Preparing the field in the Wild Animal Sanctuary
Making roads for large carnivores
It’s a wild job, but someone has to do it. The oldest and largest wild animal sanctuary in the world needs gravel to upkeep the internal road in its over 10.000 acres.
The purchasing of an MB Crusher unit provided them with the opportunity to turn the sandstone into a roadbase. Great saving and environmentally friendly choice.
The Sanctuary is dedicated exclusively to rescuing captive exotic and endangered large carnivores, it hosts over 550 lions, tigers, bears and wolves providing them with a wonderful life in a natural habitat, imagine a wild vast area with small serpentines of gravel roads, to keep track of feed and the care of the animals.
The lack of roads and the difficulty in maintaining them make the already difficult task even harder, and to get roadbase material delivered was not a solution because:
- It was hard to get road base to this location
- It was expensive to get the amount needed
Thankfully, 10,000 acres of land comes with plenty of natural materials to work with, particularly sandstone. However, no matter how much materials they could collect from the location, without the machinery to turn the sandstone into something usable the stones simply piled up.
Here comes into play a mobile crusher BF120.4 and their Komatsu PC360LC excavator. With a jaw crusher bucket, the Wild Life Animal Sanctuary creates its aggregates and builds its soft roads, they can maintain their roads and save money by utilizing what’s already available to them.
A bit of history:
The Wild Animal Sanctuary was established by Pat Craig in 1980, a year after he saw how zoos that lacked available room handled their “surplus animals” – by placing them in tiny cages tucked away from the crowd. Now, about forty-two years later, the donation-based Wild Animal Sanctuary is not only the largest carnivore sanctuary in the world, but also has three locations: two central locations in Colorado and one in Texas.
The Wild Animal Sanctuary’s goal is to rescue large captive carnivores, rehabilitate them, and provide a home where they can freely walk around. Pat has also found a way to educate the public about the wild animals and the wildlife crisis without placing glass between the two parties. He did so by creating a stunning mile-long aerial walkway several feet above the habitats.
Improving the internal road network creates was a priority to create a better environment for the animals inhabiting the location, the donors who visit and help keep the Sanctuary afloat, and all of the workers who put their heart and soul into creating a better life for the animals they’ve saved.
They stationed the MB Crusher unit in one area, where all the sandstones were piled up and they crush them down to 2 to 2 ¼ inches, crushing directly into the bed of the truck that will then transport the gravel around.
Picture courtesy of https://www.wildanimalsanctuary.org
