SurfWriter Girls: California’s Sea Otters Need Your Help

Friday, February 22, 2013

California’s Sea Otters Need Your Help

Your Tax Donation Can Help the Sea Otters and More

Sunny Magdaug and Patti Kishel hold the exclusive rights to the following copyrighted material. For permission to reprint or excerpt it and/or link it to another website, contact them at

surfwriter.girls@gmail.com

Now that it’s tax season again, it’s time for SurfWriter Girls’ annual reminder that you can help the environment by making a voluntary contribution to these two important programs:

California Sea Otter Fund

Rare and Endangered Species Preservation Program

The California Sea Otter Fund provides crucial funding to help scientists learn about and trace the causes of sea otter mortality, examine the factors limiting population growth, and prevent pollution of California's marine ecosystem.

Please help us!

This fund is especially critical now, given that the bad economy has decreased or even eliminated support for sea otter conservation and research.

SurfWriter Girls Sunny Magdaug and Patti Kishel learned that close to 20,000 sea otters used to inhabit the ocean between California’s northern border and San Diego. But, hunting and environmental changes practically wiped them out, leaving only a few otters in the Central Coast.

Sea Otters at play

In 1977 sea otters became a protected group under the Endangered Species Act and since then the California population has risen to almost 3,000.

To see the otters for yourself, check out their page on Facebook.

Like us on Facebook!

The Rare and Endangered Species Preservation Program helps ensure that critical habitat for California’s endangered plants and animals is conserved for future generations.

Did you know that California supports more than 5,000 native plants and more than 1,000 native animals? At least one-third of these plants and two-thirds of the animals are “endemic species” – species that are found nowhere else in the world.

California Condor

But, many of these species have been pushed to the brink of extinction and more than 300 are designated by the state as rare, threatened or endangered. Some of the reasons for this include loss of habitat, water management conflicts, invasive species, hunting, and climate change.

Tortoise

These animals and plants are part of our heritage and need our support. By donating whatever you can to the Rare and Endangered Species Preservation Program you can make a big difference.

Manzanita

SurfWriter Girls’ contact in Sacramento, Dana Michaels, a spokesperson for the CaliforniaDepartment of Fish and Wildlife, explained, “The tax check-off program makes it easy to help. Thanks to people who make these voluntary contributions on their tax form we can save important wildlife research programs that benefit everyone.”

Fox

Michaels pointed out that both programs are listed in the “Contributions” section of your California State Tax Form: California Sea Otter Fund, Line 410, and Rare and Endangered Species Preservation Program, Line 403.

Quino Checkerspot Butterfly

Talking to Michaels reminded SurfWriter Girls that, in helping the sea otters and other endangered species, we are also helping ourselves since we are all connected.