Here's how donating your Christmas tree can help orphaned animals

Instead of putting your Christmas tree to the curb, the Procyon Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre would like you to consider donating it to help injured or orphaned animals.

"We and any wildlife rehabilitation and in anybody's area would love your donations of Christmas trees so long as they are real and they don't have plastic, tinsel, or anything like that that an animal could ingest," said staffer Kylee Hinde.

With over 45 outdoor enclosures at the Beeton centre, staff members aspire to have a tree in each enclosure.

"Our squirrels really love them, our raccoons love them, skunks use them for hiding places, our possums climb them as well," Hinde said.

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Volunteer Elizabeth Trickey highlighted the importance of creating a natural environment for the animals.

"Sometimes we get animals in that are orphaned, and sometimes all they know is the small enclosure that we provide for them, and that's not realistic, so what we do is, we put trees in them, we put stuff that they'd find on the floor of the forest. So, it makes it a little bit more realistic, and that helps them be more successful when we release them," Trickey noted.

And staff say there are others donations that go a long way to helping the animals in their rehabilitation.

"Even if you don't have a full-size Christmas tree but you have live evergreen of any kind that you've used as a garland or for fresh bows on your front porch or in your house, so long as they don't have plastic tinsel or metal, and wine bottles or liquor bottles that you've had company over for the holidays if you can donate those, that goes so far," added Hinde.

The empty bottles are used to bring in money to help provide formula and vaccines for the animals.

This year alone, more than 1,500 animals have been admitted at the centre, an increase of 500 compared to 2022.

Anyone interested in donating empty bottles, Christmas trees or evergreens can do so at the main entrance.