It's become almost an annual tradition at The Cochrane Eagle's sister paper, the Rocky View Weekly, to do a story on the Alberta Institute for Wildlife Conservation (AIWC) in early December, to help promote the Madden-based animal hospital's yearly Give the Gift of Saving Wildlife fundraising campaign. We included a brief about the campaign on page 2 in this week's Eagle.
Every time The Weekly writes this story, the headline remains virtually the same as the year before – 'Local animal hospital faces surge in demand,' or something to that effect. It's remarkable, but also disheartening, that the non-profit continues to have to treat more and more injured and orphaned animals every calendar year.
Usually, AIWC's patients are injured due to some form of human activity. They got hit by a car, attacked by a pet dog, or flew into a window. The cost to rehabilitate these injured or orphaned animal averages $100 per patient, though this can be much higher. According to AIWC, the centre has treated more than 1,900 animals already this calendar year. You can hypothesize how much funding is required to fulfil their mandate.
This week's Eagle also contains a story about a similar animal fundraiser taking place this December for another animal-focused non-profit near Cochrane: The Yamnuska Wolfdog Sanctuary (see story on page 16). While the wolfdog sanctuary and AIWC have different mandates, their commonality is the passion they share in caring for their animals.
Another commonality is the high cost required to perform this mandate – as sanctuary manager Kara Dowhaniuk told us, the non-profit needs to pay for 86 pounds of food per day to feed the wolfdogs on site. Support is certainly appreciated.
There are tons of charity campaigns taking place around December, which is always a busy month for non-profits. Supporting animals is easily forgotten when there are so many other important charitable campaigns taking place to support people in need.
But we'd urge our readers to remember the wildlife this holiday season as well, and consider donating to the campaigns for either of these two crucial local non-profits.
