The Northern Lights Wildlife Society is holding their annual M and M fundraiser. The money collected will go to “milk” for the new baby bears coming in this spring and “miles” to help release last year’s cubs back into the wild.
This spring, the shelter will be releasing 36 black bears to different parts of the province and two grizzly bears back to where they came from near Kitimat.
The bears always go back to the region they were rescued from. However, because of the COVID-19 pandemic, returning them may be more difficult than usual.
“It is giving us a lot of headaches,” said shelter owner Angelika Langen. “We usually work closely with different government regions to determine locations and I find it hard this year to get the necessary information. Secondly, we usually use hotels for our long-distance releases, this year that might mean sleeping in the car. We were glad to hear yesterday that restaurants will be reopened so that will help.”
The pandemic is also causing other headaches for Langen in their day-to-day operations.
“The biggest challenge is the lack of volunteers,” she said. “June is typically our busiest month with part of us on the road releasing and the other part taking care of new arrivals.”
She said June is typically deer and moose baby season for them but they lost all of their volunteers as most come from out of the country and travelling is not an option yet. The shelter has not yet secured any more local volunteers.
“Caring for babies is a full-time 24/7 commitment so people need to stay with us to do that, not something you can drop in to do for a few hours. However, people could come in for a few hours to help us clean feed dishes and cut fruit and that would be greatly appreciated.”
The recent pandemic has also caused the shelter to possibly cancel their annual open house which always happens on Canada Day. Usually, more than 3,000 people walk through each year with donations accepted at the door. It has become the shelter’s biggest fundraiser of the year and Langen isn’t sure how they will make up for the loss of income. Langen said they are looking at hosting the event virtually but doesn’t think it will raise as much money as it normally does.
“We trust that our supporters will help in every which way they are able to and, of course, we are very careful to spend money on necessities only. Any renovations or new buildings have been put on hold indefinitely,” she said.
She isn’t sure what kind of season they’ll have this year.
“We now have already four bear cubs and are actively trying to catch two more. This is early in the season, so we wonder what need this year might bring.”
For more information including bios of the bears being released or to donate, visit wildlifeshelter.com