Wolf sanctuary raising funds for new public facility
LAPORTE — Besieged by fire and floods, the W.O.L.F. Sanctuary is howling for help to move to a new site it can open to the public.
The sanctuary — its name is an acronym for “Wolves Offered Life and Friendship” — opened in 1996 on a rugged 180-acre tract, but natural disasters in the past few years have made it no longer suitable for the organization’s needs, said executive director Shelley Coldiron, “So now we have an offer on a place” along U.S. 287 north of Ted’s Place “that’s still 180 acres but right off of a main road traversed by a lot of tourism,” she said.
The full purchase price is $650,000, she said, with a down payment of $152,500 due at the scheduled April 28 closing. Just a month into its capital campaign, W.O.L.F. already has reached 44 percent of its goal, with about $85,000 left to raise in the next month.
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“The site is really well buffered from any surrounding neighbors,” Coldiron said, “so the impact should be minimal. And it backs up to state-preserved land.”
The sanctuary’s mission is to rescue wolves and wolf dogs who were born in captivity and need sanctuary placement in order to survive, provide a life-long home for them in a natural habitat and provide the general public with education about the plight of wild and captive wolves and wolf dogs.
W.O.L.F.’s current location, 2½ miles down a private-easement road off of Rist Canyon, already presented challenges both to operations and fundraising even before the devastating 2012 High Park Fire and great flood of 2013, she said.
“Because the land we use is a ‘special-use’ area, we are not allowed to be open to the public where we’re located, and we’re restricted to five vehicles a day on the road, which makes it hard to get staff, volunteers, work groups and resources like Porta-Potties in and out. So not only couldn’t we be open to the public, but we couldn’t bring supporters in to see what they’re donating to, much less school buses or cargo vans.”
Unlike the new site, where electricity is available, “we have no power, so we just run propane generators a couple hours a day, and that’s expensive,” she said. “The property is in a steeply sloped ravine, so it gets only a few hours of direct sunshine a day, which makes it really cold. And our special-use permit only lets us use five acres for enclosures for the animals, so that limits how many animals we can care for.”
The fire, followed by eight flooding events in 2013, made the decision to move more urgent, she said. “That whole area was heavily damaged by the heat of the fire,” she said, “and authorities expect those flood events to continue for a few years because of all the loss of vegetation.”
Coldiron’s hopes for the new location are that W.O.L.F. can have larger enclosures for each wolf pair, provide tours to the general public that can be conducted in the most respectful and non-stressful manner for the wolves, and allow schoolchildren to come for educational programs.
As funding becomes available, she’d like to add an educational and nature center, a visitor center and gift shop, a memorial garden and on-site living quarters for interns. She believes the improvements also can attract more tourism dollars to the region.
More information about the property is available on the “Help Us Move” tab at www.wolfsanctuary.net.
