Defenders of Wildlife: Misleading fundraising?
Several months ago my wife and I went to a Florida Panthers (hockey) game. During one of the periods I took a walk around the arena and came across a booth with people promoting conservation of the Florida Panther (Puma Concolor Coryi), a critically endangered subspecies of panther that exists in south Florida. I spent quite a bit of time talking to the people about the panthers and the discussion migrated to wolf dogs and wolf-like dogs since one of them had a husky / malamute service dog with them. Their setup and their paperwork didn’t give any kind of hint that they were associated with a larger organization and I was under the impression that they were a local organization I decided to give them a donation of $20 and they gave me a small stuffed panther.
My concerns started the next day when I noticed the tag on the stuffed panther said “Defenders of Wildlife”. I didn’t jump to conclusions at the time since I had also given them my email address. I was hoping that DOW had given these panthers to the group as a donation to help with the conservation. Over the next few months I watched my email account and did not receive any emails from DOW so I thought that the panthers were donated to the group from DOW. Continue reading