Animal Shelter ‘Bearly’ Getting by – Put Out Call for Donations
Photos courtesy Northern Lights Wildlife Society
Smithers, B.C. – If you’ve got any fruit or vegetables to spare an animal shelter in Smithers could sure use your help.
Demand is fierce at the Northern Lights Wildlife Society because they’ve got 25 bear cubs and three deer fawns to feed.
“They are eating like crazy right now and trying to get ready for hibernation,” says shelter manager Angelika Langen, who notes they’ve never had so many cubs so early in the season. “So we’re looking for apples, pears, cherries, plums, whatever people have or vegetables in the garden, carrots and so on.”
She says the animals go through six buckets per feeding – about 25 pounds of fruit and vegetables – three times a day.
“We just got a load in of 500 pounds of apples and they only lasted three days.”
She says those willing to help in the Prince George area can ship their fruits and veggies free of charge.
“We have some lovely ladies that have offered to make pick ups at people’s places,” says Langen. “Or they can bring it directly to Bandstra and Bandstra will ship it to Smithers for us. But if they don’t have the transportation to bring them there then we have some volunteers that are willing to help.”
Those unable to make it to Bandstra can call Langen on her cell at 1-250-877-1181 for pick up information.
Locally the Northern Bear Awareness Society has helped by providing a link on its Fruit Exchange Facebook page says president Dave Bakker.
“It’s another option for people to take advantage of to address the excess fruit issue that we have in the city.”
Comments
It seems wrong to me to feed bears a unnatural food some thing that there going to develop a taste for; that’s going to increase the chances of becoming
a problem bear down the road.
I also see something wrong with this picture.
Here we have a local winery providing $ to the bear aware program if you pick up apples from trees which people are not using for themselves and bringing them to the winery, while people elsewhere are feeding apples to bear cubs.
There must be some better way of feeding them than the fruits which grow in people’s backyards and attracts them back into human habitat when they are released to the wild.
Do as I have done in that past and will continue to do, go online and make a charitable donation!
Not only will you receive a tax deduction, you will be providing the Northern Lights Wildlife Society with cash, cash that can be used to buy what they believe are the best food options for these orphaned animals!
This is awesome of Bandstra to do this,
Will be dropping of close to 100 pounds tomorrow.
25 orphaned bear cubs… wow! Obviously the Northern Lights Wildlife Society does a valuable job, perhaps the provincial government should start chipping in it share of funding because we know its their conservation officers that are contributing to the larger number of orphaned bear cubs when they kill their mothers. There are a couple of recent examples, here in the PG area, where this has happened.
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