This innovative North Carolina facility helps injured and orphaned wildlife, even in the face of current challenges.
Appalachian Wildlife Refuge
From Top: Eastern Box turtle; North American river otter; baby black rat snake about to emerge.
The birth of the “Wands” movement, says Savannah Trantham, was “a complete accident.” One Friday evening in 2017, the executive director of Appalachian Wildlife Refuge in western North Carolina posted a simple tip on her Facebook page with a photo of several mascara wands she found while cleaning out her makeup drawers.
“Here’s a great way to help wildlife and it doesn’t cost anything,” Trantham wrote. “Send your old wands to us and we’ll put them to good use.” She went on to explain that the soft, dense bristles were ideal for removing external parasites, fly larvae and dirt from the fur of delicate baby animals.
By Monday, the post had been shared hundreds of thousands of times and, before long, media outlets like O magazine, Cosmopolitan and USA Today were running stories about the project. People from around the world sent discarded wands, scheduled “Wandraisers” to collect them, and donated the supplies and money AWR needed to operate.
“It was a complete fluke, but it got amazing traction. It was perfect timing for our facility,” says Trantham. “The most amazing thing for me was that it connected people who maybe had never even thought about wildlife in a way that they started thinking about how they could help.”
Appalachian Wildlife Refuge
From Top: Red-shouldered hawk; fawn; baby opossum.
A few years earlier, while working at a local nature center, Trantham, a wildlife rehabilitator, and Kimberly Brewster, a nonprofit executive, witnessed a dire need for a place that would take in injured and orphaned critters, coordinate licensed home-based rehab efforts, and create public awareness about native wildlife. With support from local veterinarians, educators and conservationists, in 2014 they formed AWR. Four years later, their urgent care facility opened in Candler, near Asheville.
Even with the COVID-19 shutdown, since 2018 AWR has welcomed 3,000 animals, from mice, shrews and moles to possums, groundhogs, otters, white-tailed deer fawns and birds. It has also provided triage and stabilization for a number of reptiles and amphibians, including turtles, salamanders and frogs, along with a community hotline and volunteer transport of animals that need longer-term care.
The coronavirus crisis has shrunk the pool of volunteers who are able to help out, and Trantham and her staff have been forced to get “a little more creative” in engaging donors. As of late summer, scheduled curbside drop-offs had replaced walk-in deliveries of sick or abandoned animals.
But, says Trantham, “We’re the only large facility that focuses on wildlife rehabilitation in our area that has remained open.”
There’s also been an upside to the pandemic. “We’re actually seeing a decrease in the number of animals that are coming in with injuries that are human-caused, whether it’s been hit by a car, gunshot victims, or [animals] that have been hit by weed eaters and lawnmowers,” Trantham says. “We think it probably has to do with the number of people that aren’t really out and about.”
Wands for Wildlife recently became a freestanding nonprofit organization with Brewster at the helm.
“As the program continued to grow, we acknowledged that this was a lot bigger than what we had ever thought it was going to be and that it has immense potential to grow and do amazing things,” Trantham says. “It’s been really exciting to see that this is going to keep engaging people and getting them excited about wildlife and wildlife rehabilitation, but on a more global level.”
Appalachian Wildlife Refuge: How to Help
- Go to appalachianwild.org and make a donation.
- Contribute supplies. (See the online “wish list” for specifics.)
- Volunteer to work with the animals.
- Join the hotline team, help with office tasks, or take part in outreach programs.
- Spread the word through social media.
The story above appears in our November / December 2020 issue. For more like it subscribe today or log in with your active BRC+ Membership. Thank you for your support!