Overwintering Injured and Orphaned Wildlife Needs Your Help!

The Cause

Since 1993, Alberta Institute for Wildlife Conservation (AIWC) has been a champion for injured and orphaned wildlife through rescue, rehabilitation and release. Since our founding, we have admitted more than 37,000 animals into care. We believe our responsibility to wildlife includes an educational component that emphasizes the importance of environmental protection, and as such, AIWC offers engaging public education programs to inform all ages of the importance of wildlife to our ecosystem and way of life.

95% of the animals admitted to AIWC are as a result of human activity in some way. From a bird hitting a window, to a moose calf being hit by a car, to a hummingbird being caught by a cat. Wildlife is an important indicator to the health of our environment. Humans cannot survive without wildlife and we believe it is our duty to support injured and orphaned wildlife.

AIWC is uniquely positioned to care for critically-injured and tricky species, as we are the only wildlife rehabilitation facility in Alberta that has a full-time veterinarian on staff. For some of these patients, recovery is a long-term process, and can take over a year (or even two!) for them to be ready to go back to the wild, and they need constant care and medical attention in order to be successfully rehabilitated.

In 2023, 1,670 wild animals were cared for and each year we see over 150 different species of wildlife admitted to our hospital. While many animals are able to be released within 1-3 months of admission, there are some critically injured animals and very young orphans who will need to stay with us for much longer. We would like to please request your support by providing funds to help care for long term patients overwintering at our facility, including a bobcat kitten (anticipated release of April 2025) and beaver kit (anticipated release of May 2026). Your support is vital to us providing the best care possible to Alberta’s wildlife. The cost to rehabilitate an individual animal can vary greatly, but for long term patients, it can cost a thousand dollars or more to get an animal back to the wild.

The funding requested supports AIWC’s mission and will provide wildlife with critical medical supplies and food to help them on their journey back to the wild.

Who Will it Benefit?

Few places in the world have such diversity of wildlife as found in Alberta. The province is home to over 500 different species and they draw hundreds of thousands of people to the province each year hoping to get a glimpse of iconic, Canadian wildlife.

Albertans care about wildlife and the environment, so much so that over 15,000 members of the public utilized our services in 2023, whether it be our Wildlife Hotline, Wildlife Rehabilitation, or Wildlife Education programs. Unfortunately, the reality is that due to urban expansion and the increase in human and wildlife encounters, wildlife needs our help more than ever. Knowing that AIWC is there and can care for long-term patients makes an enormous difference to people in need of our services, and Field Law’s help in this critical effort would be greatly appreciated.

Keystone species like carnivores and beaver kits are critical to the health of our ecosystems, whether in keeping rodent and hare populations under control or creating habitats that provide homes for hundred of other species. Because they are slow to reproduce, each individual animal has a disproportionally large impact on their ecosystems. Beavers in particular not only create ideal habitat for other animals, but their dams and streams also prevent flash flooding and even help lessen the impacts of forest fires! It is impossible to say for certain how many people these animals will help upon release, but their stories have already touched the lives of thousands of people through AIWC’s social media posts, education programs, and news stories.

In an ideal world, wildlife rehabilitation centres like AIWC would not need to exist. The sad reality, however, is that due to urban expansion our services our needed more every year. AIWC is not funded by the government and relies on its own fundraising to support its mission. Each year, AIWC assists over 15,000 people, whether through education programs and postings, direct questions on our hotline, or working with finders of injured animals to ensure they get the care they need to return to the wild.