Ethics in Wildlife Rehabilitation: A Workshop for Wildlife Rehabilitators

Posted on September 25, 2022May 18, 2023 by Soro Cyrene

[editor’s note: Please welcome Soro Cyrene as a new voice across all the platforms HWCC/bax and BAX use across the digital world! Also, please note that all of the material in this video and article is intended for permitted wildlife rehabilitators engaged in the daily work of providing care to orphaned and injured wild animals in accordance with laws of their community, state, province and nation.]

As wildlife rehabilitators, it is critically important that we uphold strong ethical standards in our daily practices. What gives us the ethical right to rehabilitate wildlife? What agencies give us the permission to do so? How can wildlife be cared for in a way that is moral, and how do our own moral compasses affect the way that we care for these wild being? We will be exploring these questions and more in this written workshop. To begin, a quote from Henry Beston’s The Outermost House:

“We need another, and a wiser, and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. Remote from universal nature and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion. We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate for having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein do we err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours, they move finished and complete, gifted with the extension of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings: they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth.”
Henry Beston, The Outermost House

What underlies this quotation is the idea that we, humans, are not the gatekeepers of what it means to be a wild being. It is important to remember, always, that wild animals are deserving both of respect and the right to be wild, and the decisions that we make for them in the realm of wildlife rehabilitation must always be governed by what is in the animal’s true best interest.

What is wildlife rehabilitaton?

Wildlife rehabilitation is the practice of admitting into care an injured, ill, or orphaned wild animal in order to treat the injury or illness, or to raise until able to be released back to a wild and free life.

In this line of work, our job is to do just that, as well as to end suffering when need be.

What agencies regulate wildlife rehabilitation?

There are several governing agencies that regulate how wildlife rehabilitators operate, and they differ somewhat depending on which state and country you live in. The following laws and agencies are generally applicable to most wildlife rehabilitators:

The Migratory Bird Treaty Act: An international treaty that outlaws the taking of birds. It prohibits the possession of birds, bodies of birds, parts of birds, and property of birds, such as nests. What this means for wildlife rehabilitators in the United States is that we must acquire a permit from the federal government, specifically the US Fish and Wildlife Service, in order to treat birds.

State Agencies: Generally, most of the other (non-bird) animals that we may treat in a wildlife rehab setting are regulated by state agencies, such as the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, or the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, etc. The state agency will have a fish and game code that dictate what is allowed in wildlife rehabilitation facilities. Included in this code is a Memorandum of Understanding, a set of rules for wildlife rehab conduct that were written in order to ensure that the practice is as ethical as possible. See an example of the California Memorandum of Understanding here: https://www.nativeanimalrescue.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/MOU-2020-2023-CA-Dept-of-Fish-and-Wildlife.pdf

The National Wildlife Rehabilitators Association and the International Wildlife Rehabilitation Council: These two organizations are important leaders in wildlife rehabilitation and ensuring that rehabbers around the world are working within the frame of high ethical standards. Together, they wrote the Minimum Standards, a document that states the minimum standards of care for wildlife in rehabilitation that has been adopted by many states as their fish and game code. The Minimum Standards can be viewed with the following link: https://theiwrc.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Standards-4th-Ed-2012-final.pdf

A Barn Own receiving an intake exam at our hospital

The Minimum Standards begins with a Code of Ethics:

A wildlife rehabilitator should strive to achieve high standards of animal care through knowledge and an understanding of the field. Continuing efforts must be made to keep informed of current rehabilitation information, methods, and regulations.
A wildlife rehabilitator should be responsible, conscientious, and dedicated, and should continuously work toward improving the quality of care given to wild animals undergoing rehabilitation.
A wildlife rehabilitator must abide by local, state, provincial and federal laws concerning wildlife, wildlife rehabilitation, and associated activities.
A wildlife rehabilitator should establish safe work habits and conditions, abiding by current health and safety practices at all times.
A wildlife rehabilitator should acknowledge limitations and enlist the assistance of a veterinarian or other trained professional when appropriate.
A wildlife rehabilitator should respect other rehabilitators and persons in related fields, sharing skills and knowledge in the spirit of cooperation for the welfare of the animals.
A wildlife rehabilitator should place optimum animal care above personal gain.
A wildlife rehabilitator should strive to provide professional and humane care in all phases of wildlife rehabilitation, respecting the wildness and maintaining the dignity of each animal in life and in death. Releasable animals should be maintained in a wild condition and released as soon as appropriate. Non-releasable animals which are inappropriate for education, foster-parenting, or captive breeding have a right to euthanasia.
A wildlife rehabilitator should encourage community support and involvement through volunteer training and public education. The common goal should be to promote a responsible concern for living beings and the welfare of the environment.
A wildlife rehabilitator should work on the basis of sound ecological principles, incorporating appropriate conservation ethics and an attitude of stewardship.
A wildlife rehabilitator should conduct all business and activities in a professional manner, with honesty, integrity, compassion, and commitment, realizing that an individual’s conduct reflects on the entire field of wildlife rehabilitation.

Lastly, many states have professional organizations of wildlife rehabilitators, such as the California Council of Wildlife Rehabilitators, or the Washington Wildlife Rehabilitation Association. These organizations do important work in improving standards for wildlife care. If you have one of these organizations in your state, you should be involved with it in some capacity.

A fox receiving medication at our hospital

Ethics in the Clinic

An important thing to remember in wildlife rehabilitaiton is that we are treating our wild patients without their consent. There is no possible way that they could (or likely ever would) give us their consent to hold them captive while they undergo rehabilitation. The process of rehabilitation is undeniably greatly stressful to our patients. The only thing that justifies rehabilitaiton is our promise to give them a second chance at their wild life that they would not have otherwise, or to end their suffering if that is not possible.

Having respect for our patients is obviously critical, but what does having respect for our patients mean, exactly? One aspect of having respect for our patients is to understand deeply the stress, fear, and suffering that they are enduring from being in captivity. Thus, when an animal responds to us with signs of fear, such as warning vocalizations, struggling against capture, and other defensive behaviors, it is important to see this for what it is: suffering. It is not the animal being cute or extra feisty, as some people might say. Being able to empathize with our patients and understand that their signs of stress are never to be considered endearing is important for maintaining our own high ethical standards.

Ways to reduce stress in patients

Visual barriers: Wild animals have instincts to fear humans. Thus, we should do all that we can to reduce their exposure to us while they are in care. Provide patients with a visual barrier in their enclosure whenever possible, such as placing a pillow case or sheet across the enclosure so that the animal can not see you when you walk around the area that they are being housed in.

Minimize handling: Only handle the patient when necessary for cleaning purposes, feeding, medicating, or similar. Handle the patient for as short of a time as possible to do the job well.

Noise: Reduce noise as much as possible. Do not talk with your coworkers while you are handling or near a patient unless it is necessary. Voices should always be kept low while inside the hospital, regardless of what room you are in. Be mindful to walk in a reasonably quiet manner when inside the hospital.

Colors: Some animals may be stressed out simply by being exposed to visual stimuli that they have not encountered in the natural world. I once worked with a volunteer who was attempting, unsuccessfully, to feed a baby bird while wearing several bangles and a neon colored sweatshirt. When she removed the bangles and changed into a neutral-toned shirt, the bird young started eating without hesitation. Try to surround your patients with colors and textures that they would find in their natural environments as much as possible.

Enrichment: Provide your patients with natural items that they seek out in the wild, such as tree branches, leaves, bark slabs, and so on. Research the natural history of your patients to get a better understanding of what enrichment might be best for them, as what will be best differs between species.

A recent release of a fawn who was orphaned and raised at our center

Imprinting and Habituation

If we are not careful to avoid it, sometimes young wild patient may imprint on us caregivers, meaning that they lose, sometimes permanently, the ability to identify with their own species. While imprinting can only happen with younglings, habituation can happen with a patient of any age. Both rob the patient of the ability to live out their lives in a truly wild and free way and should be absolutely avoided. Some methods of reducing the risk of imprinting and habituation include:

Puppets and mirrors: Adding puppets or plushies that look like the patient can be beneficial. Mirrors can be added to the enclosures of young solitary patients to allow them to see what their own species looks like, and to help them feel less alone.

Disguises: Wearing a disguise to obscure the human face and form can prevent a patient from imprinting and/or becoming habituated. You will have to be creative with your disguises. When I worked with cormorants, I would wear a large black sheet draped over my head during feedings that completely hid my humanness, encouraging the cormorants to instead associate food with a vague form of their own color (a disguise learned during my time at SANCCOB). We cannot dress up to look exactly like the animal. The idea is to hide our human features and add something (a color, a texture, etc) that is like them. It would be extremely impractical to wear different disguises for different creatures all day long, so we need to decide when it is critically important to use disguises. These extra measures are important particularly for young and impressionable patients, and patients who will be in care for a longer period of time.

Housing with the same or similar species: While some species are solitary and should be rehabilitated as such, most species benefit greatly from being housed together with others who are like them. You may need to collaborate with other nearby wildlife rehab centers in order to accomplish this. If you have only one young mallard, for example, reach out to other centers near you to see if they also have young mallards in care. Those patients can be united and rehabilitated together at the same center, resulting in a better outcome for the young mallard.

Renesting and wild foster parenting: Getting patients back into wild nests when possible should always receive high consideration.

Reduce exposure to human caregivers: Again, visual barriers and noise reduction

Euthanasia

Euthanasia is inseparable from ethical wildlife rehabilitaiton. Wild animals have a right to freedom. We do not have the right to impose permanent captivity on wild animals. If a patient cannot be rehabilitated and released back to its wild and free life, its suffering should be ended humanely. There are different schools of thought on this topic, and keeping unreleasable former patients as educational animals is commonly practiced in American wildlife rehabilitation centers. However, there are real ethical considerations and concerns regarding this practice that should be acknowledged and examined by each rehabilitator who will be making life and death decisions for their wild patients.

Euthanasia is defined as a quick, painless, and humane death. There are different methods of euthanasia, and the best choice of method will be different in different circumstances. A common euthanasia protocol consists of both inhalent anesthetics and injectable drugs. The American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) has published euthanasia guidelines that all rehabilitators should be familiar with, which can be viewed using this link: https://www.avma.org/resources-tools/avma-policies/avma-guidelines-euthanasia-animals

Treating Non-native Species

There are two main schools of thought on the topic of treating non-native species. One is that all animals are deserving of care and rehabilitation. Some might argue that as humans are certainly the most invasive and damaging species on the planet, the fact that we still check ourselves into the hospital when we are sick means it is only right that we treat non-native species as well. The other common opinion is that only native species should be rehabilitated, and non-natives brought in for care should be euthanized due to their detrimental effect on the environment. Some non-native species do have notably detrimental effects on the environment and surrounding native species, while others have relatively benign effects. It is encouraged that rehabiltiators seek out information using scientific journals to better understand the different effects that various common non-native species have on their surroundings. This is a topic that all rehabilitators should think deeply about. Ensure that you come to your own conclusion of what you believe to be right and don’t blindly accept the opinions of others.

The release of a Ring-tailed Cat patient

This article just scratches the surface of what it means to do wildlife rehabilitation ethically. Improving our practices and methods is something that never ends. We should always seek to continue learning, both from fellow wildlife rehabbers and from our own patients, to make our process of wildlife rehabilitation more ethical for the wild creatures who we have the unique and humbling experience of crossing paths with so often.

The Wildlife Ethics workshop was written by Monte Merrick, and this article was written by Soro Cyrene.

Volunteers Train to Peacefully Solve Wildlife Conflicts

Posted on May 2, 2019May 2, 2019 by Monte Merrick

At Humboldt Wildlife Care Center/bax, we treat well over a thousand orphaned or injured wild animals each year. But we help thousands more without ever getting close to them! Every Spring and Summer day our phone rings dozens of times as people run across wild animals in strange situations. Maybe they are in a conflict with a wild animal who is using their home as a den site, or a nest has been knocked down when limbing a tree.

A sunny warm Sunday in Spring is a perfect time to practice our phone skills! Here one our awesome interns (Erika Espino) plays the role of a caller who has a problem with a denning Raccoon

Many of these problems can be solved on the phone! We’ve helped hundreds of people co-exist with Raccoons by coaching them through convincing a mother Raccoon to den somewhere besides their crawlspace. We’ve assisted hundreds more over the years in getting baby birds back in their nests, or rebuilding their nests if they’ve been unintentionally destroyed.

Solving conflicts over the phone isn’t easy! Often, people who call are very frustrated and a little bit mad at the wild animal trying to use their space. Patience is usually required in order to get through this part of the call. But we always remember: The caller wants our help. They want to do the right thing. That’s why they called us.

And our solutions have to work! There are always those in any community who will leap to the lethal solution. If our program doesn’t get the job done, there is a very good chance that the caller will opt for violence and be forever convinced that humane solutions to conflict aren’t effective.

An HSU wildlife student and one of our wonderful volunteers (Alex Rivera) practices helping resolve denning Raccoon problems.

When you are on the phone with someone who is upset about the actions of a wild animal, and that animal’s life is on the line, the moment can be very stressful. As with all stressful tasks, preparation is critical!

We offer volunteers and staff regular opportunities to sharpen their phone skills with our Phone Workshop, which Bird Ally X developed. Using the details of actual calls, our participants practice helping various callers resolve a conflict or get a wild animal the care they need.
Teaching the next generation of wildlife care providers the skills we’ve all acquired over the decades of practice is an important part of our mission. Operating Humboldt Wildlife Care Center not only provides help for the injured and orphaned wild neighbors of our region, and not only resolves wildlife conflicts peacefully saving perhaps thousands more each year, but our small facility on the edge of Humboldt Bay acts as our lab and ongoing classroom to develop and teach effective ways of caring for our wild neighbors and promoting co-existence with the Wild.

Your support makes this work possible! Thank you! Want to help? Please donate today! DONATE

Bird Ally X Celebrates Seventh Anniversary!

Posted on October 1, 2016October 2, 2016 by Monte Merrick

Seven years ago, six wildlife rehabilitators*, friends and colleagues, began meeting to develop a workshop on aquatic bird care geared toward other rehabilitators. Each had worked extensively with aquatic birds, including providing care for large numbers at once during catastrophic events such as oil spills, harmful algal blooms, and disease outbreaks, such as avian botulism, that can be driven by environmental conditions like drought.

As one of the six, I can tell you that our primary motivation was to help make certain that hard-won knowledge didn’t end with specialization – that life-saving knowledge spread through our profession.

Across our state, our region, our continent and the world, wildlife rehabilitators work, often alone, with whatever species winds up on their doorstep. Knowledge of aquatic bird care at that time was mostly centralized, in the hands of experts – experts who had learned at the cost of many lost wild lives, experts who had access to money provided by oil companies legally bound to pay for damages (wildlife casualties) they’d caused.

We knew first-hand that many rehabilitators didn’t have the experience or the education to provide quality care for aquatic birds. Often rehabilitators sought help, advice and instruction – mostly they were encouraged to transfer their patients to expert with the knowledge, and even more importantly, the facilities to treat these patients with such unique needs.

It wasn’t long before we realized that our goal was much larger than a workshop could accomplish. Even seven years ago, it was easy to see that our future was quite rocky. Climate disruption, conflict with the oil empire, rising disparity in wealth – our world was clearly in turmoil.

It seems easy to imagine that funding for aquatic bird rehabilitation might evaporate, especially as coastal cities would be forced to divert resources toward infrastructure to cope with rising seas, as well as other consequences of our industrial age. In short, if whole oceans are dying, who will pay for the rehabilitation of marine animals such as Common Murres or Brown Pelicans.

On September 22, 2009, Bird Ally X was conceived in turmoil and hatched as a remedy.

Bird Ally X delivered our first workshop in 2010, An Introduction to Aquatic Bird Rehabilitation. Initially, workshop attendees were given a 50-page booklet as part of the course. By 2012, that booklet had been expanded to become our currently available book also titled, An Introduction to Aquatic Bird Rehabilitation. We’ve now delivered the workshop to hundred of rehabilitators around the country. Over the last seven years we’ve produced additional classes and workshops on different components of aquatic bird care, as well as focusing on different species of aquatic birds and their particular needs in care. We’ve developed workshops on the ethics of wildlife rehabilitation, on housing for wild patients, as well as being effective at helping people over the phone resolve perceived conflicts with their wild neighbors peacefully. We’ve produced materials for co-existing with aquatic birds and other wildlife for Federal and State agencies as well as our general community.

Many of our co-founders have served and still do as volunteer board members for state and national professional rehabilitation associations. Being able to work with our colleagues around the state and country to improve wildlife care as well as provide information that rehabilitators need and seek is an important part of our mission.

During this time, we have continued in our daily work of wildlife rehabilitation, either as staff at other organizations, on emergency response efforts around the continent, as well as producing educational and advocacy materials for collaborative efforts with other organizations and government agencies.

In 2014, Bird Ally X launched an online petition aimed at the United States Department of Agriculture’s highly controversial Wildlife Services, a shadowy, unaccountable program that is a sort of secret police against wild animals. The petition received over 175,000 signatures!

However five years ago we added to our mission in a significant way.

In 2011, with 3 of 6 co-founders living in Humboldt County, we were tipped off that young Brown Pelicans were sighted, contaminated, soaking wet and struggling at the public boat launch in Crescent City, about 90 miles north of Humboldt Bay. we investigated and discovered that not only were there young Pelicans in trouble in Crescent city, but all along the North Cast from Shelter Cove into Oregon. Since it was late in the fishing season, the problem soon ended for the year, but not before we’d rescued, cleaned and rehabilitated over 50 Pelicans who’d been contaminated by fish waste.

Fish waste going directly into the ocean at the public boat launch in Shelter Cove, California. Brown Pelicans and other birds were contaminated directly by this unorthodox waste disposal.

In order to meet that challenge, Bird Ally X partnered with the local wildlife care center, who we’d been assisting in small ways for years. With the facility they had in Bayside, we built the necessary infrastructure to take care of aquatic birds in Humboldt County – allowing for the first time in HWCC history for injured aquatic birds to remain in the region to receive care! That partnership led to BAX assuming HWCC as part of our organization, as of 2013. Now HWCC is the largest single aspect of our efforts. We treat over 1200 wild patients each year, and work every day of the year to provide humane conflict resolution for thousands of other neighbors human and wild.

Now, after seven years, we are still seeking new avenues to reach our colleagues and our community to improve the lives and care for injured and orphaned wild animals, to partner with other organizations so that we can prevent injuries in the first place (an ounce of prevention!!). Our work is far from complete. With the addition of HWCC to our organization we have a working lab for developing affordable and achievable techniques and solutions to the problems of shoestring-budget wildlife rehabilitation. We have an internship program that allows us to train the next generation of wildlife rehabilitators.

We have an education program that brings a message of humane co-existence to classrooms and organizations across our diverse community.

And most importantly, we have the capacity to provide care and save wild lives. As we continue to grapple with the dictates of our work and strategize the future of our efforts, I’d like to close this retrospective with the most important part of the last seven years – the support we’ve received and the wild neighbors we’ve helped!