Offering educational presentations featuring live animals year round. No “open admission” hours or general public visitation. What is the Wildlife Encounters Ecology & Wellness Center? Originally founded in 2004, our organization early-on focused mostly on community education (especially in-school curriculum enrichment) achieved through delivery of live-animal presentations: our Wildlife Encounters® shows! Programs and classes delivered by highly skilled & passionate educators and presenters did, and still do feature a wide variety of non-releasable wildlife that live with us because they were:
- Injured in the wild and not able to survive independently
- exploited by the illegal trade in wildlife and placed with us by authorities
- abandoned, abused, neglected or otherwise surrendered former pets
- captive-bred in a US-based protected environment to participate in public education & species/biodiversity conservation efforts. Today, the Wildlife Encounters Ecology & Wellness Center today is a private nature-based educational entity that has grown and developed to manage a 77 acre nature preserve in Barrington, NH and a USDA licensed dependent-wildlife sanctuary in Rochester. We aim to improve globally-oriented environmental literacy, awareness & engagement among children, members of our community and visitors to the region. We offer on-site programming, events, trails and more at the Barrington location, private guided Sanctuary Tours, and a Membership Program as well as our extremely popular Community Outreach live-animal presentations. We are stewards of a 77 acre nature preserve on Beauty Hill in Barrington, NH and additionally maintain our legacy Ambassador Animal Sanctuary in Rochester, NH. Both are USDA licensed and inspected facilities, operating in full compliance with the Animal Welfare Act, and are able to be visited by prior reservation or event registration. The Wildlife Encounters Ecology & Wellness Center is not a zoo, nor a pet store, adoption shelter or breeding facility. The owner and some staff are professional environmental educators and are individually members of various nature center, zoological, wildlife and conservation entities. Strengthened with a variety of backgrounds and passions, many on the education team have degrees and experience in biology, ecology, sustainable agriculture, homesteading, conservation, health & nutrition, yoga, forest bathing, wild plant foraging, ethical hunting, primitive survival skills and more! With regard to reproduction, propagation & breeding. The most fundamental biological mandate of all living things is to reproduce and pass on it’s genetic traits. It is the root of all biological desires and behaviors, and the most natural “right” of all things to pursue in the attempt to ensure the survival of it’s species. Though we do not currently participate in any of the animal species conservation efforts (AMP/SSP) for captive propagation of endangered species of domesticated farm animals, we do support and advocate for them so long as they are conducted ethically and as naturally as possible. Furthermore, we fundamentally disagree with and strongly oppose the efforts by small ideologically-driven segments of society to deprive domestic and wild animals and plants of their reproductive rights – and further oppose their long term agenda of domestic animal extinction and exclusion of animals from human society. USDA Class C Exhibitor License #12-C-0051
Licensed as required to provide services in NH, ME, VT, MA, CT.
