The global COVID-19 pandemic has created a very uncertain landscape for millions of British charities, which is going to make it very challenging for us to survive.
The Raptor Foundation receives no government funding. Instead, we rely upon entry fees, fees for school visits and similar, and donations. At the present time, we are closed to visitors due to Covid 19, and are unable to carry out any visits, therefore, we are not currently receiving any income.
We have approximately 180 resident birds of prey on site, along with a variety of reptiles and other small animals. In addition, we operate a hospital on site, into which we accept wild injured birds of prey, which means that at any one time, we can have numerous non-resident birds awaiting treatment, rehabilitation and release.
As I am sure you can appreciate, we still have considerable running costs that cannot be scaled down. Apart from staffing, our main costs are food and veterinary bills. We are managing to cope currently, but anticipate that this will become more and more difficult the longer we are forced to remain closed.
PLEASE could you carefully consider helping us to tide us over this very difficult time. Apart from the very important rescue and rehabilitation work we do, we have offered hundreds of young people work experience over the years, together with opportunities for the pupils of a school for children with special needs that we partner with. It is vital that we are able to continue this work, but in order to do so, we need to be able to ride this current crisis.