September 28, 2011
Lick a Stamp, Save a Sea Turtle
For those of you out there who still send snail mail – and I know there are some of you – we have some fun news. The U.S. Postal Service has issued a special “Save Vanishing Species” stamp to benefit endangered species including elephants, rhinoceros, tigers, great apes, and – you guessed it — sea turtles.
While we would have picked the sea turtle to be the face on the stamp, there are as few as 3,200 Amur tigers left in the wild, so the big cat was chosen, and we have to admit it turned out beautifully.
Each stamp is 55 cents, 11 cents above the cost of a first class stamp. Those extra cents will benefit the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s five Multinational Species Conservation Funds, including the Marine Turtle Conservation Act (MTCA).
Only the fourth of its kind ever created by the Postal Service, this stamp is now available in post offices nationwide and will remain on sale for at least two years.
The MTCA is funded by annual U.S. Congressional appropriations. As U.S. lawmakers focus on spending cuts in 2011 and the years to come, the sales of the wildlife stamp are an important source of funding for these animals. If all 100 million stamps are sold over the next two years, it will net about $10 million for these vanishing species.
And if it’s a success, the program could be extended. Since its inception, the Breast Cancer Research stamp has raised more than $80 million.
So go ahead, send your next letter with a sea turtle in mind – get your own set of these beautiful new stamps!