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.
- Download the CTV News app to get local alerts on your device
- Get the latest local updates sent to your email inbox
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.
CTVNews.ca Top Stories
Trump confronts repeated boos during raucous Libertarian convention speech
Donald Trump was booed repeatedly while addressing Saturday night’s Libertarian Party National Convention.
This type of screen time has the worst effect on kids: experts
According to some experts, there is one type of screen time that is continuously excessive, and it's having a severe effect on our children.
Family of toddler found dead at small-town Ont. daycare no closer to answers after year of investigation
A year has passed since two-year-old Vienna Irwin was found on the property of a home-based daycare in small-town Ontario, but her family says they are no closer to answers of what happened that day.
Fire at a baby care centre kills 7 infants in India's capital, a fire officer says
A fire broke out in a baby care center in India's capital Saturday night, killing seven infants, a fire service officer said.
More seniors are using homeless shelters. Here's why, according to experts
One of the country’s homeless shelters has seen an uptick in the number of people through its doors, including more older adults over 50.
Grayson Murray, two-time PGA Tour winner, dead at 30
Two-time PGA Tour winner Grayson Murray died Saturday morning at age 30, one day after he withdrew from the Charles Schwab Cup Challenge at Colonial.
No sign Canada has a plan to reach NATO defence spending target: U.S. NATO ambassador
The U.S. ambassador to NATO says she has seen no indication that Canada has a plan to reach the NATO spending target of two per cent of GDP on defence.
Man or machine? Toronto company finds a way to determine how real audio clips are
The Toronto-based research arm of life sciences technology firm Klick Health has found a way to analyze voices in a manner that’s so granular, it can tell whether it's a person or an artificial intelligence-powered machine.
Sirens sound in Tel Aviv for the first time in months as Hamas says it fired rockets from Gaza
Rocket sirens sounded across central Israel, including in Tel Aviv, for the first time in months on Sunday, as Hamas claimed to have fired a barrage of rockets from Gaza.