We hope you enjoy this video highlighting how your Giving Tuesday gift to the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center will provide over 100 resident animals across 16 different species with a healthy and balanced diet, quality animal care, engaging enrichment, and more.
Your Giving Tuesday gift to the AWCC Matson Ocean Education Center will provide engaging learning opportunities to students and guests throughout the year and help in learning more about endangered Cook Inlet beluga whales.
Did you know beluga whales can swim backwards, and their dives may last up to 25 minutes and reach depths of almost half a mile? The new AWCC Matson Ocean Education Center (MOEC) will showcase educational programs highlighting Cook Inlet beluga whales, icebergs, bore tides, and glaciers. Other features will include interpretive signs for self-guided visitors, life-size beluga whale skeleton, binoculars and big eyes for viewing across Turnagain Arm, Secchi disks for measuring water turbidity, and a hydrophone for hearing underwater sounds. Additionally, the MOEC will serve as an official counting station for Cook Inlet beluga whales during the annual Belugas Count to raise awareness about beluga whales and their declining population.
Your Giving Tuesday gift to the AWCC Animal Clinic and Housing Facility will provide quality animal care to Alaska’s wildlife who call AWCC home.
AWCC’s current onsite animal infirmary, where animal wellness checks and medical procedures are performed, is less than 200 square feet and does not have running water. An adult female reindeer can weigh upwards of 200 pounds and stand just under five feet tall. When one of our female reindeer, Hope, had a bulging, infected eyeball, our staff veterinarian Dr. Michele Oakley had to perform an operation in the middle of the reindeer enclosure in the cold winter season.
AWCC’s Animal Clinic and Housing (ACH) facility is a multi-year plan to build a new facility to expand the ability to provide onsite quality animal care. The two-story, 7,200 square foot facility will include a multi-room space with a large garage door to accommodate larger animals like Hope coming in for surgeries, a hydraulic table/lift system for procedures, a separate wing of the building to maintain biosecurity, and a workstation in the clinic for the Head Veterinarian.
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