From Pets To Heroes: The Role Of Animals In Disaster Response And Recovery

Disasters affect animals in many ways. For example, the 2019-2020 Australian bushfires saw huge funder interest when nearly three billion animals, including more than 60,000 koalas, were at risk.

Pets in disasters became an important issue for disaster responders after Hurricane Katrina when many people refused to evacuate because they did not want to leave their pets behind. This issue flared again during the mass evacuation from Ukraine.

Drought and other disasters may also affect the ability of animals to provide livelihood support to farmers and pastoralists.

Panelists will discuss the range of ways that animals and disasters intersect. From both an international and domestic perspective, the panel will discuss how funders can invest in prevention, emergency response and long-term recovery to improve the lives of animals.

This webinar will allow donors to:

• Understand the many ways that animals are impacted in a disaster.
• Learn how to provide support in all phases of a disaster.
• Build a domestic and international perspective on animal-specific grantmaking to support long-term equitable recovery.

While primarily aimed at funders, the webinar may also interest emergency managers, government staff, academics, disaster responders and nongovernmental organization staff interested in, or working on, disasters and other crises.

Register now

CDP’s Director of Learning and Partnerships, Tanya Gulliver-Garcia, will moderate the discussion.

Panelists: (Additional panelists will be added as they are confirmed)

• Josh Cary, National Director, American Humane, Rescue
• Louisa McCune, Executive Director, Kirkpatrick Foundation
• Hassan Olow, Program Director, Concern Worldwide, Kenya Programme

This webinar is co-sponsored by Animal Grantmakers.

Automatic closed captioning will be available via Zoom during the webinar (with automated multilingual translation). The webinar will be recorded and posted on this page. We will email the link to the fully captioned recording to everyone who registered.

CDP is striving to increase the accessibility of its webinars. Please email Katie Huang and let us know what accommodations you need by March 1; we will do our best to meet your needs as feasible.