Fauna Rescue Whitsundays (FRW) is a not for profit, volunteer organisation that cares for the regions sick, injured and orphaned native animals. The region we cover includes Collinsville, Bowen, Whitsundays, Mackay, Sarina and out to Clermont, Moranbah & Dysart. We receive no government funding. Our income relies solely on membership fees, fundraising and the odd grant we apply for specific items, ie humidicribs for animals, smaller aviaries and some workshops/training. FRW works closely with other organisations such as Dept Environment & Science, Central Qld University (Koala Mapping Project), Dept of Main Roads, The Proserpine Rock Wallaby Recovery Program, Whitsunday Catchment Landcare, Green Corps, Land for Wildlife, as well as local Vets, Police, The Men’s Shed, local school and environmental groups. These groups are all supportive of our organisation. We are all very lucky to enjoy this beautiful region, however as the region develops our interaction with the environment and its native inhabitants increase. This increases the demand for FRW’s services. To meet this demand FRW is continually looking to expand membership and continue to fund operations such as assistance to carers with Veterinary expenses, food costs, animal housing as well as funding the running of the hotline. We also wish to continue to provide ongoing workshops and training for our members on appropriate and up to date wildlife care, ensuring that the animals in our care have the best possible chance of survival and release. We have many visions for FRW’s future and I have listed some of these below: • Monetary donations to assist FRW operations, ie food costs and veterinary bills • Display items for our Educational Display Trailer. • Educational materials for our School and Community Education Project. • New heating equipment for sick and orphaned wildlife. • Flight Aviaries for birds (it is of utmost importance that our birds that have been in care for several weeks/months have the chance to build up their wing muscles prior to release. Currently we only have one of these. Quite often there is a ‘waiting list’ for this facility as you can’t always put certain birds together (such as Wedge-tail Eagle and pigeon). • Macropod (kangaroo, wallaby) Enclosures (including a new enclosure for our Proserpine Rock Wallabies, an endangered Wallaby found only in the Whitsunday Shire). • Assistance toward revegetation following Cyclone Debbie. • Wildlife Hospital, that would also incorporate a conference room for our meetings and training session as well as living quarters. It would be great to be able to have Veterinary Students and Veterinarians from overseas spend some time with us, working with our native wildlife as part of a Volunteer Programme in exchange for food and board. • Property we could use for release sites, especially for our larger macropods, the kangaroos • Our own Wildlife Veterinarian (whilst our local Vets are excellent and support us as much as they can, they are not trained Wildlife Veterinarians). The list is quite endless when it comes to wildlife rehabilitation. One could keep adding to this but I have kept it brief just to give you an example of what we could do. We welcome donations and/or assistance from our local community to help us achieve our aims and support our local wildlife.