WATCH: An organization that rehabilitates wild animals in northern B.C. needs a new truck for their work. Jordan Armstrong talks to Northern Lights Wildlife Society founder Angelika Langen
Last October when the Northern Lights Wildlife Society was out doing their work in B.C.’s interior, there was a problem.
Their truck, well over a decade old and with over 400,000 kilometres on its odometer, had broken down. They needed someone to give them a lift to a repair shop.
The stumbling block?
“When you have two small animals in the back, that’s very difficult,” says Angelika Langen
In the end, the Northern Lights Wildlife Society was able to find someone willing to help them, and the grizzlies they were trying to bring back to the wild.
But the situation underscored the organization’s need to improve their infrastructure.
“We’re not government funded, we’re solely funded by individuals or corporations. We have been doing this, like this, for the last 25 years,” she says.
Langen co-founded the Northern Lights Wildlife Society in Smithers 25 years ago, and she’s rehabilitated hundreds of animals throughout B.C. since.
READ MORE: Our past coverage of the Northern Lights Wildlife Society
“We started just thinking we would do a little bit in our immediate area, but the community reached out to us and we grew with it,” she says.
Black bears, grizzlies, moose, deer and many other animals have been tended to by Langen’s centre, which gives young, orphaned animals a place to recover and mature before being released in the wild.
“They need a second chance,” she says.
“It’s young animals, usually they’re orphaned because of some human interference – vehicle accidents, train accidents, stuck in fences – it’s not natural occurrences. We’re just trying to offset that a little and given them a second chance.”
However, their large trailer can no longer reliably cover the long back roads the NLWS must travel to reach some of these animals.
“The big pull for bears usually comes in the fall, when they’re more visible to people. We have the busy season coming, and we’re quite concerned to face that without a truck,” says Langen.
They’ve launched a crowdfunding operation (which you can donate to here) to help pay for a new vehicle. They’re hoping for $40,000.
“It’s a great feeling to help these animals that otherwise would have nobody.”