Progress Report 2023 - PAWS Wildlife Center

2023

PROGRESS REPORT

PAWS Wildlife Center

PAWS is pleased to announce that construction of the Wildlife Hospital and outdoor recovery habitats at the new PAWS Wildlife Center is now complete.

With these milestones complete, the PAWS Wildlife Center enters its final phase of construction including the Wildlife Care Unit and the Outdoor Aquatics Complex. Thanks to our generous community, momentum for this transformational project continues to build. Our fundraising efforts remain a top priority in 2023 as we work together to make this lifesaving, purpose-built campus a reality.

We look forward to keeping you updated on our progress and celebrating the opening of the new PAWS Wildlife Center. If you would like to tour the project while construction is underway, please email snohomish@paws.org.

The 25-acre property is surrounded by nature.

Located just minutes from downtown Snohomish, the new PAWS Wildlife Center provides a quiet and natural setting for healing wildlife.

The octagonal raptor recovery habitat allows birds to practice continuous flight.

Since the 1980s, PAWS has operated one of the largest emergency hospital and recovery facilities in the Pacific Northwest, designed to rehabilitate sick, injured, and orphaned wild animals and return them to their native habitats. It is the only center of its kind in Washington State equipped with immediate and continual veterinary expertise and services 365 days a year.

We have stretched to meet the needs of wild animals in our region, but we are now at a critical point of capacity. Aging wildlife facilities at our current facility in Lynnwood are at the end of their lifespan and in dire need of replacement.

The PAWS Wildlife Center in Snohomish has been designed to support the best care for wild animals. Hallways and doors are extra wide to allow for movement of staff, equipment, and patients. The HVAC system is engineered to minimize air exchange between rooms to reduce the risk of infection and disease. Interior windows allow staff to discreetly observe wild patients without entering rooms to disturb them. Large surgery and treatment rooms allow staff to

move easily around animals and also facilitate veterinary students to assist and perform their own procedures while in training at PAWS.

The PAWS Wildlife team performs thousands of medical procedures every year, which has become increasingly challenging in the cramped surgery room at the Lynnwood facility. The current surgery is only 86 square feet in size, barely fitting one table, making some procedures –for bears and other large patients – very difficult.

The surgery room in the new PAWS Wildlife Center is 420 square feet and features two operating tables. With space for staff and the ability to complete concurrent procedures, PAWS is now equipped to conduct countless lifesaving operations – no matter the complexity or the size of the patient. Adequate space will no longer be an obstacle.

In addition to dramatically increasing the square footage of animal care areas, like the surgery room and radiology room, the newly-designed Wildlife Center also introduces entirely new spaces that do not exist in the current Lynnwood facility, including a wildlife waiting area where patients can settle before their first examination, an isolation room to provide flexible care space, an intensive care unit where sensitive patients can be closely monitored, and a treatment room where patients will receive specialized care.

The new treatment room will contain two wet tables connected to running water, allowing the PAWS wildlife staff to clean animals as needed. Our team can perform a variety of tasks in this space, like wound management, physical therapies, and examinations.

The new Wildlife Hospital alone is larger than the entire Lynnwood Wildlife Center. To be fully operational, a second building – the Wildlife Care Unit – and an outdoor Aquatics Complex are also needed to work in conjunction with the new hospital. These two buildings are currently under construction, and when completed, the new PAWS Wildlife Center in Snohomish will be more than twice the size of the current facility in Lynnwood. With so much well-designed space, PAWS will be able to respond more effectively to the growing and changing needs of animals in our community while also expanding training programs for veterinarians and wildlife care professionals.

The new surgery room is 420 square feet, compared to the 86 square foot surgery room at our current facility in Lynnwood. The small size of the current surgery room is outlined in blue within the picture of the new surgery space.

Unique patients require a uniquely designed hospital

The new Treatment Room will feature two specialized exam tables and ample space for concurrent examinations, trainings, and more.

Readying patients to return to the wild

Once a patient is stabilized and recovering, the PAWS wildlife team turns their focus to preparing the animal to return to the wild. An eagle that arrives with a broken wing might need several weeks of physical therapy in various sizes of animal housing. Other animals, like orphaned bear cubs, require months of daily enrichment to learn foraging skills that would normally be taught by their mother. This kind of rehabilitation requires spacious, flexible outdoor areas that can adapt to each animal’s unique needs.

Moving from a 3.5-acre facility in Lynnwood to a 25-acre Wildlife Center in Snohomish has allowed PAWS to construct new types of enclosures based on the latest innovations in the field of wildlife rehabilitation. A circular flight track in the large raptor recovery habitat allows birds like osprey and peregrine falcons to practice continuous flight – something that is not possible in the smaller, rectangular enclosures in Lynnwood. Larger carnivores, like bobcats and bears, will have access to spacious outdoor areas. These spaces will better mimic natural habitats, greatly improving their rehabilitation experience and their readiness for release back to the wild.

New custom-built recovery habitats on this remote property will reduce visual and auditory stress for animals, better support their changing needs while rehabilitating, and ultimately lead to improved outcomes, decreasing the time that animals need to spend at the PAWS Wildlife Center before they are released.

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10  20 bobcats

100  200 seabirds

Custom-built recovery habitats at the new campus will reduce visual and auditory stress for animals.

The 25-acre Wildlife Center will allow PAWS staff to significantly increase the number of animals they help.

 30 bears cubs

The path to completing the PAWS Wildlife Center

With the Wildlife Hospital and outdoor recovery habitats fully constructed, the Wildlife Center is nearing completion. Construction of the remaining components of the new campus – the Wildlife Care Unit and the Outdoor Aquatics Complex – is underway.

The Care Unit is an indoor space connected to the hospital which houses important indoor rehabilitation spaces, including the baby bird nursery, indoor aquatic areas, a disaster response washroom, and special care wards for sensitive and vulnerable patients. Comparable spaces at the existing Lynnwood facility are much smaller and are not co-located, requiring staff and volunteers to spend significant time moving between spaces to complete tasks.

The Aquatics Complex will feature three in-ground pools and several above-ground pools connected to an efficient central water circulation and filtration system. The aging plumbing system currently in use at the Lynnwood wildlife facility cannot adequately support current water needs, and the process of cleaning and maintaining the pools is labor-intensive and costly. This new complex

will better meet the needs of the animals, significantly reduce PAWS’ water usage by recycling water, and will be easier to maintain.

The Care Unit and Aquatics Complex are vital to the everyday operation of the PAWS Wildlife Center, and we cannot move into the new facility until construction of these areas is complete. PAWS anticipates moving into the new campus in time to be fully operational for the busy spring baby season in 2024.

PAWS fills need to care for more bears

As a regional leader in wildlife rehabilitation, PAWS cares for injured and orphaned black bear cubs. With increasingly severe wildfires in our state, more animals are affected, and the need for our services continues to grow. Caring for bear cubs is no small feat: they arrive too young to survive a winter in the wild on their own and remain in PAWS’ care for up to a full year before release. Our current wildlife facility in Lynnwood has space to care for a maximum of six cubs. In the fall and winter of 2022, with our bear enclosures already full for the season, PAWS received several calls about bear cubs in desperate need of help. When PAWS is at capacity, there are not many options.

Fortunately, PAWS will have ample space for cubs in need at the new Wildlife Center in Snohomish. The new recovery habitat for bears—which features nearly an acre of outdoor pasture space—is large enough for 30 young bears at a time.

And because of you and supporters like you who have invested in this lifesaving project, at this time next year, bear cubs will be snug in their self-made dens in the new outdoor pasture, just months away from emerging from hibernation and returning to the wild where they belong.

In-ground and above-ground pools will provide appropriate recovery habitats to birds and mammals who need water access during rehabilitation.

Bears will have access to almost an acre of outdoor space while rehabilitating at PAWS.