Colorado animal sanctuary pleads for public's help to buy and build new property to protect from flooding

By Gabriela Vidal

August 1, 2023 / 11:39 PM / CBS Colorado

Spanning across 10 acres of land near Thornton is a sanctuary for animals that has quickly become a happy place for visitors as much as the animals it tends to.

"Anything from chickens, cows, we have had swans come in, yaks, all sorts of different farm animals," said Andrea Davis, founder of Broken Shovels Farm Sanctuary.

Broken Shovels is a nonprofit that's worked to rehabilitate far more than 500 farm animals coming from neglect, abuse and abandonment.

"A lot of people don't think of farm animals as being part of hoarding cases, but it's actually a really big part of the hoarding cases that we see in Colorado," said Davis. "Many have not had adequate food, water or shelter, so a lot of times, it's just taking care of those needs right there."

The sanctuary started rehabilitating a variety of animals in 2017 after serving as a goat dairy for five years.

The space, however, is now flooded with a new need.

"The property next door built up a large berm that is about 5 feet out of the flood plain," said Davis. "We may not have noticed that except for this historic rainfall year, we got so much flooding.

Davis shared videos of the sanctuary underwater during multiple rainfall events in the Denver metro area this past year.

"We had literal rivers running through here," she said, "torrential rainstorms coming all at once and pretty catastrophic for the sanctuary to deal with."

Fortunately, the property next door was foreclosed, which prompted Davis to take swift action and purchase it.

"It is a really big stretch for a tiny nonprofit that we are," she said.

In purchasing the property adjacent to the sanctuary, Davis says they can take down the hill that has caused a lot of the excessive flooding and move the animals over to the new site to repair the flood-damaged areas. Adding this land would also nearly double the sanctuary in size.

"In our little scrunched space here, it's been hard to do the work that we've needed to repair the flood damage because there's animals using it," she said.

This year the sanctuary received $150,000 in funding support from Gov. Jared Polis during the inaugural ball. However, to reach the down payment of $250,000 for the property, Davis has relied on the public for help through a GoFundMe that is still shy $10,000.

"In order to close on Friday, we need to make that last $10,000 happen," she said. "I can't even entertain the idea that we won't make this happen."

Davis says it is a goal that doesn't just keep these animals protected, but also keeps them within close reach of the Denver community.

"It would be truly heartbreaking to have to move the sanctuary," said Davis. "[It's] expensive and time-consuming and difficult, but also the metro area would lose so much in having us an hour or two hours away."

Gabriela Vidal is a reporter for CBS News Colorado. Read her latest reports or check out her bio and send her an email.

First published on August 1, 2023 / 9:39 PM