Animal Enclosure and Enrichment Fund

Thank you for supporting the Animal Enclosure and Enrichment Fund. Your donations directly improve the well-being of all of our ambassadors, enabling us to add mosquito netting, maintain enclosure cleanliness with thorough deep cleans, and provide new enrichment materials. Recent volunteer groups from local schools, companies, and organizations have donated their time to help maintain our enclosures and create enrichment.

Edgar, our Common Raven heavily relies on enrichment. Common Ravens are brilliant birds whose intelligence is comparable to that of a human toddler. Enrichment, such as food hidden in puzzles, sounds, and ropes, is all around his enclosure. This enrichment allows Edgar to be challenged and stimulate his brain by solving physical puzzles, tearing paper and ropes, and interacting with objects that make different sounds. Edgar currently has the oldest enclosure on our site. We make upgrades where possible, such as adding new gravel to his floor and replacing perches, but he is due for a new enclosure. With your help, we can continue to provide enrichment and upgrade enclosures for all of our Wildlife Ambassadors, including Edgar!

Summer is in full swing at Piedmont Wildlife Center! In the midst of summer camp and off-site programs, we are still focusing on bettering our enclosures for our animal ambassadors, including building exemplary enclosures at our new location and maintaining the current enclosures for our outside animals while we anticipate the big move.

One of the forms of enrichment we like to implement with our animals is “physical habitat”, or attempting to mimic their natural habitat as closely as possible. This includes rearranging perches in the bird mews, adding native plants to our turtle enclosures, and giving our rat snakes plenty of opportunities to use their unique ability to climb. 

We are excited to continue improving our enrichment plan for our animal ambassadors! Enrichment is a very important, although often overlooked, part of animal husbandry that helps our ambassadors use their natural behaviors while they are in our care. We are grateful to the Girl Scout troop that visited us in June and brought homemade enrichment for some of our ambassadors! The rat pack enjoyed exploring their mazes and Basil the rabbit savored the treats he found in his foraging box.

With your help, we are able to provide our animal ambassadors with the best care while they help us advocate for their species and the ways we can help them each and every day! We appreciate your support and can’t wait to show off our new digs after our move!