Whether we are open or closed, to run our park on average costs a minimum of £52,600 per week. This doesn’t include unexpected veterinary bills, unexpected repair work and of course Sandwich Wildlife Park, with both parks being funded together. By helping one of our parks, you are invariably helping the animals at both parks!
We have had people ask about how they can support us and what makes the biggest impact. To be honest, every single ounce of support we receive from you, no matter how small you think it is, will make a difference to us. We know that you are also in a tough position at the moment and it means a lot to us to know that you are thinking of us.
How can you help?
Financial
Of course the easiest way for most people to support us remotely is through donations and we are grateful for every donation we get. There are a number of ways in which we can receive these.
Firstly we have set up a new category of tickets in our online shop which allow an easy and secure portal for making donations direct to us. You can get this this via the link below:
winghamwildlifepark.digitickets.co.uk
Secondly if you want to send a very specific amount, no matter how small, you can do so through our pay-pal donation button on the main website, or using the link below:
Thirdly, we have been asked by a lot of people to set up a GoFundMe campaign, as many of you know this funding source! Thanks for the idea, here’s the link:
If you want to support a specific GoFundMe campaign, Ruth is organising a sponsored fancy dress walk from Wingham Wildlife Park to Sandwich Wildlife Park and back!
Even if you can’t donate yourself, a huge help would be just sharing this on your social media!
Finally, especially if you use online banking, you can send money direct to our bank account using the BACS details below:
Account name: Wingham Wildlife Park
Sort Code: 60-14-05
Account number: 52081214
Food donations
This is a very important one for us because even if we have donations coming in, we still need to be able to get the food supplies using these funds. Thankfully most of our animals are able to have their food supplemented with high quality animal feeds, however nothing beats fresh produce!
As such, if you grow your own and have more than you need, purchased more than you needed and it is going to go off soon or have a business which has had to sadly close like ours and need to move on produce, please get in touch. At the moment our main reception is closed but with these inquiries you can contact our animal care team. A contact form for them is in the link below, however please do not contact them about things like season tickets, opening or experiences as they will not be answering these:
The types of foods we can take include, but are not limited to the following. If in doubt, just get in touch and we will see whether we can use it:
- Fresh vegetables & salads, especially:
- Cabbage
- Brocoli
- Cauliflower
- Potato
- Sweet potato
- Leek
- Lettuce
- Peppers
- Courgette
- Aubergine
- Swede
- Parsnip
- Carrot
- + many more
- Fresh fruits (although we have decreased the number of commercial fruits in many of our diets due to high sugar content, in these special times we will also be using fruits as needed). Some animals do however still use large quantities of fruits, such as our lorikeets:
- Apples
- Bananas
- Oranges
- Grapes
- Melons
- Mangoes
- Pears
- Fresh herbs
- Peanut (and other nuts) butter
- Nuts (both in and out of the shell)
- Honey
- Plain breakfast cereals (such as bran, oats, cornflakes etc) – our cockroaches still need to eat too and these help our live food for the reptiles retain nutrients and live longer
- Live food (meal worms, crickets, locusts, wax worms etc if you have too much or produce your own)
- Protein shakes (any flavour other than coffee) for Fritz the chimp
- Large cuts of meat (this mainly applies to businesses moving stock) such as chicken, duck, goose, beef, goat, lamb and deer. We do not use any pork for our carnivores as it is generally too rich
There are plenty of different food items which we use here and can certainly do with the help at the moment. Sadly we cannot come out to everyone who wants to donate as we need to keep as many of our staff on site as we can at this time. However if you are a business and / or have a bulk quantity of food which needs to be moved, please get in touch and we will see whether we can get someone out to you.
Thank you
We want to finish this by saying a big thank you to everyone who is supporting us. We want to do everything we can to make sure that you can come back to the parks in the future and enjoy seeing the amazing animals at both sites.
We do appreciate you all and want to make coming back to Wingham and Sandwich Wildlife Parks as easy as possible once this is all over. We can’t wait to have you all back.
Finally of course we need to say a big thank you to our staff who continue to work hard for us, bringing their expertise to the park and ensuring that our animals get the love and care they need during this time.
This is an incredibly difficult and quite frankly scary time for us all, but we will get through it with your support.
