'Outgrown our space': Salthaven West fundraises for new clinic to treat injured wildlife in Sask.

In light of Giving Tuesday, Salthaven West is asking residents to consider supporting Saskatchewan’s wildlife and the benefits they bring to the ecosystem.

The wildlife rehabilitation centre has been operating out of a 600 square foot basement for the last five years and is now fundraising for an upgraded facility.

In its early days, Salthaven West would help a few hundred animals yearly. Now, the clinic admits and releases more than 1,500 birds, mammals, reptiles and amphibians each year.

“Our needs have outgrown our space,” said clinic manager Natalia Slipak. “We have had to turn patients away at some points.”

Salthaven rehabilitates sick and injured wildlife with the goal of releasing the healthy animals back into their natural environments.

The clinic houses and treats all its patients in one room, which can make it difficult to offer personalized care, Slipak said.

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They currently have 71 patients, which is considered a slow time of year. In the summer, they can have 120 animals at one time.

“We have a lot of fall baby squirrels that we have to keep over the winter, which also takes a lot of space and resources from us,” she said.

A new clinic would give them space to have an isolation room, ICU area, oil washing station and indoor therapy tub.

“We could take more volunteers and we could take more animals. We could do different treatments if we had the resources for it,” Slipak said.

“When you have animals that may have something viral, we do have to separate them from the rest of the animals. It is very important for us to have a separate isolation room.”

As the city expands, the clinic continues to see a rise in sick and injured wildlife due to “human-caused challenges” such as habitat destruction, window collisions, oil pits and vehicle collisions.

The clinic has an initial fundraising goal of $10,000. However, more fundraisers will be planned in the future.

People can donate to Salthaven West here.

A number of Saskatchewan organizations are pushing nature to the forefront this Giving Tuesday.

The Nature Conservancy of Canada (NCC) in Saskatchewan is asking for donations to help conserve the province’s natural habitats.

“The prairie grasslands is one of the most endangered ecosystems in the whole world,” said NCC senior development officer Vanessa Headford.

Saskatchewan has lost 80 per cent of its native prairie grasslands that puts plant and animal species at risk.

Headford encourages people to support the environment because of its many benefits.

“The plants absorb carbon from the atmosphere and then they store that in the vast root system. So it means that we’re not warming up the planet as much when we have more acres of prairies than less,” she said.

Giving Tuesday donations to NCC in Saskatchewan will be matched by the Heath Ryan and L. David Dube Foundation. People can donate here.