Spruce City Wildlife is looking for grants

But they are hoping to get some long-term, sustained funding through the Northern Interior Gaming Grant program to carry on with the many programs they put on.

“So essentially what we’re looking for here is just sustainable funding for all of our programs. So not only our hatchery program, but this year we started a wide variety of kinds of new things that we’ve just popped up One being our kids’ day camps have been really, really popular, getting kids kind of introduced into wildlife, building birdhouses that sort of thing bat houses also,” says Dustin Snyder with the Spruce City Wildlife Association.

One of the more major projects they’ve done this summer is the salmon enumeration project, with an eye to expanding it. Another project they brought up well before COVID, involves this empty piece of land next door to the hatchery.

“What can we do with it? And we we approached City at the time and they said that it was zoned park and the wheels started turning,” explains Hamilton. “And our board of directors, we came together with a pretty cool idea. I like to think and putting in a fishing pond in the park. But it’s not off the radar.”

Since the idea was hatched, there have been challenges with permitting and, of course, COVID. But the Association says the project is still on the table.

“Being so close to a waterway with an attraction right here, there’s a lot of due diligence that needs to take place on everybody’s part, but we’re still moving ahead.”

Spruce City will likely hear back from government about its application in November, which will be perfect timing to get the wheels rolling.

“That’s one of those things that we’re usually kind of scrambling at the last minute to try to make sure we’ve got enough, especially with our hatchery program. There are some really high costs. You know, our hydro can be as much as a thousand bucks a month just to run the chillers and well pumps and that sort of thing,” says Snyder. “So it’s one of those things we always have to make sure at the last minute we’ve got enough money in the bank to run all year long because if those eggs are in incubation, we can’t, you know, in February, we can’t go, ‘Whoops, we’re out of money. I guess we’re not doing that anymore.’ Right?”

Especially in light of the fact the organization doesn’t and hasn’t received any government funding in the past, they rely on the ongoing task of fundraising to stay afloat.

by Cheryl Jahn

Spruce City Wildlife is looking for grants

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