Bad news visits the sanctuary

Posted by Jobi on July 26, 2009

the old place

News arrived just before Christmas of 2007, and it was not merry. The surviving owner of the land the sanctuary was built on informed the organization they would have to relocate. As she explained it, she was now alone and had no provisions to deal with liability issues or any other issues that could arise. Everyone worked together to formulate a relocation plan for a rapidly approaching move-out deadline of March 15th!

Talk about having an overloaded Task List:

Find new land to house lions, tigers, wolves, servals, caracal, lynx, leopards, lemurs, and iguana, a variety of birds and other creatures of the wild, plus, of course, the bear.
In two weeks find enough people to help take down numerous cages and housing the animals were accustomed to.
Pack up and move box upon box of records and office supplies – not to mention, the office.
In less than two weeks find enough people to load and move the building materials that were once home to the animals.
And then what? How do you pack up wildlife and shuffle them off to temporary shelters, not really even knowing for how long? Where will they go? Who will take them in?

the new place

So as to not leave you hanging, I will tell you they all kicked things into high gear and within weeks a new piece of property was found a few miles south. All the members worked tirelessly to pull off the move in a VERY brief period of time.

The new tract had none of the comforts available at the current location – no lakes for the big cats to roam about and romp in, no built-in pools in each big cat enclosure, no infrastructure (water and electricity to every enclosure, solid buildings – any buildings, period), no perimeter fencing.

I don’t know about you, but I have a million questions to ask Elmira’s Wildlife Sanctuary volunteers as to the how, why, what, and even an “if”. In the next week or two, I will track down some more details and ask a bunch of questions.

Please get back to me with YOUR questions about this mighty adventure. OK?

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