Beans for Bags: Center Valley Animal Rescue

Apr 28

Despite many things currently being on hold due to corona virus, this year holds a great deal of growth and excitement for CVAR. We will be welcoming veterinary interns to CVAR this summer! These students will have the opportunity to live onsite and gain hands on clinical skills experience in domestic & farm animal care, as well as wildlife rehabilitation from our licensed wildlife rehabilitator (and director) Sara Penhallegon. This will be an ongoing program that we are pleased to offer as a unique educational opportunity to students in the veterinary medicine field. We have a new dog building in the works! The funds for this building came from a generous private donation that has allowed us to create an entirely new area of the ranch dedicated to canine housing and care. We are happy to be expanding our capacity to take in dogs, who primarily come to CVAR from hoarding & abuse/ neglect cases. We will soon be home to two retired education raptors, a Swanson Hawk and Red tailed Hawk, coming to us from Jaye Moore of The NW Raptor Center. We are blessed to have a brand new state of the art raptor flight pen, built entirely by our wonderful volunteers, to welcome them home to the ranch. Due to coronavirus we have postponed our Fundraising Auction & Gala ‘For the Love of Animals’ to October 3rd. This is our biggest fundraising event of the year. We look forward to celebrating CVAR’s work and the beautiful community that supports us, this fall. Details can be found on our website and tickets can be purchased online. Please feel free to call the office with further inquiries. We are also seeking item donations for the auction itself. Some of the exciting auction items we have lined up thus far include a private day cruise departing from Hudson point and a personalized tour of a micro logging operation in Chimacum.

CVAR is a private no-kill facility which depends entirely on donations from the community to stay opened and working. We are almost entirely volunteer run, with a dedicated volunteer staff of 50-60 folks a week giving their time to clean, exercise and provide for the needs of over 200 animals. Our funding is heavily reliant on donations from the community and through awesome programs like the Food Co-op’s beans for bags program. These funds will help sustain our work of providing safe harbor and rehabilitation for unwanted, injured or abandoned domesticated and wild animals. This includes feeding, housing and providing medical care to any animals that come into our care.

CVAR has had countless success stories since its inception in 2002. Sara Penhallegon, our founder and director, has carved out a unique position as a go to rehabilitator for severe animal abuse and neglect cases, which includes working with law enforcement to seize animals from hoarding cases. The most well known of these cases was in 2018 when 7 Bison (1 pregnant – baby bison picture attached!) were seized from a property in Beaver Valley. After a huge boots on the ground effort to move, house and provide medical care, and a legal case against the owner, the remaining Bison are now housed at a sanctuary in Texas.