While at a recent event promoting Maui tourism, I met Candy Aluli, president of Aluli Public Relations. Candy lives in Maui and promotes several hotels and resorts there. The properties looked lovely, but what really interested me was her animal advocacy work.

Candy told me about the Wings of Aloha program. This is an easy way for tourists to help with the overpopulation problem of stray dogs on Maui. I’d never really thought about it, but Maui is a small island. When dogs and cats keep breeding, where do all those puppies and kittens go?

Alaska Airlines, Air Canada, Aloha Air Cargo and Hawaiian Airlines partner with shelters on the mainland to give excess pets a chance to find a home. If you’re flying from Maui to Portland on Alaska or Hawaiian, you can add one of these strays to your reservation. The great thing about it is it’s an easy, even lazy, way to help.

Here’s how you do it:

1. Contact Jamie Fitzpatrick jfitzpatrick@mauihumanesociety.org at the Maui Humane Society and give Jamie your name, phone number, email address, flight date and confirmation code. The MHS staff will contact their Portland rescue shelter partners – Pixie Project and Tender Care Animal Rescue across the border in Vancouver, Washington – and see if they can take the pet. If so, MHS contacts your airline and adds the pet to your reservation.
2. MHS staff and the pet meet you at the airline check-in counter 2 hours before your flight. Staff checks in the pet, who will fly cargo.
3. When you get to Portland, the rescue partner claims the pet in the baggage area.

Simple! And you’re a hero.