National Wildlife Centre's new Caledon hospital already ‘overrun with animals'
A new wildlife hospital in Caledon that soft-launched about a month ago is already overrun with animals needing care.
Dr. Sherri Cox told the Caledon Enterprise her team 'scrambled' to get the medical facility ready to 'help the community.'
'We haven't had our official grand opening, but we wanted to at least accept babies that are orphaned and hurt,' the wildlife veterinarian explained. 'But the floodgates have opened, and we are just overrun with animals.'
According to Cox, the new National Wildlife Centre field hospital has already seen around 150 patients since its soft launch on April 22. More than half are baby raccoons, squirrels and rabbits. Meanwhile, it is also attending to adult animals, including turtles, goslings, songbirds and grosbeaks.
'We thought it would be quiet because our volunteers only started May 1, but we were getting so many calls,' she added.
The
National Wildlife Centre
(NWC), founded by Cox and her husband Octavio Perez in 2014, has cared for more than 5,000 animals via a mobile hospital in the past 11 years. But it wasn't open to the public.
The new permanent facility serving Caledon and the surrounding communities, as well as wildlife rehabilitators (those authorized to provide temporary care) across Ontario, is projected to service 5,000 annually.
Although it's open to the public, Cox advised people to call the NWC hotline before bringing any animal.
'We need to connect with the owner/finder to gather information and determine if the animal can be brought in,' she said.
'Don't just leave them on the doorstep. As per Ministry of Natural Resources regulations, animals left on the doorstep must be euthanized, which is horrible,' she continued.
'Also, we don't have the space to take in every orphaned animal.'
Cox said the new centre has unique capabilities, which account for its high demand.
'Most rehabilitators are not veterinarians. We happen to be both,' she explained. 'We're also authorized to treat all species.'
According to Cox, she is one of the few veterinarians in Canada certified in avian medicine and surgery.
'We just had a bald eagle flown to us for surgery,' she said. '… We do more complicated surgeries; that's why they're (the rehabilitators) coming to us.'
An orphaned baby rabbit being fed by NWC rehabilitation manager Angie Furniss.
Cox said the 2,800-square-foot field hospital, sitting on an 100-acre property, needs to be ten times bigger to help more animals, and Phase 2 will provide that space.
The
hospital
was Phase 1 of NWC's Project Evolution. A centre of excellence which would serve as its headquarters and a training hub for next-generation wildlife specialists across Canada comes next.
'We rely completely on the public and
grantors
for funds,' she said. 'We desperately need more space and more funds.'
Cox said each outdoor cage or enclosure can cost around $1,500, and the NWC has currently prioritized these over storage cabinets. Food and medicines are also expensive.
'We're doing our best to keep up, but we're limited by funding,' she said.
She appealed to the public for donations.
'Consider becoming monthly donors,' she said.
Cox also advised the public to help reduce ways in which wildlife is harmed.
'Speed and vehicle strikes (are) the number one reason,' Cox said. 'Slow down!'
She also suggested window glass applications (like decals) which act as bird collision deterrents.
'Ontario's wildlife is in trouble and a lot of it is due to actions from us. Let's all work together to help,' she said.
If you find a sick, injured or orphaned wild animal in Caledon, Peel Region and the surrounding areas, call the NWC hotline at
416-577-4372
.
For more information or to make a donation, visit the National Wildlife Centre
website
.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Yahoo
Co-owners of Missouri company at center of marijuana recall got greenlight for another license
Delta Extraction's license revocation is the center of a lawsuit playing out in St. Louis courts between a complex web of shareholders seeking to snatch back ownership of a Waynesville facility (Rebecca Rivas/Missouri Independent). When the company at the center of a massive cannabis product recall lost the appeal of its revoked business license in February, Missouri regulators moved quickly to ensure those involved would no longer be permitted access to a marijuana facility without supervision. But that punishment doesn't mean those involved with Robertsville-manufacturer Delta Extraction are out of the Missouri marijuana industry. In fact, long after the state initially stripped Delta Extraction of its license in November 2023, regulators approved one of the company's co-owners — AJO LLC — to take over a cultivation and manufacturing facility in Waynesville in May 2024. It's a far bigger operation than Delta Extraction, and it also involves several dispensaries as well. AJO LLC says it was only a passive investor in Delta Extraction, where it owns 50%. The company claims it bought 50% of the Waynesville facility in 2022 and has been running it while awaiting approval of the license transfer last year. But now Delta's license revocation is the center of a lawsuit playing out in St. Louis courts between a complex web of shareholders seeking to snatch back ownership of the Waynesville facility from AJO. They argue the state shouldn't have given its final approval for the ownership change because of AJO's involvement in a company that had a marijuana license revoked. Lisa Cox, spokeswoman for the department that oversees the Missouri Division of Cannabis Regulation, said the constitution does allow regulators 'to deny approval for ownership changes if approval is not 'unreasonably withheld.'' However, in May 2024, Cox said Delta's appeal of its license revocation was still pending. The final verdict didn't come down until nine months later. 'The totality of the circumstances at the time, including the nature of the ownership change, was not sufficient cause to deny the change,' Cox said. Cox also said the state's administrative rules – which the division drafts to interpret the constitution's intent and that take months to pass – currently do not prohibit individuals who have had a license revoked from acquiring another license. The division, Cox said, is 'reviewing its rules to add further detail to this authority.' A scathing 137-page decision issued in February by the Administrative Hearing Commission denying Delta's appeal of its revoked license concluded the company had a 'corporate culture of lax compliance with regulatory requirements.' Regulators are permitted to revoke agent ID cards for individuals who violate the rules. No one without an agent ID can access a marijuana facility without supervision of someone with a card, though you don't need one to own or run facilities. Within weeks of the Administrative Hearing Commission's February decision, Cox said the state 'revoked several agent IDs for involvement in rule violations associated with Delta Extraction.' In March, cannabis regulators issued AJO principal Josh Corson a notice of pending revocation of his agent ID card, according to documents The Independent obtained through Missouri's Sunshine Law. The notice stated that as an owner and manager of Delta Extraction, he was responsible for 17 cited rule violations, including 'manufacturing and selling bulk distillate in a false or misleading manner due to the failure to disclose that the distillate contained large quantities of unregulated cannabis.' Corson surrendered his agent ID license shortly after receiving the notice, and the other two AJO owners — Ryan Rich and Josh Ferguson — have let their agent IDs expire, Cox said. Cannabis regulators revoked the agent ID cards of four of Delta's contractors as well. AJO has been helping run the Waynesville operation since 2022 with Hi-Rise LLC, which is the other 50% owner. Hi-Rise has no ownership interest in Delta Extraction. Peter Barden, a spokesman for AJO and Hi-Rise, said the companies 'provided complete information' about the owners to the state for the license transfer. In response to Corson's agent ID revocation, Barden said AJO 'was not managing the Delta Extraction facility. It was a passive investor, and no action of AJO has ever been the basis of any revocation.' Yet pages of evidence in the Delta Extraction case – including emails, depositions and testimonies from high-level employees – appear to demonstrate AJO was fully involved in Delta's operations and even initiated the arrangement that led to their revocation. Barden said AJO 'certainly monitors its investments but has not actively managed any manufacturing or cultivation license.' Charles Pullium stood before a St. Louis judge in February in an emergency hearing, anxious to share what he believed would be a smoking-gun update in his lawsuit. It was just days after Delta Extraction had lost its appeal seeking to get its license to manufacture marijuana products reinstated. Pullium is an attorney representing a group hoping to wrestle the Waynesville manufacturing and cultivation license away from AJO and Hi-Rise. If Delta Extraction violated state law to the point where its license was revoked, Pullium argued, its leadership shouldn't have won state approval to operate a different cannabis facility. 'It's a huge case because it involves the revocation of a license,' Pullium told St. Louis Judge Joan Moriarty at the February hearing. 'And why it's important in this case is because when people apply for a new change of ownership… they have to answer, 'Have any of you or your owners or anyone had a license revoked or suspended?'' Pullium argued the Delta revocation was key to settling a three-year legal ownership battle, which ended up in St. Louis court in 2023 when AJO and Hi-Rise filed a lawsuit. On one side of the legal battle are AJO and Hi-Rise. On the other side are 19 named individuals and marijuana companies connected to the deal, including St. Louis-based marijuana company Heya, former Missouri House Speaker Carl Bearden and Delphi Management LLC. They argue the 2022 sale to AJO and Hi-Rise was invalid. Moriarty disagreed the new information was worth holding an emergency hearing for and made Pullium's client pay $3,037.50 in attorney fees for AJO and Hi-Rise, which are represented by Dowd Bennett law firm. The lawsuit is ongoing. In January, Scott Sterling, who is involved in the tangled ownership web, filed two complaints with the Division of Cannabis Regulation, alleging that AJO did not provide all the information necessary for the transfer. One crucial detail left out, Sterling contends, is that he never signed off on any sale as a 40% owner. The division has opened an investigation into Sterling's complaint, Cox said, and it is ongoing. Barden said the Waynesville location is legally owned by AJO and Hi-Rise and 'current ownership has never had a license revoked.' One of Pullium's motions in January returned the spotlight to Jason Sparks, one of Delta Extraction's contractors. 'The facts underlying the Delta scandal read like a made for T.V. drama,' the motion states, 'a prior felon… buys out-of-state products from a nameless and unknown 'network'… which he then illegally turns into uncertified product which he then sells to a complicit Delta, who then illegally sells to unsuspecting dispensaries…' Sparks was among the four contractors that had their agent IDs revoked in March, and he has a disqualifying felony on his record that was overlooked by the state when he obtained that ID. However, Sparks directs the blame largely at Corson in legal filings in his company SND Leasing's lawsuit against Delta Extraction. In the spring of 2023, the supply for marijuana distillate was low across the state and Delta hired Sparks to make large amounts of distillate that Delta sold to about 100 other Missouri manufacturers. Those manufacturers went on to produce gummies and vapes for their brands, which is why the product recall was so widespread. At issue was what's in the distillate. Sparks extracted a small amount of THC from Missouri-grown marijuana, which the state heavily regulates. Then he added a large amount of THC oil that was extracted from hemp, a product that is completely unregulated. Regulators pulled 60,000 products off the shelves in August 2023, arguing the use of out-of-state, unregulated THC oil violated state law and posed a public health risk. Corson was 'the person who found the supply for the distillate,' a January motion in Sparks' lawsuit states, and he was the one who signed the contracts. In his lawsuit, Sparks points to the testimony from Delta's COO Rachel Herndon Dunn during an Administrative Hearing Commission hearing in March 2024. Dunn testified that Corson reached out to a large cannabinoid-producing facility in Florida to obtain the hemp-derived THC oil needed to make their recalled distillate. 'Corson went down to tour their labs in Ft. Lauderdale…' Dunn said during the hearing. Sparks claims Delta leadership reassured him that cannabis regulators signed off on the extraction process. 'The reality is that (the state) never gave assurances of regulatory compliance,' the suit states. Delta argued hemp is not a federally controlled substance and the state has no authority to regulate hemp-derived THC products — an argument they lost in their appeal. Also, the products went through a final round of testing before they hit the shelves, Delta noted, so they didn't pose a health risk. Despite the ownership connection to Delta, state regulators told The Independent they've found no evidence of similar practices taking place at the Waynesville facility.
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Yahoo
‘Tough and tender.' Longtime advocate for Pierce County homicide victims dies
Lew Cox, a longtime advocate for victims of violent crime who was a fixture in the courthouse in Pierce County, was recently involved in a car crash and died at 85. Cox was well known by prosecutors, law enforcement and the scores of families he helped to process grief and understand the inner workings of the judicial system, turning his own personal tragedy into a mission to assist others to heal. His 22-year-old daughter, Carmon, was murdered in Los Angeles in 1987 while Cox was in the Philippines performing work through a ministry he started, according to his wife, Suzanne, and an online letter Cox authored in 2008. Cox founded Tacoma-based Violent Crime Victims Services four years after his daughter was killed, giving families and friends of homicide victims a reputable advocate in someone intimately familiar with the experience of losing a loved one. He worked with over 1,000 families, including in high-profile cases such as the Green River killings, Suzanne Cox said in an interview. The organization, which she said essentially folded about two years ago after her husband left in 2021, offered crisis intervention, peer counseling, support groups and court guidance. While Lew Cox was dedicated to Pierce County, he helped families elsewhere, including outside the United States, according to his wife. 'I don't think anybody knows more about grief counseling than Lew,' Scott Bramhall, who became a client in 1992 after his wife's brother was murdered in Tacoma, said in an interview. Lew Cox died May 14, involved in a two-vehicle crash in the 7900 block of Valley Avenue Northwest near the Fife-Puyallup border. Suzanne Cox and Bramhall said Tuesday that all details were not yet known but that he may have suffered some type of medical event prior to the wreck and they were awaiting clarity from the Pierce County Medical Examiner's Office. The driver of the other vehicle was taken to a hospital with non-life-threatening injuries, authorities said. Lew Cox, a graduate of Stadium High School, was frequently found in the pages of The News Tribune. Violent Crime Victim Services was credited in 1997 with helping a mother who became a political activist after her 21-year-old son was slain. Cox provided his perspective on the relief that families felt being able to address 'Green River Killer' Gary Ridgway during Ridgway's sentencing hearing in 2003. He advocated for justice in 2004 as then-Pierce County Prosecutor Gerald Horne weighed whether to charge the Washington D.C.-area snipers with the 2002 slaying of a 21-year-old woman. In other instances, he acted as a family spokesperson to the press, defended a prosecutor's rationale for not seeking the death penalty for the murder of an armored guard, reflected on a week spent in New York following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and described the difficulty of enduring in the aftermath of heartbreak. 'Am I over this? No. You never get over it. There's a piece of your heart that's been ripped out,' he told a News Tribune reporter in 2004. 'I loved my daughter very much; losing her was the worst pain a father can experience. But I also knew I had to resume life.' Bramhall, a retired Puyallup police detective, said that Cox — who also served for roughly 25 years as a chaplain for the Des Moines Police Department — was an asset to prosecutors and law enforcement as a liaison between officials and crime victims' families. 'If you went to the courthouse, you would oftentimes find him there,' Bramhall said. Pierce County deputy prosecutor Lisa Wagner recalled Cox as omnipresent in courthouse hallways and 'really, such a huge help' because he had the ability to keep close relationships with victims' families even after they had left the courthouse — ties that prosecutors and Pierce County's victim advocates don't ordinarily maintain. Wagner, who met Cox three decades ago through her work, said he had a keen understanding of the legal system and willingly re-lived his own trauma for the sake of providing 'incalculable' aid to others. Cox was genuinely kind and caring, Wagner said in an interview. 'You don't often run into people like that in my business,' she said. Prosecuting Attorney Mary Robnett first crossed paths with Cox in the mid-1990s, and he was well known to the attorneys and advocates in the Prosecutor's Office, she told The News Tribune. He had the air of a religious leader and was soft-spoken, warm and approachable, according to Robnett, who said it was comforting to have him around. Her office would pick up his phone calls or set aside time to meet with him, and he often showed up to court hearings with family members of victims, she said. Robnett said she remembers Cox sitting in court, attending community events and appearing at law enforcement funerals. Ultimately, he wanted to be a resource for victims' families. 'He did that and he did that really well,' she said. Suzanne Cox described her husband as 'a tough and tender kind of guy' who wasn't known to dwell. He had experienced more than one tragedy in his life. Shortly after the murder of his daughter — born from a previous marriage — his wife died, too, she said. He later lost a son. 'I just always was kind of amazed by his resiliency,' she said. Suzanne and Lew Cox married in 1991. He was a published author, co-writing a book titled, 'Coping with Traumatic Death: Homicide,' that sought to shepherd grieving families through loss. He also served on a Washington state task force related to criminal sentencing as a strong proponent of not lowering punishment, testified in front of state lawmakers and took the stand in a civil court case, Suzanne Cox said. He trained therapists and chaplains, and worked as a consultant after leaving Violent Crime Victim Services. 'He cared for people. He cared for everybody that he worked with,' she said. 'He just had a real heart for victims and he had a heart to see that things would be better for them in terms of the laws.' Lew Cox also enjoyed outside interests, namely trains, planes and automobiles, and he was a commercially rated pilot, according to his wife and Bramhall. He was an avid tennis player and church-goer who liked to dress up in suits. He also wasn't afraid to speak his mind, including when his wife cooked too much pasta or neighborhood kids were too loud. In his youth, Lew Cox was an altar boy and later worked in a shoe store, drove trucks hauling gasoline, sugar or honey, and opened a health food shop in Federal Way that was eventually bought and turned into Marlene's Market & Deli, according to Suzanne Cox. In the last year of his life, Lew Cox had suffered some health issues but none that were debilitating, his wife said. The day before he died, the couple had learned that he had a mass on his bladder but it wasn't known if it was cancerous. He died on his wife's birthday, just four days before their 34th wedding anniversary. 'Lew was very dedicated,' Bramhall said. 'He would sink his teeth into a project and not let go. 'And his teeth were sunk into caring for the people who were facing a grief that no one else could help them with.' Lew Cox is survived by his wife, two daughters, two granddaughters and one great-grandson. His family is planning on holding a funeral service in August in Federal Way, where he and his wife lived.
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Yahoo
Man officials say fired stolen gun outside Boston hospital to face charges
A 46-year-old Boston man is expected to face multiple charges after a gun was fired outside Massachusetts General Hospital Tuesday morning. Elvis Haughton was identified by officials as the man suspected of stealing a Boston Police officer's gun and fired it during a scuffle, injuring himself. He is expected to be arraigned Wednesday in BMC Central and will be charged with assault and battery on a police officer, illegal possession of a firearm, possession of a class C substance and resisting arrest. On Tuesday, officials said the man was suffering a mental health episode when he approached the officer, who was working a paid detail on Cambridge Street, and knocked the officer's hat off. Haughton was injured but expected to survive, according to Boston Police Commissioner Michael Cox. The officer, other officers also working the detail, and passing pedestrians together subdued the man and retrieved the gun, Cox said. 'We're very thankful that no one was seriously injured, that our officer is doing OK,' he said. Officers received a call to the area of 265 Cambridge St. just after 8:40 a.m., a Boston Police spokesperson said. The shooting drew a swarm of police to the bustling downtown street in Boston's West End, just outside the region's largest hospitals, during morning rush hour. Police cordoned off the street and were seen sweeping the ground for evidence an hour later. Information on the incident was limited as police launched an investigation, Cox said in Dorchester, where he, Mayor Michelle Wu and other officials had gathered for a planned 10 a.m. press conference on the city's public safety plan for the summer. The person 'attacked the officer in some way, shape or form, was able to get hold of the officer's firearm, discharged at least one round, injuring himself,' Cox said. 'The suspect took the officer's gun and ended up hurting himself, shooting himself with it.' Haughton appeared to have been minimally injured, according to James Borghesani, a spokesperson for Suffolk County District Attorney Kevin Hayden. No one else was injured. Authorities took the man to a local hospital for treatment. The district attorney's office pledged a 'thorough investigation.' It investigates all instances in which a police officer's weapon is fired, Borghesani said. Wu thanked police for their vigilance '24 hours a day' and said the incident spoke to the unpredictable nature of their job. 'As you can see by how we started off today, there's always something that pops up,' she said. 'The job of officers, whether they're officially on duty, or they're working a detail, or they are even just sometimes off duty with their families, is a constant call.' Legendary rock guitarist, Grammy-winning producer dies at 77 Should you keep the heat on in May? It's the law for some Mass. residents Mass. weather: Rain, thunderstorms return after sunny day Wednesday 2 lost hikers found in Mass. using cell phone tracking software GoFundMe raises money for Mass. family of 26-year-old who died in motorcycle crash Read the original article on MassLive.
