It's Our 5 Year Anniversary Month!!

This month - August 2025 - is our 5 year anniversary!  We are coming up to 1000 wild lives provided with help, since we started…. [And a lot more impact - a lot more animals helped, I think - in fundamental ways, through the funding/training/support we provide to Wildlife Carers, via the WCB.]

Up until this point - August 6th 2025, at lunchtime, with more transports expected later today - 998 wildlife casualties minimum have been transported or gone out to (‘gone out to’ is when Drivers have gone out to an animal that has passed away - or not been contained properly, despite instructions, and has escaped/been predated - just before they got there, which is about 2% of our number).

[This is NOT including all of the transports done by teams of Drivers that we have recruited/equipped and sent in the direction of Wildlife Rescues who run their own teams independently (for whom we act as more of a recruitment service).  An informed, very conservative estimation for 2023/24/25 being at least 100 animals transported, which is probably very much below the actual figure.]

It has been a rollercoaster, but every life is worth the time and work.  Why?  Because we ALL matter.

Here’s an overview of the last 5 years…

[Most of the info below has been repeated across 2 other blog posts, as part of 2 different recent explanations on how/why we operate as we do. Scroll down to see some new infographics representing our work thus far...]

UKWT has always been a celebration of the fact that we ALL matter, whatever/whoever we are.  UKWT focuses on what we can do to celebrate & boost one another - Wildlife Rescuers, Vet Practices, UKWT Organisers & Drivers - to help wildlife together.  We play our part in filling in the transport gap around the UK, to get wildlife to emergency care...

• WHEN WE STARTED…  I set up UKWT because I noticed that around 1/3rd of wildlife weren't getting to emergency care just due to transport issues. When UKWT first launched in August 2020... We used to coordinate emergency transports for wildlife casualties/orphans (securing rescue spaces and organising Drivers). We transported almost 600 wild lives & provided advice/support for another 2000, up to June 2022.

• JUST AFTER WE STARTED, IN JANUARY 2021, I CAME TO UNDERSTAND JUST HOW UNREGULATED THE UK WILDLIFE RESCUE INDUSTRY WAS… This lack of regulation means that almost anyone can set up as a 'Rescue' (you could do it right now, with kind intentions, setting up a social media account and choosing a name for your Rescue and inviting members of the public to bring you wildlife).  [*Please note that I am NOT advocating this practice. To do the above would be the WORST thing that you could do for our UK wildlife. To truly be of help to poorly/orphaned wildlife you require a significant level of knowledge & training AND you need a strong, working relationship with your local Veterinary Practice (it is not enough to just be a client there).]

Since almost anyone can set up as a 'Rescue’, unfortunately lots of well intentioned people do BUT they often have no training, no suitable premises, they don’t work with a vet (which means no access to the right medications, no access to veterinary diagnostic tools & support like x-rays, blood tests and life saving operations) and they often have little to no knowledge at all of the animals they are taking in or what injuries/illnesses they might be experiencing.

As a transport network for wildlife, this has led to a lot of extra steps being put in place to ensure that we are always doing our best to take wildlife to places who CAN provide the right care.  [Essentially, it felt the same as creating a transport network of willing Drivers with cars and then realising that there weren’t any proper roads to drive on, to get animals from A-B, so we ended up creating the ‘road map’ ourselves.  I realised that I either closed UKWT - as I didn’t actually have a map to run off - or I & others needed to come together to create that map.]

• HENCE, THE FOUNDING OF THE WILDLIFE CARE BADGE…  The WCB represented the uniting of Veterinary Professionals & Wildlife Rehabbers, to enable the wildlife rescue industry to self regulate itself.  It required a year of development & launched in February 2022.

The WCB is currently the ONLY Wildlife Rescue map/database in the UK that features Wildlife Rescues who have proven standards of care, akin to actual licensing (annual onsite checks, exams on wildlife care passed & high welfare practices proven through record keeping and an ongoing vet relationship, every quarter throughout the year).  Without the WCB Map, UKWT cannot run.  We rely on it to know where to take wildlife to, entirely.

• JUNE 2022 - DECEMBER 2024 WERE EXCEPTIONALLY BUSY YEARS, BEHIND THE SCENES.  THE IMPACT OF THESE EFFORTS CAN BE SEEN TODAY…

• WCB PROGRESS, THEN TO NOW: From the WCB launch in February 2022 to December 2024, an enormous level of commitment was required, to give the WCB a chance at success.  For the first 2 years of the WCB being launched, we discovered that essentially all we could do was build trust, to prove that the WCB truly reflected the wildlife rescue industry self regulating - and, most importantly, self supporting - itself, to ensure that Wildlife Rescuers & Wildlife alike are cared for.  We had our first waves of WCB Holders, we ran Compassion Fatigue Support Sessions, Webinars, Vet & Rehabber singular and joint zoom events, we developed templates to support Veterinary Professionals & Wildlife Rescuers to build mutually strong relationships, we created platforms to share about important cases & we started to provide grants for WCB Holders & much more.  By mid 2024, we had a foundation of WCB Holders who were renewing their badge every year and bringing on new WCB Holders, by leading by example.  The WCB Map is now growing the fastest it ever has, in 2025.  The WCB celebrated its 3rd Anniversary in February, with testimonials from WCB Holders, see HERE. We have been approached by a number of the UK’s largest animal welfare organisations, to find out about our work and to potentially work together.  We have also recently extended our services by formally hiring a ‘Wildlife Care Advisor’ to support WCB Holders and Vet Professionals on cases and to help advise any Rehabber on how to provide care to at least a minimum standard, to wildlife casualties & orphans.

• UKWT PROGRESS, THEN TO NOW:  By June 2022, demand for UKWT services had grown so much that our phone line was ringing off the hook and we lacked the sufficient Admin Volunteer support to cope with the demand.  Rescues, Vet Practices & members of the public were waiting hours just to get through to us...  I realised that there was a better way for us to run, that would operate more efficiently: I took the phone line down - so that we were no longer coordinating calls - and instead started allocating teams of our UKWT Drivers to Vet Practices & Rescues, so that they could have immediate access to our Drivers (Drivers that we had recruited, equipped and were funding fuel for) instead of having to wait for us to answer their call.  Members of the public could then ask Rescues & Practices direct for transport help, instead of having to go through us.  It took up to December 2024 to fully manifest this structure (mostly because it relied so heavily on the WCB being a success, so a great deal of my focus had to be invested there).  A lot of our work now, as well as setting up new Driver Teams each month, is recruiting new Drivers, to add onto Teams, so that we can always say 'yes' to every transport request.  See how I go about that HERE.  I am so pleased that today, the results from the huge amount of work that has been put into both the WCB and the new UKWT Transport Structure can be seen, in the fact that we’re transporting almost triple the wildlife numbers every month, to emergency care, than we ever were up to June 2022 - we have transported almost 1000 animals now, to emergency care - AND the new UKWT structure has pretty limitless scalability, which I’m building on every day, so that soon, ‘no wild life will be left without care.’  We have 44 Drivers Teams - see HERE - running (some still tiny, some substantial) across England, Scotland & Wales.  We're constantly growing, and especially trying to make sure that wildlife are helped in remoter areas ASAP, where they would fall through the gap otherwise.  See an example of how HERE.

Here's to 1000s more wildlife getting to emergency care and - hopefully - a second chance. We all matter.