The Union Ridge Wildlife Center hopes to recruit more volunteers so that it can bring a wider variety of animals to the sanctuary.
Doctors said Gumby, a camel who was born lame, would never be able to walk. Yet, after nine months of daily physical therapy and treatment from Cy Vierstra, Gumby can.
Gumby is now more than four years old and still lives at the Union Ridge Wildlife Center where Vierstra looks after him along with other exotic and domestic animals.
Vierstra, a social worker, runs the Union Ridge Wildlife Center in Wilkesville, Ohio, about a half hour outside of Athens. The center was established almost 25 years ago as a sanctuary for animals.
Animals such as tigers, kangaroos, prairie dogs and different primates live at the center. Some are permanent residents, and others are there solely for treatment. The Union Ridge Wildlife Center has to maintain about a dozen different state and federal permits in order to keep the animals. Each exotic animal has its own regulations, Vierstra said.
Every day is different working at the Wildlife Center, Vierstra said. One day, he spent an afternoon carving the excess beak off of a blue macaw bird.
JC Mullins, a frequent visitor of the center and friend of Vierstra, described Vierstra primarily as a rescuer. He said Vierstra once brought a dog that had been hit by a car to the center and cared for it. Vierstra occasionally has animals in his own house, depending on the level of injury.
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“You’ll never know what you are going to find when you come out here,” Mullins said.
In order to acquire the money to run the facility, Mullins said Vierstra breeds hound dogs on the side, on top of being a social worker.
The center sees a constant fluctuation in its animal population, as animals come and go from rehabilitation. After stabilizing the animals, Vierstra then passes them onto another facility and supervises the animal’s care until it is ready to be released back in the wild. Many animals at the wildlife center were previously pets that families could no longer care for.
“Because of some of our networks, we’re looking forward to creating the Midwest’s and Ohio’s only true primate sanctuary,” Vierstra said. “So that when we’re actually finished, we’ll have facilities that are comparable to no other in the state — whether it’s public, private institutions, zoos or backyard facilities. So it will be an incredible place for not only myself and the animals, but for the community.”
The Union Ridge Wildlife Center hosts two open houses a year. Vierstra said it accepts a limited number of guests, as he wants to monitor visits and not have the open houses be a free-for-all.
“I don’t like the idea of it being like a zoo experience,” Vierstra said. “People come out of the woodwork for our open houses, but, outside of that, I like the idea of the animals having that safe, secure, quiet place.”
Vierstra said he also keeps a limited number of animals at the center because he maintains it mostly by himself and can only take care of a number of animals.
“I do have ambition to have some other exciting primates here but not until our facilities are bigger, our volunteer base is bigger and our resources are larger,” Vierstra said. “I don’t have the right to expand beyond the scope of what I can maintain myself.”
Vierstra said it is important to protect animals to afford future generations the opportunity to experience them. Jenny Morton, an undecided freshman who visited the Union Wildlife Center for the first time Oct. 11, said the center was "beautiful" and the animals were "awesome."
“Once you see them, you see how important it is to save these animals,” Morton said.
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