A fundraising campaign launched last week by East Huntspill’s Secret World Wildlife Centre to build a new £4.4m animal hospital has been given a huge financial boost this week.
The charity has been handed a £25,000 donation by a charitable group run by national pet stores chain Pets At Home.
Support Adoption For Pets has given Secret World’s ‘Call of the Wild Appeal’ the huge donation, much to their delight.
Support Adoption For Pets provides support to national animal welfare charities plus locally-based rescue and re-homing centres which dedicate themselves to finding loving homes for pets within the community. It has raised in excess of £1.3million for pet-related charities accross the UK.
Burnham-On-Sea.com reported here last week how when the hospital is completed, it will include an operating theatre, examination, preparation and x-ray rooms with a first floor laboratory, lecture theatre and library.
It will also give Secret World the facilities to provide all veterinary care on one site, to bring faster relief to suffering wildlife. An IT hook-up will allow up to 120 resident students a year to watch procedures being performed by the hospital’s in-house veterinary surgeon in the operating theatre below.
Founder Pauline Kidner (pictured) and her team believe that wildlife admissions to Secret World will double over the next five years so to meet rising demand, the project also includes 28 indoor recovery areas, 16 rehabilitation enclosures, six new water areas for otters, swans, gulls and other water birds and 24 small and large bird aviaries.
Pauline said: “We will receive around 5,000 injured or orphaned animals and birds over the coming year, yet when wildlife needs people’s support most, the nation is increasingly losing touch with nature.”
“While vets receive virtually no wildlife training, children now spend half the time outdoors that they did 40 years ago and many cannot even identify an oak tree.
The launching of our new hospital and education centre project is a positive move to redress the balance and we are appealing for everyone in the region to give us their support so that we can open on schedule in 2013.”
