Welcome to Impacting Wildlife, my blog about Wildlife Rehabilitation. I have been volunteering helping with wildlife rehabilitation for about 3 years now and am very passionate about helping animals. I have created this blog to educate people about the work done by wildlife rehabilitators, share stories from working with wildlife, and offer advice and suggestion about how you can support wildlife rehabilitation and make a difference for wildlife.
Wildlife rehabilitation is the practice of treating, sheltering, and caring for injured and orphaned wild animals in order to release them back into the wild. The impact of wildlife rehabilitation goes beyond just the individual animals saved. The impact of wildlife rehabilitation goes beyond just the individual animals saved. Much of the research from rehabilitation can make a huge difference for conservation as a whole, learning more about the factors impacting wildlife and the techniques necessary to care for certain species. Rehabilitation also makes an impact in educating the public about the impact that they have and how they can minimize their own negative impacts on local wildlife.
Wild animals live all around us, though often go unnoticed until they are injured or sick. Often times, this is just nature, and sometimes it is best to let nature run its course with minimal interference. However, with humans encroaching on habitats and interfering with ecosystems, a large majority of these injuries are from human causes, such as vehicular accidents, nest destruction, window collisions, etc.. There are many dangers for wildlife as human influence spreads into their habitats. Wildlife rehabilitation serves to try to undo some of this negative impact so we can help restore some of the balance in nature that has been disturbed. In fact, according to the National Wildlife Rehabilitators Association, 75% of the animals cared for by rehabilitators were affected by some sort of human activity.[2]
Not only does wildlife rehabilitation help individual animals in the immediate ecosystem, but it also serves as research that can help large scale conservation efforts, or in case the of crisis. Wildlife Rehabilitation is a combination of veterinary science, biology, ecology, animal behavior, and other fields. There is a lot that can be learned from working directly with wildlife. Through the direct care of more common wildlife, rehabilitators are able to find the best practices for caring for certain animals, which can have a huge impact for preserving endangered species when the risk is much higher. Wildlife rehabilitation can also have a huge impact for public health. Often, wildlife rehabilitators are the first to notice changes in disease patterns, which can be very important to prevent further spread. Rehabilitators are also often the first to notice the impact of environmental changes, such as more injured birds due to them relocating due to deforestation. This information can be invaluable to the scientific community, giving them a head start to addressing issues early on. [1]
The impact of wildlife rehabilitation goes much further than merely helping individual animals. It can have an important impact in counteracting the damaging effects to wildlife. Many wildlife rehabilitators dedicate themselves to educating the public, teaching us how to live peacefully alongside wildlife without doing unintentional damage. I hope that you will enjoy the information in this blog, and that it will build appreciation for all the hard work done by rehabilitators to help wildlife.
- “Facts about NWRA”. http://www.nwrawildlife.org/content/facts-about-nwra. National Wildlife Rehabilitators Association. Retrieved 2015.
- “Wildlife health and rehabilitation”. http://dnr.wi.gov/topic/wildlifehabitat/wildlifehealth.html. Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. 2014. Retrieved 2014.
Impacting Wildlife 