Animal Welfare/philanthropy
In 2005, Madeleine Pickens provided substantial funding to allow Old Friends Equine to purchase Fraise and the multiple Grade One winner, Ogygian from their then Japanese owners and bring them back to retirement at the Old Friends facility in Georgetown, Kentucky. Following her marriage to Boone Pickens, the couple led the fight to close the last horse slaughterhouse in the United States. Their work resulted in the passage of the American Horse Slaughter Prevention Act by the United States House of Representatives. In recognition of their efforts, in 2007 Madeleine and Boone Pickens received the Equine Advocates' Safe Home Equine Protection Award..
During the disaster caused by Hurricane Katrina in August 2005, Boone Pickens donated $7 million to the Red Cross to aid the people of the city of New Orleans. Madeleine Pickens watched the events unfold on television and set about to organize emergency aid for the multitude of homeless dogs and cats wandering the streets of New Orleans plus others whose owners could no longer take care of them. She arranged and paid for aircraft to transport a great many of these animals to the safety of the Marin Humane Society in Novato, California.
After the Bureau of Land Management announced in 2008 that the United States government was considering euthanasia and/or selling more than 30,000 wild mustangs to slaughterhouses overseas, Madeleine Pickens announced plans to develop a one million acre (4,000 km²) sanctuary for the horses. On September 13, 2008, Madeleine Pickens was named ABC News "Person of the Week." On March 3, 2009 she testified before the United States House of Representatives Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests and Public Lands in support of H.R. 1018, the Restoring Our American Mustangs (ROAM) Act.
Read more about this topic: Madeleine A. Pickens
Famous quotes containing the words animal, welfare and/or philanthropy:
“An animal can learn to fight, but to sing beautiful things and make people believe them....”
—Dalton Trumbo (1905–1976)
“Whether in the field of health, education or welfare, I have put my emphasis on preventive rather than curative programs and tried to influence our elaborate, costly and ill- co-ordinated welfare organizations in that direction. Unfortunately the momentum of social work is still directed toward compensating the victims of our society for its injustices rather than eliminating those injustices.”
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“Almost every man we meet requires some civility,—requires to be humored; he has some fame, some talent, some whim of religion or philanthropy in his head that is not to be questioned, and which spoils all conversation with him. But a friend is a sane man who exercises not my ingenuity, but me.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)