Wildlife refuge seeks volunteers to foster creatures with bad rep: 'They're wonderful garbage cleaners and gardeners' friends'
If you live in the San Francisco Bay area and find small marsupials charming, local wildlife rehabilitators have excellent news.
Yggdrasil Urban Wildlife Rescue was founded in 2001 after neighborhood children discovered several orphaned baby opossums — also known as "joeys" — left to fend for themselves in their deceased mother's pouch.
That incident led its founders to discover that not only was the closest rescue organization 30 miles away, but also that most animals found in distress in the urban setting were euthanized due to a lack of resources.
Founder Lila Travis decided to take action with her husband, and Yggdrasil Urban Wildlife Rescue started small in August 2002. It began with opossums, which makes it fitting that the creatures are why the organization came to widespread attention recently.
On July 16, KGO-TV covered a call to action issued by the wildlife rescue center, seeking locals who care about animals to help foster an influx of baby opossums. At the end of June, Yggdrasil Urban Wildlife Rescue shared a plea on Facebook, seeking volunteers to foster and eventually release juvenile opossums with their "ReWild" team, all necessary training included.
"We are 100% volunteer run. We need volunteers to be able to help these animals," Travis said. She also acknowledged opossums have a bad reputation, adding that while people inaccurately conflate them with rats, they actually "eat rats."
"Opossums have a wonderful role in our environment. They're wonderful garbage cleaners and gardeners' friends," Travis continued, before explaining why this time of year is hard on them.
She indicated the Fourth of July is like "Armageddon to them," one of several inhospitable conditions for opossums in the summer. Wildfires, increased human activity outdoors, and fireworks "can all lead to wildlife displacement," per KGO-TV.
Volunteer Kitty Jones expressed a preference for the outcasts of the animal kingdom, which is why she's fostered "opossum after opossum" and "litter after litter" since she began working with the group.
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"It makes me really happy. They got to be free," Jones recalled of a litter she'd recently released into the wild. Of course, not everyone has the time or space to foster distressed wildlife, but donating to environmental causes is another way to get involved.
Just under a week after KGO-TV profiled Yggdrasil Urban Wildlife Rescue's opossum fostering initiative, the organization shared an uplifting Facebook update.
"We are so grateful and humbled — and amazed by the more than 200 volunteer applications we have received so far," they said. Those who wish to help but aren't local can also assist by purchasing items from Yggdrasil Urban Wildlife Rescue's Amazon Wish List.
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