Please note that our Fun day date has changed from the 7th July until the 9th August – National Women's day and a public holiday. Put in your diary now and we will keep you up to date with more details soon.
After many comments and general feedback we have decided that it's essential we explain to you all our limitations and mandate. There seem to be a unrealistic expectations and negative comments about our inability to fulfil our perceived mandate here at FreeMe.
A key area of discussion is Hadedas. There have been reports of Hadedas with string around their feet – sadly and as we tell callers there is very little we can do to help if the bird is flying. Even with them on the ground there is no magic muti or special technique to catching these birds and we fully understand that it is very distressing to see them battling to walk.
We get on average at least 20 to 30 calls of this nature a month, and have learnt from hard experience that we could spend all our time and our entire budget on them and in theses financially trying times it time and budget are better spent helping those hadedas brought to our clinic.
The sad fact is that, since Rob Taylor's demise FreeMe is battling to survive. This year we have had to reduce our staff numbers and have sold one vehicle, which means that we only have two full time employees, to carry out all the duties of the centre and one of those has to be based at FreeMe. Rising costs and a focus on budget has meant we need to halve our diesel budget, made harder as we don't charge for call outs or recoup costs on call outs.
Another sad matter is that we have stopped taking in AFS Students because of the cost factor to FreeMe. We would love to continue this training programme. Yet we have seen a significant decline in donations and not all visitors leave money in our box.
Again, with monkeys and "problem" animals, we are not mandated to remove these, and are, in fact, not allowed to do so. We are here for the animals who find themselves in life threatening circumstances and those are our priority. We hope that everyone now understands our financial situation and our mandate and will support our staff as we work through these very difficult and distressing circumstances.