they can inform management strategies.

A little further south, an organization in Brazil is trying to learn more about the vulnerable giant anteater. Your support has helped us provide scientists with equipment and training to learn more about their reproduction, which is essential knowledge to manage the species in the wild and in captivity.

THANK YOU

We are so thankful for the support you’ve provided for all these pets, people, and wildlife in need of aid and protection. We couldn’t do our work without you, and we look forward to continuing our work together to help make more stories like these happen!