Wild at Heart animal rescue and refugee facility forced to shut its doors

Wild at Heart animal refugee closing WATCH: It's a sad day for animal lovers in northern Ontario as the Wild at Heart Rescue and Refuge closes its doors. Molly Frommer reports.

SUDBURY – A popular animal rescue and animal refugee facility in Sudbury has to shut its doors due to a lack of revenue.

Wild at Heart has saved hundreds of animals since it opened 12 years ago.

Rod Jouppi, who has been running the place, says the centre just simply does not bring in enough revenue to keep things going.

"We lose money every year and recently we've been finding that revenue is decreasing, volunteers are decreasing and we don't get any regular funding whatsoever, so it puts us in a precarious situation every year," he explained.

Just last year, Jouppi says 120 volunteers were trained, and out of that number, only half a dozen people came out and volunteered their time.

"People are too busy, they don't have the time to volunteer. Our needs are in the spring and summer and everyone's spring and summer in northern Ontario is busy," he continued.

"The days that they don't show up, we are very packed and we struggle to get through the day. So it was very vital to have volunteers… we did have some really good days when everything went really shortly, but again, long weekends som days were really hard because we'd only have three or four volunteers," said Cassidy Sullivan, Wild at Heart.

Jouppie wants the community to know that the facility will be taken over by Pet Save, but it will only be accepting domestic animals and not any wildlife.

Jouppi says, "you cannot have both types of species together, so the best thing we can do is know that the building is going to continue helping animals in need."

He says he is hopeful someone will step up and open a wildlife facility here in northeastern Ontario and hopefully receive some government support.

Those involved say roughly 1,000 injured or orphaned animals are cared for each year in our region.