UKWT Driver IDs...

This is absolutely the correct & most exciting next step for UKWT: Driver ID cards!

Since we launched in August 2020, we have had to put in a HUGE amount of work, behind the scenes, to simply just enable UKWT to operate in a way that TRULY serves the animals we want to provide a second chance to. [If you scroll down, I have included a history of what it has taken, to reach this point].

This year, all of our hard work appears to have paid off: we have transported 772 animals this year alone (as of 14th November 2025) to emergency care & passed the milestone of 1300 animals gone out to/transported since we started in 2020.

With what I hope is now a very solid foundation to run off, and a UK wide Driver Database of almost 300 Drivers - which we want to almost double to 500, before Spring 2026 - it's now time to formalise our Drivers' experiences when picking up/dropping off wildlife casualties & orphans, from & to members of the public, Wildlife Rescues & Vet Practices, by each Driver wearing a UKWT ID.

These are nothing too technical & don't carry personal information: they're simply a lanyard & plastic pouch, with a 'UKWT Volunteer Driver' representation in it. They're not too expensive for Drivers to be, very kindly, happy to purchase themselves (with packing & postage included, each ID comes under £2 per Driver). *If/when a Driver steps down, they can sell also sell their ID, should they choose to, to a new Driver who is just joining up.

Check out a mock up below:

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.]

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 gone out to/transported over 1300 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'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.