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Save Vanishing Species

First Day of Issue Date: September 20, 2011

First Day of Issue Location: Washington, DC

About This Stamp

The U.S. Postal Service is proud to offer the Save Vanishing Species™ semipostal stamp. Featuring a bold graphic of an Amur tiger cub, the artwork depicts just one of the magnificent animals that this stamp is designed to help. Your purchase benefits conservation funds that are helping create hope for the future.

Under the Multinational Species Conservation Funds Semipostal Stamp Act of 2010, the Postal Service will transfer the net proceeds from the sale of these stamps to the United States Fish and Wildlife Service to support the Multinational Species Conservation Funds. The funds include:

AFRICAN ELEPHANT CONSERVATION FUND Elephants capture our imagination, but poaching and loss of habitat have taken their future hostage. The African elephant population has shrunk dramatically, and while conservation efforts have stabilized the elephant population in southern Africa, much remains to be done.

ASIAN ELEPHANT CONSERVATION FUND Asian elephants also face habitat issues. Conservation efforts have assisted in developing land use strategies that will benefit both man and animal, allowing both to flourish together.

GREAT APE CONSERVATION FUND Endlessly fascinating, great apes are especially vulnerable. Orangutans, chimpanzees, gorillas, and bonobos are all at risk. Conservation efforts address issues of habitat loss, poaching, and disease in hopes of saving these amazing creatures.

RHINOCEROS AND TIGER CONSERVATION FUND Powerful and compelling, the rhinoceros and tiger are targeted by poachers and pressured by human civilization. Conservation programs have helped bring Africa’s white rhino population back to more than 17,000 and improved poaching detection and prosecution to stem the loss of tigers in various localities.

MARINE TURTLE CONSERVATION FUND For more than 100 million years, the ancestors of marine turtles swam the oceans. Yet in less than a century, exploitation and habitat destruction have devastated their numbers. Conservation projects work toward the goal of restoring large numbers of these ancient, intriguing creatures to the world’s oceans.

Derry Noyes served as the art director, designer, and typographer for the stamp. She worked with artist Nancy Stahl to develop one powerful illustration to symbolize the plight of all of these imperiled animals. The Amur tiger cub shown in the stamp art is one of five tiger subspecies. When full grown, this cat can weigh up to 650 pounds and measure 13 feet from its nose to the tip of its tail.

Save Vanishing Species is being issued in panes of 20 self-adhesive stamps.

Stamp Art Director, Stamp Designer

Derry Noyes

For more than 40 years Derry Noyes has designed and provided art direction for close to 800 United States postage stamps and stamp products. She holds a bachelor of arts degree from Hampshire College and a master of fine arts degree from Yale University.

Noyes worked as a graphics designer at Beveridge and Associates, a Washington, D.C., firm, until 1979 when she established her own design firm, Derry Noyes Graphics. Her clients have included museums, corporations, foundations, and architectural and educational institutions. Her work has been honored by American Illustration, the Art Directors Club of Metropolitan Washington, Communication Arts, Critique magazine, Graphis, Creativity International, and the Society of Illustrators.

Before becoming an art director for the U.S. Postal Service, she served as a member of the Citizens' Stamp Advisory Committee from 1981 to 1983.

Noyes is a resident of Washington, D.C.

Stamp Artist

Nancy Stahl

A native of Long Island, New York, Nancy Stahl studied art at the University of Arizona, the Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles, and the School of Visual Arts in New York City. Her career can be split nearly equally between traditional media and digitally created art. Originally working in graphite, she experimented with a variety of media before making gouache paintings her signature style. She learned to work digitally starting in 1989 and abandoned her paints a few years later. Stahl’s clients have ranged from newspapers and magazines such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, TIME magazine, and Der Spiegel to corporate identity, packaging and billboards for companies such as The Disney Family Museum, Sharffen Berger chocolates, and Stonyfield Farms. Her love of craft has allowed Stahl to accept assignments as varied as creating lace for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute and knitting Christmas stamp designs in 2005 for the US Postal Service®. Her work is represented in The Illustrator in America, 1860-2000 by Walt Reed and Rolling Stone: The Illustrated Portraits edited by Fred Woodward. An instructor in the Independent Study Masters Degree program at Syracuse University, Stahl has also taught illustration at the School of Visual Arts and the Fashion Institute of Technology. In 2012, She was elected to the Society of Illustrators Hall of Fame. Stahl works from her studio in New York City where in her leisure time she pursues her hobby of computerized knitting.

She has designed more than 40 stamps for the U.S. Postal Service including the New York Public Library Lion (2000), three stamps for the Stars and Stripes issuance (2015), 19th Amendment: Women Vote (2020), and most recently Women's Rowing (2022). Stahl is especially well known for her highly stylized animal stamps, including Bighorn Sheep (2007); the Save Vanishing Species semipostal (2011, reissue 2014), featuring a portrait of an Amur tiger cub; Penguins (2015); Frogs (2019); and Save Manatees (2024).

First Day of Issue Ceremony

First Day of Issue Date: September 20, 2011
First Day of Issue Location: Washington, DC

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