Mr BAYLEY (Clark) – Mr Speaker, I rise tonight to hopefully put something on the adjournment table we can all agree on. Tonight, I will talk about Bonorong Wildlife Sanctuary. Many of us know and love Bonorong. For many years we have taken our kids there and we have taken our visitors there. It is an institution that looks after wildlife. It has an education role, a tourism role, and an advocacy role. It is an important place. It is a sanctuary for some of our most special species. I give a shout out to Greg, Melissa, to their little bub Lara, and to Susie and Matthew.
I want to talk about a really important initiative that they have literally just launched today. In January 2018, Bonorong launched Tasmania’s first wildlife hospital. It was open five days a week, 24 hours a day and then, just this year, it went up to seven days a week. It was completely funded by donors, including the International Fund for Animal Welfare. Over those five years since it has been up and running, it has helped thousands and thousands of animals. We all know how these animals get injured, whether it be interactions with vehicles, cat or dog attacks or power lines. These are species that are injured, they are not dead. They need to be rehabilitated, returned to the wild, put into the sanctuary or, in some cases, sadly, euthanised in a humane way. They estimate they helped about 15 000 animals a year. That increases by 500 to 1000 every year. They offer a wildlife rescue line where local volunteers pick up injured wildlife and care for it in the interim. They drop it off to a rehab volunteer and then they either raise that animal and release it back into the wild or it is euthanised.
Today is a big day for Bonorong because today is the day where they launched their project RECAP. It is an ambitious new project for an animal hospital at Brighton. It is about growing their rehabilitation capacity; hence RECAP is the name of the project.
It is about getting a surgery onsite at Bonorong and an ICU facility there, having a pharmacy, a quarantine, critical care facilities and continuing to fund the rescue coordination. It is a really massive fundraising goal for Bonorong. They are hoping to raise $1 million and for anyone who actually gives money, they end up doubling their money because the Elsie Cameron Foundation is promising to match dollar-for-dollar what is donated. That brings a total of, hopefully, $2 million. They expect the build for this project would be about $1.5 million. It is a significant investment in animal welfare and animal rehab capacity right here in Tasmania. It is really important: $1.5 million for a build and then half a million dollars would go towards some of the running costs. They are going to have to fund this in the longer term and it will cost them about $1.6 million a year to keep this going over the long term. They are ambitious and have big visions for wildlife in this state and receive a lot of support.
They have Misho + Associates helping them with the design and have this fundraiser up on Pozible. It is already – I mean it is one o’clock in the morning now, this thing has been going for eight or nine hours or so and they have already raised $12 000. It is a significant effort.
Ms O’Byrne – There are 1200 views already.
Mr BAYLEY – Is that right? Fantastic. It is worth having a look. They have also taken the initiative of establishing the Friends of Bonorong, which is a charity. It has deductible gift recipient status which means every donation over $2 is tax-deductible. That is a significant fundraising opportunity and incentive when it comes to these kinds of initiatives.
I give a shout out to Bonorong. I congratulate and thank them for their ambition, initiative and for the effort they put in to creating a space that can give care to injured native wildlife here in Tasmania. As did many businesses in the tourism area, Bonorong went through a very tough time during COVID-19. They have quite a large market anchored to the cruise ship market and, like everybody during that period, they had to shut down. That did not mean they could just close down their animals. They had to maintain the care for those animals. This is a business that has had it tough over recent years and it deserves our support, not only because they are doing good things today, but because they have massive ambition to do even better things in the future.
Congratulations to Greg and the team at Bonorong. I will read into Hansard to finish off tonight part of their pitch to people for Project RECAP. They say that:
Project RECAP is a chance to give back to wildlife and be part of history. In a world where wildlife increasingly comes second, we can still strive to achieve more for them and change that direction. Help us build a facility that can cope with the added numbers needing help with the scale we expect in 10 years’ time. Help to fund the running of our wildlife care programs. Be part of a project that changes the world for wildlife.
I commend Project RECAP to everybody and anybody who is listening and really do encourage people to get behind Project RECAP to dig deep into their pockets to help out. This facility will be a fantastic asset for the conservation efforts in Tasmania to protect, look after and rehabilitate injured wildlife. Congratulations and good luck to this team.
Members: Hear, hear.