The Alberta Institute for Wildlife Conservation is celebrating its 25th anniversary Saturday.
Since 1993, the not-for-profit has helped to rehabilitate and heal injured and orphaned wildlife.
Saturday, executive director Holly Duval told Alberta Morning News that throughout the years they’ve accomplished many things, but the biggest one has been the number of animals they’ve helped.
“During our time we’ve cared for over 31,000 individual injured and orphaned animals. If you just think about that number for just even a second, it’s a huge amount of animals that have benefited from our care in some way.”
The centre has also started education programs to bring awareness to wildlife conservation, and cultivated a robust volunteer program.
Duval said the level of care they’re able to provide to the animals in need continues to improve.
“We are an accredited veterinary clinic through the Alberta Veterinary Medical Association, but that only happened in 2009. We’ve had a wonderful group of volunteer veterinarians come and assist with surgeries, but it wasn’t actually until spring of 2017 that we added a veterinarian on staff.”
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She said it’s because of the improvements they’ve made, and the donations and grants they’ve received that they’ve been able to provide the care they never could before.
She gave the example of a great-horned owl that had been found with a fractured bone in his wing, that because of these resources, they were able to buy the specialized surgical pins needed for the bone repair.
The owl was later released back into the wild.
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