Wildlife Rehabilitation: Bleeding Hearts for God's Creatures

We don't pretend we're perfect but we have endearing features, / We're honest and we're always kind to God's four-footed creatures; / Dogs and horses, hamsters, rabbits, little furry things- / Lousy Europeans can't appreciate the pleasure that a little kindness brings, / We're a nation of animal lovers.
Ewan McColl, A Nation of Animal Lovers^*

Hosted by Logie winner Georgie Parker, "Animal Emergency" will take you from the intensive care unit to the surgery, on the road with the hospital's ambulance service and be there when families arrive with their beloved pets. Viewers will witness the joy of pet adoption, the perils of unusual pet ownership, the incredible will to live that possesses the most determined animals, and the people who have pledged a career to protect them.
Channel 9 intro to "heart-warming television" in Australia.

*McColl primary reference may be to a Scottish regiment caught fraternising with a flock of sheep in the Napoleon wars.

Some honour to the voluntary wildlife rehabilitators all over the world; they are selfless, devoted, hard-working people, much like ethnocentric missionaries or liberal slum workers! (Their virtues should be put to a better use). So, why is it that the rehabilitation project seems to be losing integrity and status right now, gradually being pulled into the abyss of a sentimental and perverted "pet culture"? The divide between "professionals" and volunteers also seems to be widening - although there is still a community of interests and values between the two camps. (The willingness by which many professionals perform in the limelight complicates the equation). I think part of the explanation lies with the volunteers themselves. They belong to the human species that wants to intervene at all costs, wants to "do something", but in spite of their hearts embracing all of God's creatures, many of them remain in a sense solipsists, never crossing the borders of their own bleeding hearts and entering the external world, e.g. in order to reflect on their own interaction with mass media - or to evaluate the subsequent fates of their former patients.

A hidden, but central affinity between wildlife rehabilitation and pet care surfaced when veterinary "clinics", treating pets and wild animals alike, were first broadcast as "factual entertainment" by television. British BBC is and always has been the No. 1 battering ram for wishy-washy triviality (Animal Hospital with Rolf Harris from 1995), the national television company SVT holding the same position in Sweden (with the BBC remake "Djursjukhuset" running for a decade). In the tracks of these figure heads, the field was opened up for more ruthless exploitation by lower players like Channel 4 (a comedy version) and TV4 ("The Veterinarians"). The next stage will probably include a "makeover show" on prime time: you break the wing of a duck and remake it into a turkey while the cameras are running and X million viewers are holding their breaths. The genre also has had repercussions in the gaming world with products like "Pet Vet 3D: Wild Animal Hospital". (Note the juxtaposition of "tame" pet and wild animal).

The gradual degeneration of a concept like this shouldn't come as a surprise: downhill is the natural direction of movement for commercial television. And televised deformations of human crazes occur in many other fields, animal lovers aren't the only fools exploited. Chicks and their mothers - in a double sense - are particularly targeted, and this group is almost defenceless, since "caring for" is still very much an essential part of the socialization of girls. Against that background it's so saddening to notice the hypocricy of the "animal emergency" programs: the cats nursed and cuddled at the start of one program are the same cats catching and damaging the birds provisionally patched up at the end of the same program. The patients die the next day: cat's-bite is the kiss of death to millions of birds, cats a kind of complete sample cards of bacteriae and other kinds of devilry. Like all human activities involving opinions, attitudes, rehabilitation is based on double standards, twin messages. What the programs basically teach young girls is to step in and patch up where something went wrong, without asking questions about sources or causes - and that is an attitude that has always benefited society, but clipped the wings of millions of women.

Back to wildlife rehabilitators, above all the volunteers. They too have some know-how about cleaning and patching up, but they often know surprisingly little of biological fitness, the constant demand on living creatures for "peak performance". I have seen orphaned and hand-reared Swallows, Great Tits and Wood Pigeons being thrown out into the next park or garden the moment they can fly, little more than meagre food for predators, and i have seen "rehabilitated" Mute Swans, Eider Ducks and Common Buzzard coasting along for a few weeks in dismal existence before kicking the bucket or being admitted to the animal clinic anew. The voluntarism so characteristic of rehabilitation ideology brings about a switch from responsibility to irresponsibility: living creatures should be "given a chance" to cope on their own - and in most cases they are thrown for the dogs (read: the cats). I state categorically: many, maybe a majority of "rehabilitated" animals will never be fit for a life independent of human care and protection, and the subsequent release of orphaned and hand-reared juveniles is a disgrace.

In the end the voluntary side of the rehabilitation project seems to persist on its own like a piece of virtual reality, happening mainly in the interaction between media and a particular species of "naturalists", living in their secluded rehabilitation cages like characters of some Truman Show. My evaluation of the overall "project" is: it means more to the people doing the job in the field than to populations, from an objective point of view the whole rehabilitation business is nonsense. On the other hand it cannot be neglected from a subjective point of view, because of its interaction with the ideology of pet lovers (much funding comes from here), therefore it must be critically dealt with. Rehabilitation of endemic species with a restricted distribution may be excepted from this denunciation, see e.g. The contribution made by cleaning oiled African Penguins Spheniscus demersus to population dynamics and conservation of the species and other similar communications from South-African SAFRING. On the credit side it could also be added that rehabilitation centres provide the large and rather immobile veterinary institutions with an extra source of information when some disease is rampant; they do a lot of voluntary and unpaid field-work. (Also see the links to great ape projects; some of these projects are cuddling with the pet culture, the originators probably did it out of necessity. I doubt the viability of these projects, the apes will end up in a sort of zoo existence, whether in Florida, Louisiana or Tanzania doesn't matter much). [CP]

LINKS

A. Bird disease, poisoning, damage to birds caused by man, B. Oil spills, C. Rehabilitation

Begun 22.3.08. To readers: please notify me of links that you think belong here!

A. Bird disease, poisoning, damage to birds caused by man

Bird Flu

	Avian Influenza (Bird Flu) from CDC, (U.S. Government) Centre for Disease Control and Prevention. In English, Spanish. C
	Avian Influenza from WHO, in English, French, Russian, Spanish, Arabic, Chinese. C
	Avian Influenza and waterbirds, from Wetlands International. C

Other infections

	Type C Botulism in Birds from Canadian Cooperative Wildlife Health Centre, in English, French, Spanish. C
	The Emerging Problem of Pigeon Circovirus av Dave J. Rupiper och Kenneth T. Briggs on the Pigeon Cote. C
	Disease Investigation and Management (Birds), from WIN, Wildlife Information Network. C
	Eider Mortality in the Dutch Wadden Sea, Winter 1999/2000 by Kees Camphuysen, Nederlandse Zeevogelgroep. It is estimated that 21,000 Eider Ducks died during a limited period. C
	Deaths in Finches and Sparrows, published by Malcolm Watson on uk.rec.birdwatching. Much the same article as the next one. C
	Deaths in Finches and Sparrows, published by Tom W. Pennycott from SAC Veterinary Science Division (Ayr, Skottland), 12.2.01. It is a well-known fact since the late sixties that greenfinches and sparrows may be infected with the bacterium Salmonella typhimurium at feeding stations. Birds investigated in 1994-2001 revealed this bacterium to lie behind greenfinch and sparrow mortality from December to March, while Eschericia coli "086" affected greenfinches and siskins from March to June. C
	USGS: Field Manual of Wildlife Diseases. C
	Waterfowl: Health and Management from WildPRO contains a.o. information on 300 waterfowl diseases. A qualified site. C
	Migratory Birds and Spread of West Nile Virus in the Western Hemisphere by J. H. Rappole, S. R. Derrickson, och Z. Hubálek, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. C

Herbicides, insecticides, poisoning

ECOTOX Database, from the U.S. EPA, with information about the toxicity of chemical compounds occurring in soil, air and water. C

B. Oil spills

	WWF: Braer - 12 years on and still waiting for better protection measures. Braer was a Liberia-registered tanker, on her way from Norway to Canada with 84,700 tons of "Gulfaks crude" when she had an engine breakdown and ran aground in a hurricane outside the south point of Shetland on 6 Jan. 1993. The ship was quickly broken up by the waves and sank, releasing the whole cargo into the sea. It is estimated that some 32,000 sea-birds were killed because of this oil spill. It is the 11th largest oil spill globally, and Scotland's worst environmental catastrophe. A memento: the rough sea dispersed and dissolved the crude oil within a few weeks, and the environment may have been worse affected by the chemical dispersants spread out, these being poisonous to a.o. things corals. C
	Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council, a good and informative webpage. On 23 March 1989 the tanker Exxon Valdez had loaded crude oil at the Trans Alaska Pipeline terminal. She encountered icebergs and left the shipping lanes to avoid them, but due to a misunderstanding (consecutive handover of control of the wheelhouse) she never returned to the proper lane, and ran aground on Bligh Reef, releasing 38,800 ton crude oil. "The Exxon Valdez spill, though still one of the largest ever in the U.S., has dropped from the top 50 internationally. However, it is widely considered the number one spill worldwide in terms of damage to the environment." (The spill killed an estimated 250,000 seabirds, 2,800 sea otters, 300 harbor seals, 250 bald eagles and as many as 22 killer whales. It took weeks to establish emergency veterinary hospitals; in the end, only 801 birds and 197 otters were rehabilitated and released. Reference). C
	IBRRC: Spill history 2000 - 2005, with some surrounding statistics. C
	Pollutions Maritimes, aftermath of the "Erika" catastrophe in 1999. The same area had been hit by the "Amoco Cadiz" shipwreck twenty years earlier. Back then, 21,411 Guillemots were collected in France and on neighbouring beaches in Great Britain and Belgium. The number of undetermined birds was even larger: 33,711, most of them probably being Guillemots, too. C
	The Mariner Group - Oil Spill History. [***] The world's largest oil spills between 1993 and 2004, no material after that year. C

Prestige Oil Spill

	Corporates, investigating journalism by Friends of the Earth about the tangled ownership behind the "Prestige". With 15 links. (Ian Willmore / "The Observer" 24.11.02). C
	Who Fits the Bill? for the "Prestige Oil Spill"? - from Friends of the Earth. C
	Bye, Bye, Birdie, by Bonnie Weinstein in SocialistViewpoint. C

	Save Our Seabirds, Inc. was founded in 1990 and belongs between Tampa Bay and Gulf of Mexico, Florida. The organisation has a mobile team, the link is to that page. C
	The Sea Empress Oil Spill in Context, by Ian C. White, International Tanker Owner's Pollution Federation Ltd, and Jenifer M. Baker, Independent Environmental Consultant. C
	The Treasure Oil Spill, from Avian Demography Unit, University of Cape Town. The oil spill took place in June 2000; the pages have been left as an "e-monument" over the event. C

C. Rehabilitation

General

	California Council for Wildlife Rehabilitators, with a lot of links and Resources. C
	IBRRC, International Bird Rescue Research Center, US-based (Alaska, California), with a good webpage. C
	Mauersegler. Aufzucht und Freilassung, a German page about how to raise juvenile and injured Swifts. Javascript needed, last actualised June 2006. C
	Nordens Viltrehabilitering, emanates from "Katastrofhjälp för F�glar och Vilt - Stockholm" which was closed down in 2004. Links to other Swedish centres. C
	Oiled wildlife rehabilitation, from Oiledwildlife.eu, with links to European projects and European cooperation. C
	Rehabilitation of Birds, with links to mainly US websites. C
	International Wildlife Rehabilitation Council: Wildlife Rehabilitation Online This initiative is California-based. C
	Swedish Wildlife Rehabilitators Association (KFV: Katastrofhjälp F�glar & Vilt), came into life in 1997; it runs 42 rehabilitation centres in Sweden. C
	The Wildlife Rehabilitation Information Directory. Med länkar och sökmotor. C
	Wildlife Rehabilitation Links, from U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. C
	Wildlife Rehabilitation Today, Internet version of a US magazine on rehabilitation. C

Great ape projects

	Camp Leakey, centre of the orangutan project in southern Borneo, based om Biruté Galdikas pioneering work. "In the course of her work, Galdikas has returned over 100 captured, orphaned or injured orang-utans to the wild, after nurturing and rehabilitation in Kalimantan. Camp Leakey, however, no longer operates as a rehabilitation centre - this function is fulfilled by other centres in Kalimantan, which are off-limits to visitors." C
	Chimp Haven is a US project typical of our time. "In May 2001, Chimp Haven submitted a capability statement to NIH, indicating its interest in becoming the organization to construct and operate the sanctuary system for chimpanzees. Following a rigorous selection process in which Chimp Haven competed with many other organizations, the NIH announced in September 2002 that Chimp Haven was selected to construct and operate the National Chimpanzee Sanctuary System. On May 30, 2003, ground was broken for construction of the facility on 200 acres of pristine forest that was donated by the citizens of Caddo Parish, Louisiana. Two phases of construction were completed by 2006." C
	The Diane Fossey Gorilla Fund International, set up by Diane Fossey in 1978 to save the Gorillas. C
	The Jane Goodall Institute News Center, working for chimpanzees in particular, but including the other great apes. The founder of the institute, Jane Goodall, studied chimpanzees in Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania for 45 years. C
	Save the Chimps, how some NASA "chimpanauts" found a new home in Florida. C

40 links 12.04.08

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