Suggested by this post, which was triggered by this post.
Our motto is Wildlife Recovery… Human Discovery. We treat sick, injured and orphaned native species, and return recovered individuals to the wild. We also deal with some exotic species as well, like giant pythons and other invasives. You might ask about animals and their care, or the care and feeding of staff, donors, and volunteers, or public education and exhibition of animals, or anything else that strikes your fancy.
How do you handle rabies concerns? Are you and your staff immunized?
Rabies is a serious concern, both because it is 100% fatal in humans once symptoms show (well, there is that single case of a girl who survived, but out of tens of thousands of cases worldwide every year, she is the single survivor) and because certain wildlife species (bats, skunks, raccoons) can be asymptomatic carriers.
Some of my staff have received “pre-exposure” vaccine. This confers protection from “casual contact” like being sneezed on by a ‘coon. However, actual bites still require the “post exposure” series of shots. This is no longer the 20 shots in the stomach of days gone by, but is still a distinctly unpleasant and quite expensive series consisting of massive quantities of gamma globulin spaced over several days. Sadly, the pre-exposure vaccine for humans has been out of production for several years. Our health department thinks they may obtain some more in 2013.
Both staff and volunteers are involved with various aspects of patient care. We do not allow volunteers to have any contact at all with rabies vector species. And we educate and exhort our staff that any bite, however minor, must be reported immediately. This is difficult because the only way to determine whether or not the animal was carrying rabies is to euthanize it so brain tissue can be examined under a microscope. Our people have a heavy emotional investment in the animals under their care, and I worry that concern for the animal could overcome concern for their own safety.
Do members of the public bring you injured animals, or do they always come in via wildlife officials or your own staff?
If the public brings you animals, how do you deal with value/cost considerations? By that I mean that a sea turtle or an indigo snake with a serious injury might be worth a lot of treatment effort, while a mud turtle or a water snake in the same condition might seem like a euthanasia candidate. I’m assuming that at times you have to make these decisions, and that the local wildlife folks aren’t going to bring you any cracked mud turtles or half-dead water snakes.
How careful are you about releasing your patients exactly where they came from?
We receive countless phone calls about wild animals perceived to be in distress. Sometimes we need only educate the people about a misunderstanding of wild creatures’ behaviors. “Put it back; leave it alone!” is appropriate instruction for most baby animals. But if rescue seems needed we also solicit the help of the party calling, since they’re on location already. Variations of the “broom and a box” capture technique are offered and many people willingly involve themselves. We do not though suggest such for animals we deem potentially dangerous, like grown deer, rabies vectors, bobcats, large herons, etc.
Were we funded by some governmental agency, perhaps our mission might be more narrowly defined. But we are funded by donations from the general public. And the general public is more likely to encounter, and feel some emotional attachment to, the squirrels in their yard than to a very uncommon and habitat restricted species like a Florida Pine Snake. So rather than fight a losing battle with a potential donor trying to justify saving one and ignoring another, as a matter of policy, all are treated the same.
Of course, some procedures are simply not possible for certain species but are valuable for others. I can easily start an IV in a bald eagle or a laughing gull, but there isn’t a catheter small enough for a warbler. So some difference in treatment/level of care is inevitable.
ETA: We actually had a half dead water snake brought in today, removed from the county-run water park. They thought it was a venomous water moccasin and gave it a beating.
Hi CannyDan, thanks for starting this thread! As you may recall, I’m a zoo educator, so we’re obliquely colleagues 
Can you tell me about the organizational structure of your center? You seem to be very hands-on in your role, is that by design or necessity? Do you answer to a board of directors, or another body? Apart from animal care, what takes up most of your work day?
I’m somewhat involved in my local rehab center, which is in an interesting spot right now, possibly aligning with a local shelter. Do you know of any great examples/models of how private non-profit rehabs can work with city and county organizations?
I think you mentioned your center does accept invasives. As an Australian, I have some moral objections to this - no Aussie rehab would take a rabbit or fox, for example. I do think it’s important that there’s SOMEWHERE that can treat or otherwise deal with injured invasive wildlife, but I do feel that limited resources should be focused on native species. I don’t have an easy answer, but if you have any more thoughts on this, I’d love to hear them!
Eee, I’m excited to ask these questions of you! I feel like zoos are a great “gateway drug” to get kids into conservation, but I always feel like an emphasis on native species is missing, that the lions/tigers/bears get in the way of the salamanders/mountain lions/king snakes. I’m wondering if my next career step will be away from the zoo, and towards a rehab…
Thank you for your time!
How many DVMs do you have, and how much veterinary work is done by non-credentialed staff or volunteers? No snark intended here, I know that lots of very useful work can be done by non-vets.
araminty, we have a pretty standard corporate structure for a nonprofit that is approved as a charity under Chapter 501©(3) of the Internal Revenue Service code. Which is to say, the corporation is governed by a Board of Directors that sets policy. That Board has hired me and authorized me to perform administrative tasks pursuant to that policy. So I negotiate and sign contracts, hire, train, and fire staff, perform fund raising efforts, etc, etc. And I do hands-on work, both by design (that is part of my expertise) and by necessity (I wish we had more money). I have some great people, both staff and volunteers, in animal care and I rely on them for most patient care. I do morning rounds with them, review cases, and generally stay out of their way unless they ask me for help. Most days are taken up with petty administrative tasks like correspondence including email and social networking, or with the emergencies (water system failed this morning, for instance) that arise. I’m fortunate to have gained a large measure of trust from my Board over my tenure. They were more management-oriented years ago, but now their philosophy is “Leave him alone to implement our policies in whatever way his professional judgment thinks best. If he screws up big time, we replace him with somebody else.”
The biggest problem we’ve had with local animal control agencies and humane shelters is convincing them to stay the hell out of wildlife issues. Wildlife are not dogs and cats and cannot be treated like them or commingled with them. The common thought is that as an “agency” (some are actually governmental, others just quasi-governmental) they can do whatever they want with native wildlife – trap it, remove or relocate it, give it to just anybody for care, etc. But in the USA possession of “migratory birds” (basically all birds native to North America) is strictly controlled by US Fish & Wildlife Service, and such ad hoc possessions are illegal. Plus Florida has equally rigid permitting requirements for everything (almost) that is not a migratory bird. Possession for rehabilitation requires both Federal and State permits and no special dispensation is given to anyone, agency or not. I’ve had to call down the higher powers to convince these agencies/groups that, if they aren’t going to bring the animal directly to us, they had best leave it completely alone. Once we get past that rough patch though, an amicable relationship is possible. If they want to possess wildlife for rehab or anything else they can get the training and the permits needed to do so. Otherwise they can, without permit, act as our agents and provide transportation to us.
We do not treat exotics as patients, except if necessary to euthanize individuals whose condition so warrants. And we certainly do not release them. But many are possessed in our state, legally or illegally, and some are released or escape. So I maintain permits for most kinds of wildlife, including venomous reptiles, “prohibited species” like Burmese pythons, and others so that agencies who encounter them have a resource that can legally accept and hold them. Some are then passed along to permanent facilities like zoos, while others must be euthanized because of lack of placement opportunities. We also sometimes hold restricted wildlife as a courtesy service to wildlife agencies. For instance, we held a number of spitting cobras for six months at the request of Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission while their possession status by an individual was under legal challenge. Eventually the guy straightened out his permit and bond issues, and the court allowed him to collect his animals from us. After paying us a reasonable fee for 6 months of maintenance and care, by the way.
And while I agree that simple, small, local wildlife are the most important – and most neglected – in wildlife educational programming, we also sometimes use a few examples of what not to do if one is inclined to acquire a “personal possession animal” (read: pet). Sometimes a 6+ foot male green iguana can be a persuasive disincentive for someone contemplating purchase of that 9 inch green beauty in a pet store.
No offense taken :). We employ zero vets, but have a number (at least half a dozen) who will provide pro-bono services upon request. Frankly, this is partly a financial decision and partly a philosophical one. Our mission is to return animals to the wild, not to save their lives and warehouse crippled specimens. Oh, we certainly keep some such for educational display, but really, you cannot keep every crippled great horned owl, or bald eagle for that matter. There are just too many.
And many vets either cannot understand, or have difficulty dealing with, this reality. I find that almost all vets are sincere in their desire to help animals, and their priority is to save lives. Of course that is not necessarily the same as our priority. Once I took a hit by car bobcat to a new cooperating vet. He was very excited to plate this tibia, remove the head of that fractured femur, wire the broken lower mandible, etc, etc. But of course the cat would never heal from those repairs because as soon as it woke up from surgery, in the frightening environment of a veterinary clinic, it would go ballistic and destroy the surgical work of hours. And there was no way to keep it sufficiently sedated for the 6 months needed for healing. Grandma’s kitty on the other hand would heal just fine lying in her lap and being petted. After 45 minutes of discussion and soul searching, he agreed that the bobcat required euthanasia. He became one of our most helpful wildlife vets because he had internalized the different meaning of “helping” needed when dealing with wild patients.
So as a general rule, I prefer not to have a veterinarian in a position of authority over animal care. The decisions are tough, and a vet’s background and training just do not prepare them for this. I’ve seen other organizations literally and financially buried by an overabundance of non-releasable patients. We’ve made the decision not to go there.
My staff has a great deal of training and experience, and is capable of dealing with an awful lot on their own (and with me). Much of the necessary care is husbandry, not medical, anyway. None of us hesitate to call in one of our vets for a tricky diagnosis or a problematic course of treatment.
Do you get tons and tons of people applying to work for you? What kind of credentials would be required? A vet tech degree or some kind of licensing?
What kind of degree do you have?
I’m not sure how to word this…but, how do you feel about people who rehabilitate animals at home (illegally). I know this kind of thing must be incredibly widespread.
When I was younger I found an orphaned baby bird (truly orphaned, it was on a sidewalk that went through a large grassy yard. I think perhaps a cat drug it there). It must have just hatched, it had no feathers and its eyes weren’t open. I didn’t really know what to do, and I assumed it must be very close to death, so I just brought it home to keep it warm so it could die in peace. Well, it didn’t. It survived, and grew up to be a big flying bird, which I then released. As much joy as saving that bird brought me, in reading since I realize I did a lot of things wrong, and that the bird almost certainly died because I didn’t adequately prepare it to live in the wild.
Anyway, as I said, poorly worded. But, since you know it’s bound to happen, do you wish there was perhaps better information available for people who attempt this at home, or does it just piss you off?
Ugh, I didn’t really finish. What I mean is, now I always call wildlife rehab, because I don’t want to make the same mistake again. But I’ve known people who get really attached really fast, and refuse to give up the animal, and in those cases I try to give them good information so they don’t make the mistakes I did. What would you do?
Truly no offense meant with this one, I promise.
Do you or your coworkers ever feel guilty about using resources to help animals rather then putting that effort and money toward people who are sick and starving?
Last question first – for privacy reasons I’ll say my areas of study were biology, chemistry, and secondary education and stop there.
We get tons of people who *think *they want to do this work, but then decide cleaning up shit and working outdoors in the heat, rain, and bugs just isn’t as alluring as it seems. Especially for a pay scale around minimum wage. They want to help animals, yes, but envision clean lab coats and a clinical indoor workplace. If they give any thought to the dirtier aspects of animal care, they seem to presume that will be someone else’s job.
I explain to all interested parties that sexy medical procedures are a tiny fraction of our job. Most tasks involve preparing a species and life stage appropriate diet, providing it in a manner that the animal will accept, then cleaning up the inevitable result. In other words, husbandry. Plus a few bandage changes and injections.
Credentials are nice and I’ll consider them, but what I really need is people who are willing to do really hard work for no or little pay, work insane hours, and learn to deal with our failures without emotional breakdown. Plus, even our successes provide little gratification; we make it a rule not to anthropomorphize animals under care, and none of them ever say thanks.
For those who want to stick it out, unpaid volunteers are first to be considered when a paid position becomes available. We can make an endangered species feces removal expert out of almost anyone :).
miss elizabeth, once upon a time all wildlife rehab was “back yard”. (Today the words of art are “home based”.) There is no curriculum specifically designed to graduate a wildlife rehabilitator. Each state has their own qualification process, some more stringent than others. There may be a documentation of experience under some qualified entity, or a test, or some acceptable course work, or sometimes almost nothing at all. And so the level of care delivered varies dramatically from place to place. The founders of my own facility were sincere but untrained “back yarders” in 1970.
The world of wildlife rehab has come a long way since then. There are now state, national, and international associations that provide resources, courses of study, seminars, and other opportunities for professional growth in this field. I and my facility are members of all of them, I have taught seminars and courses for all three, and I serve on the Board of Directors of one. Perhaps someday there will be professional standards agreed upon by some professional association, probably an outgrowth of one of the present associations. But until then, levels of care will not be consistent.
As for well meaning people taking in the occasional animal, we strongly discourage it for the reasons you cite. Home concoctions of diets are almost always damaging and wild babies rarely thrive. Those that live and grow often display developmental abnormalities due to the improper diet. Few wild creatures raised without proper conspecific socialization will survive in the wild, and of the survivors, almost none will breed. So we educate people wherever we can, and encourage them to trust us, and to call us for advice whenever they encounter animals they believe need help. I only get pissed off at people who deliberately ignore advice and cautions offered to them. I have had to call in the authorities to enforce the possession laws when I thought the amateur ministrations were overtly harmful and the people refused to listen.
No offense taken. And I mean no offense to you either when I say, frankly, no.
IMHO (tee hee) the world is a complex place and all life upon it has some value. As stated earlier, we do not discriminate among species. Wildlife of all kinds has its own value, and not just value of utility, but esthetic value, or value in being a part of necessary biodiversity, or value in just being something that took 4.3 billion years to reach its present form. People aren’t necessarily the highest and best consumers of earth’s natural resources.
Also, more than 80% of our patients are the result of direct negative impacts caused by humans. Animals are struck by vehicles, gunshot, poisoned by pesticides, household chemicals, and industrial waste, entangled in plastic junk we discard, or have their homes bulldozed away or their nest trees cut down. Et cetera. I have no problem justifying the expenditure of effort, resources, or money to ameliorate those effects.
Florida, huh? So… alligators?
What are some of the more interesting things you’ve seen and done? How often do you work with endangered species? If you end up with a dead bald eagle on your hands, do you have procedure for them?*
Coke or Pepsi?
I’ve been asked the same question about my charitable contributions, the vast majority of which go toward animal shelters. My answer: nope.
Yep. And crocodiles too.
Florida shares the American Alligator with the other southeastern states. But south Florida also holds the only population of the American Crocodile in the US.
Oh, we also have an established population of the exotic Brown (or Spectacled) Caiman. In appearance these are superficially similar to alligators and once were common in the pet trade as substitutes for them when alligators became restricted under the Endangered Species Act. Accidental releases, escapes, and deliberate stocking have established populations in several locations. While smaller than either of the native species, the Caiman is much nastier.