Wildlife rehabilitation is a complex field, where a seemingly endless amount of information must be mastered in order to become a competent and skilled wildlife rehabilitator. Wildlife rehabilitators need to learn how to care for hundreds of species, each with their own unique requirements. It is natural to feel overwhelmed as a new wildlife rehabilitator. However, you don’t need to know everything in order to have a good foundational knowledge of wildlife rehabilitation practices. In order to provide basic, quality care to patients, wildlife rehabilitators must understand three key concepts: warmth, hydration, and stress.

Warmth

Maintaining an appropriate body temperature is critical for all life on Earth. A hypothermic patient is unable to benefit from care while its low body temperature is left untreated. If you attempt to feed a hypothermic patient, it is unlikely to be able to process the nutrition well and the feeding may even lead to the patient’s death. It is crucial to bring a patient’s body temperature to its ideal range before administering other forms of care. This can be done using an incubator, warm towels, and/or heating pads. Hypothermia is common in new wildlife patients, but hyperthermia can also occur. Understanding the normal body temperature ranges for species that you treat, and how to properly measure temperature, is essential for providing quality care.

Hydration

Dehydration is very common in new wildlife patients. It is critical that patients are sufficiently rehydrated before they are started on a feeding and medication regimen. Hydration can be assed using a variety of methods, from skin tenting to observing saliva consistency. The way in which you rehydrate a patient will depend on their condition. For example, a comatose patient should never be given fluids orally due to risk of aspiration, while a hypothermic patient should not be given subcutaneous fluids, as that can lead to a further drop in body temperature. Hydration should be regularly assessed for all patients throughout their entire rehabilitation process.

Stress

Undergoing rehabilitative care as a wild animal is inherently extremely stressful. Not only is stress unenjoyable, it has also been shown to reduce an animal’s ability to heal. Thus, the more stress that an animal is under while in care, the longer it will take for it to recover, and the more it will suffer. It is vital that we take every possible step to reduce the stress in our patients as much as possible. Stress can be reduced in many ways. Some examples include providing visual barriers (for example, sheets over patient enclosures so that they cannot see human caregivers every time their enclosure is passed by), reducing handling time as much as possible, speaking as little as possible while in earshot of patients, providing suitable enclosures that mimic the patient’s natural habitat, and providing housing with conspecifics or closely related species. Additionally, animals should be released as soon as they are ready to return to the wild. It is unethical to retain a fully healed patient for several days or weeks, simply because a release date hasn’t been set.

Understanding the importance of warmth, hydration, and a low-stress environment is critical for successful wildlife rehabilitation. These three concepts should be front and center in your mind for each patient you care for, from the moment they arrive to the time they are returned to freedom. We will be providing an in-depth class on each of these topics in the future, so stay tuned!