Partners • Shop Local Mainerz Boutique Seventeen Years on Main Street September 8, 2026 Written by Xplore Smithers Smithers, BC 1165 Main Street, Downtown...
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September 9, 2026
Partners • Conservation
Northern Lights Wildlife Society
Where Orphaned Bears Learn to Be Wild Again
17366 Telkwa High Road, Smithers, BC
On the Telkwa High Road outside Smithers there is a facility most people will never walk into. That's deliberate. Northern Lights Wildlife Society takes in young, injured and orphaned animals, and the entire point of the work is to send them back out again as wild animals. An animal that learns to expect people is an animal that can't be released.
Founded in 1990 by Angelika and Peter Langen, NLWS specializes in bear and moose rewilding and accepts other BC mammalian wildlife. Since its first documented release in 1991, the shelter has recorded more than eight hundred animals returned to the wild.
Giving wildlife a second chance.
Northern Lights Wildlife Society • Smithers, BC
The Founders
Angelika & Peter Langen — Since 1990
The Langens started NLWS in 1990 as a safe haven for injured and orphaned wildlife in British Columbia. Angelika Langen is co-founder and executive director, and still writes most of the shelter's rescue updates herself.
The work has a shape that surprises people. It isn't primarily about nursing animals back to health, though that happens. It's about rewilding: feeding, sheltering and treating an animal while carefully limiting its contact with humans, so that when it's strong enough to go, it goes back as something wild rather than something tame.
The rescues arrive from across the province. In recent months alone the shelter has taken in a critically underweight black bear cub from Grassy Plains, two cubs from the Kispiox after their mother was shot in a human-wildlife conflict, an orphaned grizzly cub found near Pink Mountain north of Fort St. John, and a grizzly cub from Fernie whose mother was euthanized after conflict with people.
That pattern is the reason the shelter also does public education. Most of the animals in its care are there because of something that went wrong between people and wildlife, which makes prevention as much a part of the job as rescue.
767Black bears released
35Grizzlies released
802Total recorded releases
Figures as recorded by NLWS in 2026. The shelter also notes it cannot currently triage waterfowl or songbirds, and assists only with getting injured or juvenile birds of prey to other facilities.
What They Do
Rescue, Rewild, Release
And the education that tries to prevent the next one
Bear & Moose Rewilding
The shelter's specialty. Orphaned and injured cubs and calves are raised with minimal human contact and released back to the wild.
Other BC Wildlife
NLWS accepts all other BC mammalian wildlife, and helps move injured or juvenile birds of prey to facilities equipped for them.
Education & Research
An active participant in public education on coexistence and in scientific research, including their Bear the Responsibility program.
More Than a Shelter
The Goal Is an Empty Enclosure
Most places that care for animals want you to come and see them. This one doesn't, and that difference tells you what kind of organization it is. Every hour an animal spends becoming comfortable around people is an hour working against its own release.
Why This Matters
Northern BC is bear country, and that is not an abstraction here. Whether a cub ends up orphaned often comes down to ordinary decisions made by people who live and travel in the valley: how garbage is stored, how food is handled at a campsite, what happens when a bear starts associating a yard with a meal.
How to Help
The shelter runs on donations and volunteers. There are several ways in:
- Donate directly, become a member, or give through legacy gifts, securities or their Amazon wish list
- Volunteer, which the shelter credits as having made the organization what it is today
- Manage attractants where you live and camp, so fewer animals need rescuing in the first place
Eight hundred and two animals have gone back to the wild from a property outside Smithers. The measure of success here is an enclosure that ends the season empty.
Get in Touch
Contact Northern Lights
The Shelter
Address 17366 Telkwa High Road
Smithers, BC V0J 2N7
Canada
Smithers, BC V0J 2N7
Canada
Please Note This is a working rewilding facility, not a zoo. It isn't open for drop-in visits. Check their Open House page for the annual public event.
Help Send One Home
Every release starts with food, shelter and medical care that somebody paid for.
