Officially The Wildlife Haven was founded in 2008. However, the founders, Krista and Lauren Langley began working with wildlife many years before, in the county of Herefordshire.
Most wildlife rescue centres in the UK are run from individual's homes and start by taking the occasional animal, which snowballs into many.
After rescuing and caring for both wild and domestic birds and animals for years, Krista and Lauren saw an article in the newspaper, in 1999, asking for volunteers at a local wildlife sanctuary. Deciding to get in touch with Beryl Bayliss, the founder of the Athene Sanctuary for Wild Birds and Hedgehogs, they began volunteering for her on a regular basis.
Beryl was an incredible woman, a former district nurse, who set up the sanctuary when she was 65 years old, caring for thousands of wild animals until she passed away in 2010.
During the eight years of working at the Athene Sanctuary, Krista and Lauren learned the most important aspects of wildlife rehabilitation and were able to be a part of the work that Beryl was doing, caring for Herefordshire's wildlife. Being so close to the Welsh hills the Sanctuary received many less commonly seen birds, such as Ravens, Manx Shearwaters, Peregrine falcons and hundreds of Buzzards.
Beryl had an excellent reputation for the successful rehabilitation of birds of prey and owls, and was recognised for her expertise by the RSPCA and the RSPB. She attributed her success to her hands off approach, with very little contact and no "jiggery pokery".
After years of working with Beryl; Krista and Lauren started taking on some of the more high maintenance animals, such as the small garden birds and baby hedgehogs. This grew into becoming the rescue drivers and eventually to receiving calls directly to their home. With Beryl turning 80 in 2004, most of the rescues were taken up by Krista and Lauren and the other volunteers, who climbed ladders to rescue sea gulls, used a kayak to save ducklings, borrowed a cherry picker to untangle pigeons from netting and on one memorable rescue were escorted into the Hereford SAS camp to free an albino stag from some discarded scrambling net.
After relocating to North Yorkshire in 2007, Lauren and Krista founded The Wildlife Haven and have since rescued and rehabilitated over 10,000 wild animals from across Yorkshire and the North East. The Wildlife Haven became a Registered Charity in July 2015. In 2019 Krista and Lauren celebrated 20 years of working with wildlife.