Poor Rehab Practices Are - I Think - CRUSHING Our UK Wildlife's Chances, In Even These Unforeseen Ways...

This is a long post, but of such brutal importance, I hope you at least scan over the most prominent sections… [These are MY words & opinions, NOT the words/opinions of any of the Rescues referenced - they have had nothing to do with this post.]

UKWT was set up so that every wildlife casualty & orphan could be got to emergency care & their best go at a second chance, living wild & free.

A huge number of challenges - that you wouldn’t necessarily expect - are currently needing to be overcome to make that simple vision a reality.  The biggest of these challenges (in my opinion) is the lack of universal support & regulation of the Wildlife Rescue industry in England & Wales.

Did you know that almost anyone can set up as a 'Rescue’?  With NO training at all?  With no knowledge at all?  With no way of actually helping the animals they take in, at all?

[*Please note that I am NOT advocating this practice, without the relevant training & experience. 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. 

All of this leads to a great deal of unnecessary suffering & death.

In order to be able to run UKWT at all - for it to exist at all, taking wildlife only to the right places - I started to deal with the issues above, as well as running UKWT, by also being one of the Founders of the Wildlife Care Badge, in 2021.  The WCB represents a united effort by UK Vet Professionals, Wildlife Rehabbers & Wildlife Professionals: the 'Wildlife Care Badge' map represents a growing list of UK Wildlife Rescues/Rehabbers who have been assessed to be of a proven, high welfare standard.

The WCB has turned out to not be enough, however, to enable UKWT to most smoothly operate (not yet anyway, as the WCB is still very much getting going).

I am writing this post, in part, in the hope that if more people are aware of what is going on, positive change can happen quicker.

Yesterday I was forced to do something that I hadn’t anticipated EVER having to do, until this summer: I had to make the decision to start to DENY TRANSPORT SUPPORT (the picking up of all birds & possibly other creatures too, from members of the public and even most Vet Practices, to get them to Wildlife Rescues) from an ENTIRE CITY, and a good chunk of the surrounding area.

This will result in lots of animals NOT getting help, but I feel that I’ve been forced into a corner & left without much of a choice.  Read on to find out why…

What I have experienced this summer goes beyond any level of suffering in animals I had seen before, running UKWT (and over the years we have picked up wildlife from a lot of Rehabbers with, in my opinion, very poor Practices, to rush those animals to proven high welfare Rescues, to try and help them if it wasn’t already too late).

This summer in THREE cities in the UK (but only one turned out to be so relentless that I had to effectively withdraw UKWT’s services from most of that area) not only have there been the usual very poor Rehabbers who have taken in wildlife and caused them accidental suffering BUT they ALSO started to use local high welfare Wildlife Rescues as DUMPING GROUNDS for the animals they’d taken in, that they didn’t want anymore - using UKWT as their way of moving them on - ON SUCH A BIG SCALE, that they crushed not only all of our transport resources in that area, meant for members of the public & Vet Practices, but also the resources of some of the local high welfare Rescues too, making it hard for them to operate most effectively.

[Some examples of what I have experienced from these ‘Rehabbers’ this year, in the animals we have engaged with them about, include not noticing broken legs, wings, skulls - with brains coming out - and/or they've been cutting up birds with nail scissors, without pain relief, or slicing open the throats of birds, again without pain relief, to try and examine/fix them, or just starving the animals in their care to death, from pure ignorance.]

Yesterday, I had to send the following message to a group of these people…

[For discretion, as UKWT has a policy of never naming/shaming or publicly seeking to humiliate people, I have removed all indications of where this area might be.  I am sharing this only because I think that if more people really understand the importance of the regulation of this industry - and how essential it is to only pass wildlife to proven, high welfare Rescues - more animals will get a second chance.]

“Hiya, I just wanted to let you know about a change in the ‘X’ area for UKWT, please.  UKWT can’t cope with the level of transports that are being sent to us from the [city name] Rehabber Group (from any of the independent Rehabbers in the area).  As kind and well intentioned as it is.  It’s not just the MOPs who are being directed to [local Rescue name] and told to ask for transport, it’s also - in fact, especially - the number of birds being sent over from Rehabbers themselves, who are passing on birds they don’t think they can care for anymore.

It’s reached a point where all I am doing is enabling Rehabbers - who I don’t think have good Practices, and who I think are causing immense accidental suffering, like cutting up birds with nail scissors or starving babies to death through lack of knowledge - to keep taking in birds, because they think they can pass them on easily if/when they want to.  We also pick up a lot from people who say they’re MOPs [members of public] and then who turn out to be these kinds of Rehabbers, who have had a bit of a try helping a bird but then want to move them on.  I can’t do it anymore.  The only way I can think of to move forward is to stop picking up from any members of the public in the whole of the area.  We will pick up from a few very particular vet practices, when requested by [high welfare Rescues], but these are being decided on and kept as a private list.  Any other vet practices will be told we can’t help until the new year.

I will be reviewing this in the new year, but right now this is all I can think of to do, to draw back from the crushing situation all across [area] that I can no longer cope with.”

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Take from this post what you will...

I wanted to share what is going on because, without more national awareness and understanding, the evolution of the Wildlife Rescue industry & the ceasing of the suffering of animals, taken in by poor Rehabbers, will be slower to rectify.

If you want UKWT up & running across all of the UK - as I do - and not undermined by these challenges, when really UKWT is such a simple idea and is really just to get animals, who are stuck, to the best help, which shouldn’t be so complicated, then please share very widely about these issues and share about the Wildlife Care Badge too.  UKWT funds the WCB, and I run both, which is a lot of work, especially during the Spring/Summer months, but without the WCB (or a national equivalent/alternative) wildlife will continue to miss out.

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 & ongoing high welfare practices proven throughout the year).

The more Vet Practices & members of the public who are aware of the WCB, and how important the regulation of the Wildlife Rescue industry is, the more wildlife will start to be handed only to those who can truly help them.  They deserve nothing less.