Practical Wildlife Care by Les Stocker MBE
Animal Rehabilitation Guide by One of The UK’s Leading Experts
Feb 11, 2009
Les Stocker’s, Practical Wildlife Care, is jam-packed with an incredible amount of information on wild animal rehabilitation. Stocker’s vast knowledge and experience with wildlife reveals itself in every sentence of the book.
The book's sobering pictures portray injured and distressed wildlife in various stages of rehab care. They serve as a healthy dose of reality when it comes to the education and expertise a wild animal rehabilitator must to possess in order to properly bring an animal to a releasable state.
Prime Directives
This first chapter alone is so full of the basic practices that go along with any species of animals, that if one were to read only this chapter, an average person would be way ahead of the animal care game. Some of the handling procedure examples are:
- Viewing – Wild animals feels stress every time a person come close to it, imagine how tortured it would feel to have a constant stream of humans staring at it in a cage. Wild animals being cared for in captivity should not be available for public viewing.
- Fussing – With companions animals, patting, stroking and saying compassionate words can be comforting. Wild animals do not feel comforted by the human touch or voice; just threatened. During the course of wildlife rehab, an animal should not be handled any more than is necessary. When a rehabber must approach, they are instructed to speak softly only as not to startle the animal.
- Imprinting – It is crucial not to talk or handle birds or mammals regularly to avoid imprinting them to humans. There is going to be a slight bond for a very short period of time for orphaned young and the handler; however, once they are placed in a situation of their juvenile peers, they are never to be handled again.
The Biology of Wounds
Good wound management will ensure that most of the casualties wild animals encounter can be treated and end with the animals being released back into the wild. It’s extremely important that all wound treatment compliment the natural healing process and do no further harm. There are two types of external wounds.
Closed Wounds:
- These can’t always be detected by superficial examination.
- Contusions and haematomas may be seen as swelling or bruising under the skin.
- This might include wounds to internal organs, like a ruptured liver.
- These wounds are hard to access or control blood loss.
- They might be only accessible by surgery.
Open Wounds:
- Can usually be seen.
- The blood loss can be evaluated.
- The blood loss can be controlled.
- The wound can usually be treated without surgery.
All open wounds are further categorized into either clean, clean contaminated, contaminated, or infected (dirty).
Wildlife Orphans
Rearing orphaned wildlife has its own set of protocols. Each species has its own set of idiosyncrasies, and yet face similar challenges while being treated in captivity. Some of the things that can go wrong with hand-rearing wild animals are:
- Inhalation Pneumonia – This is the primary killer of orphaned mammals. Oral rehydration can help prevent the problem, and baby mammals should always be held upright when give milk-replacers. Amoxycillin by injection can help if pneumonia does occur.
- Hypothermia – A mammal infant will not feed if it’s cold. The baby should feel warm to the touch; however, too much heat can lead to hypothermia and become fatal very quickly. Usually, heat sources should be at one end of the container so the animal can move away from the heat if they need to.
- Imprinting – This is the worst thing that can happen to an orphaned baby animal. If it becomes totally reliant on humans or domestic animals, in the end, it can’t be released. To help prevent imprinting the mammal baby shouldn’t be reared by itself, if possible.
- Refraining from handling the animals except for feeding, etc, no talking to the orphans once they are weaned, keep particularly vulnerable species such as fox cubs and deer form seeing humans and hearing voices, and not letting children handle or play with young animals.
The intricate details that Practical Wildlife Care offers should be enough to convince every wildlife lover that the best chance any injured or orphaned wild animal has of recovering and being released back into its habitat is in the hands of skilled rehabilitators. While the guide is complex with educational value, it's easy to comprehend and leaves no stone unturned.
Les Stocker MBE, HonAssocRCVS is founder of the Wildlife Hospital Trust, St. Tiggywinkles, Europe’s first and the world’s busiest wildlife teaching hospital. In 1990, he became a Laureate on winning the Rolex Award for Enterprise. In 1991 he was awarded an MBE for his services to wildlife and in 2002 was granted an honorary Associateship of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons.
Practical Wildlife Care by Les Stocker MBE, Blackwell Publishing, 2005; ISBN 978-1-4051-2749-335 pages.
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