Pet Rescue Pilots

THE TRANSPORT OF THE PET POPULATION OUT OF HIGH-KILL REGIONS TO LOW-KILL REGIONS.

Each flight brings us closer to a world where every pet has a safe and loving forever home, pet guar

Goal One: Help with immediate needs of pet relocation by air with ~35 life-saving flights each year landing 1,000+ shelter pets in loving homes, creating much needed space in crowded shelters and foster homes.

Goal Two: Establish partnerships in pet welfare to offer our community much-needed resources for responsible pet guardianship that keep pets out of shelters in the first place.

Goal Three: Educational outreach to the next generation of pet advocates - children 8 to 18 - to generate awareness and advocacy early around what is necessary to create long-term change in pet rescue.

Our pilots undergo regular training and certification to ensure they are not only compliant, but at the forefront of the latest regulations and technology in the aviation category. This helps our pilots be more innovative, proactive, and well-connected in the aviation community, which serves our organization when it comes to making our life-saving flights and routing more efficient, and recruiting other pilots to be a part of our rescue network.

In the past year, we have witnessed a backslide in gains shelters made during the pandemic, resulting in: 1) an increase in need for rescue by relocation by air, and 2) an alarming increase in euthanasia rates among larger pets, as overburdened shelters don't have the space and resources to keep them beyond 48 hour holds. In response, we moved ahead with expansion plans. In the short term, we brought on a second pilot to perform more flights in our current Cessna airplane. We also optimized our flight-planning process to allow more time for efficient coordination among our rescue network. This streamlined process promoted increased predictability of flight scheduling, so that our rescue partners could more confidently, regularly, and accurately pull pets from shelters and ensure a proper foster and/or adoption plan was in place upon arrival at their final destination. As a long-term response, we have researched, secured financing for, and are in the process of identifying a Pilatus aircraft that can carry not only 2-3x the number of pets we've carried in the past but also accommodate a greater number of large pets per flight. This aircraft is also faster, making each mission more efficient, and is best suited to expand to new areas, such as Texas that has some of the highest euthanasia rates in the country, and Canada, where some rescue partners expect to only fill 2% of adoption requests due to lack of shelter pets. With a larger, more efficient aircraft, we'll also be able to participate in more pro-active missions, such as helping create space in shelters in anticipation of wild fire season on the west coast, hurricane season in Texas, and kitten season which we can expect across states each spring.