On a recent Saturday morning, unpainted concrete walls cooled the interior of the skeleton structure that will become the new animal shelter in Josiahs Bay.
“We are building a solid concrete structure for resilience,” Humane Society of the BVI Board Member Nancy Woodfield-Pascoe said during a tour with animal shelter director Vijay Bissoondutt. “And you can see how it’s elevated. We developed to make sure we built with the environment.”
Erected near the southern edge of the salt pond in Josiahs Bay, the new structure is raised off the ground to accommodate water-level rise in times of heavy precipitation.
The land was purchased about ten years ago with seed money earned from fundraising events over the years, but the project was delayed by the 2017 hurricanes and then the Covid-19 pandemic.
Last August, however, construction finally got under way, according to Ms. Woodfield-Pascoe.
The project got a boost last year from $100,000 bequeathed to the humane society by a donor the organisation has not yet publicly identified. But to complete the interior and landscaping, an additional $200,000 is still needed, according to Ms. Woodfield-Pascoe.
The organisation hopes to raise the money as soon as possible, as the current animal shelter is cramped and low on space, she added.
“Our current capacity is about 70 dogs and 20 cats,” Ms. Woodfield-Pascoe said. “We find adoption for about 300 cats and dogs per year that otherwise would roam the streets.”
The building in Josiahs Bay will have much more space for rescue animals, according to Mr. Bissoondutt.
“We have about 20 kennels, and this is going to be way more than that, because we’re going to have a lot more indoor kennels as well,” he said. “But we’re still trying to keep the same capacity of animals that we have in the present shelter — just more space — and it’ll be more comfortable for the animals than to be cramped in somewhere very tiny.”
Mr. Bissoondutt is the humane society’s only full-time employee, and he shares his workload with only one other paid staff member as well as volunteers.
“Vijay was actually honoured with an MBE [in 2022] for his services to the community,” Ms. Woodfield-Pascoe said. “It’s not like it’s a weekday job. Animals are coming and he gets phone calls day and night, weekends, Christmas, birthdays — all the time.”
Previous Shelter
The existing animal shelter, which has stood in Johnsons Ghut for about 38 years, is Tortola’s second. The first, in Pasea Estate, operated for about a decade before moving to the current location in 1985, according to Ms. Woodfield-Pascoe.
“We’ve been really fortunate to have the land at Johnsons Ghut,” said the board member, who remembers volunteering at the original shelter as a child. “The Shirley family has been incredibly generous in allowing the [humane society] to use that land. Because when you go there, you’ll see it: It’s prime land. But for a nominal rent, they have allowed us to have the animal shelter there for all these years.”
However, Ms. Woodfield-Pascoe said the landowners are ready to find a new use for the location.
For years, the humane society has also been looking for a purpose-built structure that is better suited for accommodating animals in need.
“We don’t have our own [veterinarian] at the humane society right now, but we work together with Canines, Cats and Critters and the government vet as well,” Ms. Woodfield-Pascoe said. “We’re hoping that we can have our own in-house vet once we move out here.”
Goats, parrots, iguanas
At the shelter, Mr. Bissoondutt accepts a wide variety of species, but cats and dogs make up most of his work.
“Our doors are open to so many different things,” Mr. Bissoondutt said. “We take goats, we take chickens, we take parrots, rabbits, iguanas — you know?”
The shelter, however, doesn’t have enough room for large farm animals, which Ms. Woodfield-Pascoe said must be taken elsewhere.
Preparations
Before starting construction in Josiahs Bay, the humane society carried out extensive preparatory work, according to the board member.
“So we had a survey done; we had the [hazard and vulnerability assessment] done to know how high floodwaters could come.
[Water] comes down the hill too,” Ms. Woodfield-Pascoe said. “That money [for the land parcel] came from all the money that had been fundraised through our events up to that point.”
A steel frame building was purchased shortly after the land, but Hurricane Irma complicated the construction process.
“Before Irma, there was a lot of steel frame construction going on and we thought, ‘Oh, that would be a great way to be more efficient with the money we have to build a building,’” Ms. Woodfield-Pascoe said.
“Because there was so much damage [during Irma], priority number one was rebuilding the current shelter.”
Storm damage
After the 2017 storms, funds raised previously for the new shelter were used to keep the society’s basic animal control service operational.
“The money that we had saved up we had to put into the present shelter to keep our doors open,” Mr. Bissoondutt said. “And, you know, we keep fundraising.”
Once construction started in Josiahs Bay, much of the previously purchased steel was used in the new concrete design, and the rest will be used for outdoor structures like a birding area, according to the board member.
“We had $200,000 that we had available to build with,” Ms. Woodfield-Pascoe said.
About half that money was saved from previous fundraising. The other half, she said, came in the form of the 2023 bequeathment, allowing the humane society to proceed with the next phase of the programme.
“We’ve got this next $100,000 that came in as the private donation, which will help us with our windows and doors,” Ms. Woodfield-Pascoe said. “We still then need the remaining $200,000 to finish up the outside.”
Casino night
Fundraising, she added, is not easy. The casino night the humane society hosts each year, for instance, needs donor support and the assistance of dozens of volunteers.
“It takes a lot of time, people and energy to go out to the community and seek these prizes,” Ms. Woodfield-Pascoe said. “I just want to stress the importance of all the people who have helped throughout the past 25 or 30 years to keep the shelter running.”
Because of the outstanding funding, there is no set opening day for the new shelter in Josiahs Bay, according to Ms. Woodfield-Pascoe.
The society, meanwhile, is accepting donations of all types. A local business, for instance, has discounted doors and windows, she said.
Mr. Bissoondutt added, “Donation could be anything, you know? It could be money — dog food to cat food to cleaning supplies — because these are things we go through every single day.”