FOUR PAWS Mourns Its Founder and President Heli Dungler

6.1.2020

6 January 2020 –  It is with great sadness that the global animal welfare organisation FOUR PAWS announces the death of Founder and President Heli Dungler, who died suddenly and unexpectedly yesterday, at the age of 56. Heli Dungler has decisively shaped animal welfare over the past 30 years and expanded FOUR PAWS into a global organisation.

“His death is a severe blow for us and fills us with great pain. Our thoughts and our deepest sympathies are with his wife, his daughter and all his relatives during these difficult hours”

says Josef Pfabigan, board member of FOUR PAWS and long-time friend and colleague of Heli Dungler.

Heli Dungler was born in 1963 in Waidhofen an der Thaya in Lower Austria. In 1984, he started his career with Greenpeace, Austria. During this time, he nurtured a desire to actively promote animal welfare. In 1988, he founded the animal welfare organisation FOUR PAWS in Vienna and initially focused on animal protection issues such as fur farming, battery farms and circus animals. For decades, through negotiations with decision-makers around the world, he campaigned for higher animal welfare standards in agriculture, for legislative changes in the keeping of brown bears and for the protection of big cats and stray animals. Thanks to his tireless work, today FOUR PAWS is a global animal welfare organisation, represented in 15 countries and revealing suffering, rescuing animals in need and protecting them worldwide.

"Through his passion and tireless efforts, FOUR PAWS was able to save the lives of many thousands of animals," says Josef Pfabigan. "The world has lost a very special animal lover and visionary. The employees of FOUR PAWS, his relatives and friends mourn the loss of a very special, charismatic and humorous person. We will honor his memory by continuing the work he loved so much."

Elise Burgess

Elise Burgess

Head of Communications

elise.burgess@four-paws.org

M: 0423 873 382

FOUR PAWS Australia
GPO Box 2845 
SYDNEY NSW 2001

Main Phone: 1800 454 228

FOUR PAWS is the global animal welfare organisation for animals under direct human influence, which reveals suffering, rescues animals in need and protects them.

Founded in 1988 in Vienna by Heli Dungler and friends, the organisation advocates for a world where humans treat animals with respect, empathy and understanding. The sustainable campaigns and projects of FOUR PAWS focus on companion animals including stray dogs and cats, animals in fashion, farm animals, and wild animals – such as bears, big cats, and orangutans – kept in inappropriate conditions as well as in disaster and conflict zones.

With offices in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, France, Germany, Kosovo, the Netherlands, Switzerland, South Africa, Thailand, Ukraine, the UK, the USA, and Vietnam as well as sanctuaries for rescued animals in eleven countries, FOUR PAWS provides rapid help and long-term solutions. www.four-paws.org.au

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