An Edgewood animal sanctuary welcomed a new addition to the neighborhood last month, and she is adjusting quite well to her new home.
In fact, Magdalena, a 1-year-old bear cub who goes by Maggie, is fitting in so well that Wildlife West Nature Park is seeking donations to help feed the fast-growing cub whose food budget tops $1,000 per month.
According to Wildlife West, Maggie was found roaming around a ranch near Santa Fe and was not afraid of people or dogs, a recipe for trouble. Because she was undernourished and unsuccessfully surviving in the wild, it was likely that she had lost her mother. New Mexico Game and Fish Department employees captured Maggie by putting donuts in a trap, and she was brought to her new Edgewood residence.
Roger Alink, founder of Wildlife West, said that Maggie has been eating three meals a day consisting of fruit, vegetables and special dog food for large breed puppies, and she’s becoming much more accustomed to people, coming to the fence to get treats from handlers and greeting guests at the window.
“We got a little boost of attendance since she came. It’s well worth the trip to see her, she’s very cute,” Alink said.
Wildlife West is a wildlife preserve and “enhanced zoo” located near I-40 and Route 66 in Edgewood. The park gives a second chance to animals who require special care because they have been injured, orphaned, illegally raised as pets or any number of circumstances that might make life dangerous for them in the wild.
“We have some of the coolest, friendliest animals anywhere and they’re all native rescued,” Alink said. “Which makes a heartwarming story because they wouldn’t be alive if we didn’t adopt them here.”
Alink said that if animal sanctuaries like Wildlife West didn’t adopt these animals, they would likely be “put down” or relocated to a different habitat. He says that many of these relocated animals try to return to their original homes, which can be dangerous.
“When they put them out in a new habitat, they’re competing with the existing animals that are already out there. So it’s not a friendly place to go because there’s other bears and there’s other animals that have their territory,” Alink said. “They go across all kinds of hazards getting back to their home base, like going across highways, and so this is heaven for them because they don’t have to die to get here.”
The sanctuary recently lost one of their most cherished rescue animals in May — a black bear named Koshari, which means “clown” in Navajo — and the community is hoping the new cub will help fill that void. According to The Independent, Koshari was captured by New Mexico Game and Fish officers and brought to Wildlife West in 2005. The bold bear was a resident at Navajo Lake where he would stop at nothing to get his hands on campers’ food stashes, going so far as to swim out to people’s boats to raid their coolers.
“He was well over 20 years old and he worked real hard and wore himself out being a good bear. It was time for him to go because he was in pain and he had a few issues and he needed to go back to the earth,” Alink said.
Alink believes strongly that the animals at Wildlife West are in good hands.
“They get the best nutrition you can get and they also get a lot of love. We are happy to have our newcomers and we have a wonderful volunteer staff. You couldn’t hire anybody better because these people have passion for their animals and they spend hours socializing, loving them, feeding them, cleaning their habitats,” Alink said. “We have a pretty good deal. If I were an animal, I’d come here.”
Donations can be sent to Wildlife West Nature Park, P.O. Box 1359, Edgewood, NM, 87015 or made online at www.wildlifewest.org.
Wildlife West is open from 10 a.m to 6 p.m. from March 15 through the end of October, and from noon to 4 p.m. from November to mid-March.