Wildlife rehab facilities running holiday fundraising campaigns amid rising demand for care

Groups nursing wildlife seek the spirit of giving Organizations that help injured wildlife are running holiday fundraising campaigns, and their need for donations is great.

The Alberta Institute for Wildlife Conservation (AIWC) and the Calgary Wildlife Rehabilitation Society (Calgary Wildlife) say this is an important time of year to raise funds for their work in caring for injured and orphaned wildlife.

Beki Hunt, executive director for Calgary Wildlife, says to date, more than 2,200 wild animals have come through their doors needing care, and they've had more than 7,500 calls to their wildlife hotline from concerned citizens.

Hunt says those numbers have continued to climb since 2022.

"We're going to be up about 10 per cent from last year," she said. "And last year, we were up about 25 per cent from the year before, so over the past two years, we've seen an increase of about 35 per cent in our patient intake."

Hunt says the fundraising goal for the 2024 holiday campaign is $200,000.

"This end-of-year time is our biggest fundraising push," she said. "We do fundraise obviously throughout the year, but this time of year is when the majority of people do donate; they get their tax-deductible receipts for the taxes for the next year, so it's a really important time of year for us."

Calgary Wildlife veterinarians have seen an increase in the number of bats admitted for care in 2024.

"We've taken in about 68 so far this year, which is more than double what we had last year," Hunt said. "We're really lucky to have a dedicated bat hospital where we only treat bats, so we have enclosures, temperature control and humidity control specific for bats, and we also have an outdoor bat flight pen that obviously we're not using in the winter, but we're able to overwinter the bats, which is really important, especially since five of the bat species in Alberta are now endangered."

AIWC has provided care for 1,700 wildlife patients in 2024 and treatment of a single species can cost anywhere from $100 to more than $1,000 including food, medical care and enclosure maintenance.

Scottie Potter, AIWC's communications co-ordinator, says they saw a massive increase this year in the number of mammals admitted.

"All at once we had 40 baby skunks, an adult badger, six red foxes, a bobcat, a baby beaver," she said. "Several of those species we hadn't cared for in a very long time; it was the first bobcat we've had in over 10 years, and it's been a very busy, intense year and so we are hopefully going to try and upgrade to some new mammal enclosures to accommodate all of that."

Potter says staff and volunteers had to modify many enclosures to make them dig- and climb-proof to protect the animals that don't always want to stick around for their recovery.

"Think of trying to keep a domestic cat in a space, but a bobcat can grow twice as big," she said. "So we had to cat-proof one of our enclosures for the very first time, and that meant extra fencing, making sure that they couldn't get out through the top of the enclosure and even adding a bunch of cat furniture to make sure that this bobcat gains all the skills needed in order to survive in the wild."

Potter says the holiday fundraiser will be used to build some of those new enclosures to be ready for whatever comes their way in the spring.

"Our Give the Gift of Saving Wildlife campaign is a holiday fundraiser that we do every single year," she said. "Our goal this year is $90,000 and we're really grateful we've already raised over half of that. It happened very quickly and so we're really grateful for everyone who's donated."

The rehab facilities say they have suggestions on their websites for how people can make donations that don't include sending a cheque through the mail during the postal strike.