There’s no regulation of the wildlife rescue industry in Wales, England & Northern Ireland.
This lack of regulation means that almost anyone can set up as a 'Rescue' (you could do it right now, with kind intentions, setting up a social media account and choosing a name for your Rescue and inviting members of the public to bring you wildlife).
Since almost anyone can set up as a 'Rescue’, unfortunately lots of well intentioned people do BUT they often have no training, no suitable premises, they don’t work with a vet (which means no access to the right medications, no access to veterinary diagnostic tools & support like x-rays, blood tests and life saving operations) and they often have little to no knowledge at all of the animals they are taking in or what injuries/illnesses they might be experiencing.
As a transport network for wildlife, this has led to a lot of extra steps being put in place to ensure that we are always doing our best to take wildlife to places who CAN provide the right care.
The biggest step has been mine & others' founding of the Wildlife Care Badge (with the crucial expertise of Veterinary Experts & Wildlife Rescuers dictating the content & procedures, both in development and as consultants, ongoing).
The WCB is the ONLY Wildlife Rescue map/database in the UK that features Wildlife Rescues who have proven standards of care, akin to actual licensing (annual onsite checks, exams on wildlife care passed & high welfare practices proven through record keeping and an ongoing vet relationship, every quarter throughout the year).
The WCB is only really getting started but it already provides the map from which UKWT can run…
What it comes down to is… There’s no point putting a wildlife casualty/orphan in a car, if we don’t know where the animal can be taken to, to have their best go at a second chance at a new wild life.
Because of the WCB map, we DO have an idea of where we can transport wildlife to, to benefit from expert rehabilitative care.
I think the WCB is incredibly important in its own right. I fund a lot of it myself, I run it voluntarily - alongside UKWT - and it keeps me very busy :-)
I am ALSO, in part, so committed to enabling the WCB to keep on going/growing SO that UKWT can keep going & growing too - always having this vital WCB map to use - so that, one day, ‘no wild life is left without care’. You can always keep up to date with the WCB and all that we are doing through our Facebook Page.
