I’ve been volunteering at The Atlantic Wildlife Institute as Director of Education for the past five years. This year we managed to get a few Summer students to help us out and Mark has set up the AWI Blog, which is highlighting photos of the orphaned babies as well as some of the injured animals that have started to pour in to the Institute. For example, New Brunswick allows a Spring bear hunt so we usually receive a few orphaned cubs.
AWI uses these animals in much the same way that scientists conduct water and air sampling. We want to understand the causes of displacement. This knowledge informs our research work, in partnership with several universities & colleges, and lets us create appropriate learning programs. AWI is a registered national charity, so you can make tax-deductible donations, too :-)
Update: Our new blog is atlanticwildlife.org
What a beautiful cub. I know it’s probably hypocritical for an omnivore, but I can’t understand how people can bring themselves to shoot animals.
My cousin worked in conservation in Zimbabwe, and one of his first tasks was to cull 400 elephant. He said he got desensitised after a while, but I would have failed at the first hurdle!
We take in as many animals as we can, but it’s only a small fraction of those injured and orphaned. The only way to preserve habitat and species is to make systemic changes to the ways humans operate. That’s why we focus on education and not saving every animal out there. We have to learn to live with wildlife and remember that they are “wild” and “life”.
That is a beautiful animal, you do a great job taking them in.
I don’t think I could ever get desensitised to killing animals, but maybe after a while it would be difficult not to.