Salthaven West needs bigger space to care for injured, sick and orphaned wildlife in Regina

It's lunchtime inthe small Regina home of Megan Lawrence, director of SalthavenWest Wildlife Rehabilitation and Education Centre.

She shares the space with a menagerie of patients snakes, owls, beavers, eagles and other wildlife thatcome through herhome on daily basis.

SalthavenWest rehabilitates injured animalsand promotes animal wellbeing through public education. The facility is nowraising money to pay for a bigger space to keep up with an increase in demand.

Lawrence said more and more people know about SalthavenWest. Thisis good for the animals, but has also led to overcrowding at the facility.

"Now when they find an injured animal, they know who to call, they know what to do with it," Lawrence said. "We typically would sit around 40 patients or so during the winter and we have over 70 now, so we're almost double what we typically sit at."

Lawrence, who volunteers her time running Salthaven West on top of her regular job, is happy toreceive the calls. She spends her weekends and evenings helping takecare of the patients.

"Sometimes in the summer we can get over 20 patients in one day, and then we go through the triage for the animal medications. We reach out to our vet clinics if we think they need X-rays or surgeries, but it's just basically feeding, cleaning the animals, making sure they're healthy and OK."

She saw the need for a wildlife rehabilitation centre eight years ago when she first moved to Regina. She noticedthere were only a handful of rehabcentres in the entire province, with the closest to Reginabeing in Moose Jaw.

Since then the number of patients brought in daily has grown, SalthavenWesthasoutgrown its 600-square-footspace. Nowfundraising for a bigger clinic is underway.

The first campaign started on Nov.23, 2022 and ends on Tuesday next week. More campaigns will follow, along withother fundraising efforts such as selling T-shirts and Sarcan drives.

Lawrence said no donation is too big or too small.

"We've gotten several donations this morning already since we've launched the campaign and we're hoping over the next week leading up to giving Tuesday that start off the campaign, we can raise $10,000," she said.

Although it may take months or years to get enoughto move into a bigger space, Lawrence said the centre will continue to take in whatever patients need help in the meantime.