>>The Wildlife Center of Virginia is one of the world's leading teaching and research hospitals for wildlife and conservation medicine, providing state-of-the-art veterinary care for more than 3000 wild animals each year.

The center draws on lessons learned from each patient admitted, to teach the world to care about and care for wildlife and the environment.

>>Funding for Untamed is made possible by: (birds chirping) (upbeat music) >>When people think about rescuing a wild animal, many times they have visions of cute little babies, like a tiny little raccoon or a little baby bird that is found lost from its mother, and you take it home, feed it, raise it, save its life and set it free.

Unfortunately, a lot of folks also fantasize about maybe finding a baby predator, like a bear or a lion or a tiger, bringing it home, raising it in your home and bonding with it for life so that you will always be wild brothers.

Well, let me assure you that stories like that are 100% fiction.

And not only are they fiction, they're the wrong message about rescuing wildlife.

Wildlife rehabilitation is actually defined as providing temporary care to injured orphaned or displaced wildlife, in order for them to return to the wild and be able to function normally in their natural habitat.

Raising it in captivity and teaching it to be a pet prevents that from happening.

Now, anytime there is a successful rescue of a wild animal, it's far more complex than simply the idealized fantasies that many people imagine.

It often involves a lot of people, some of whom are very highly trained, but all of whom care.

Certainly it begins with the rescuer; the person who finds the animal, gets it out of harm's way, brings it into captivity where it can receive the care that it needs.

Then perhaps there's another person who transports it from the rescuer's possession to the rehabilitation center or wildlife hospital.

And there is where the highly specialized care really begins.

Veterinarians, rehabilitators and other wildlife professionals have to be able to assess that animal situation, diagnose its injuries, identify its illness, and then develop a plan to treat those injuries, to raise the orphaned animal or the displaced animal so that it can be both physically able and behaviorally able to return to the wild.

Now, it really is a cliche to say, it takes a village to raise a child, but it truly takes a village to save a wild animal.

(upbeat music) >>I was doing my homework in there, and then mom says, "There's an eagle in the backyard."

And I'm like, what!

>>I grabbed Lydia, and we could tell it was hurt.

>>It was trying to fly, but it couldn't fly.

>>So her and I kept our distance but followed it just to keep an eye on it so we could contact someone to come help it out, but we couldn't get in touch with anyone.

>>I got a phone call.

I was cooking dinner, I got a phone call.

My daughter called, said she seen a bald eagle on the ground, and it was hurt, it wouldn't fly.

>>I was crying because I thought it was gonna die out here.

But then dad came and saved it.

>>I just said, "Well, if nobody's gonna go and rescue the bald eagle, I might as well go ahead and try."

(upbeat music) >>The majority of wild patients that come to the Wildlife Center of Virginia are brought here by members of the public.

We have lots of resources here at the center for rehabilitative care and medical care of wild animals.

But we really depend on the kindness of individuals in the public to bring animals to us for care.

Thousands of calls come in to the Wildlife Center of Virginia every year, from members of the public that have encountered wild animals in their day-to-day life.

These animals may have been found on a roadway, evidently hit by a vehicle, they may have been attacked by a domestic dog or cat, or they may be perceived as orphans; too young to survive on their own.

The front desk team at the Wildlife Center of Virginia is trained to help callers assess a situation they're observing over the phone.

Armed with their experience and a wealth of additional resources, they can ask all the right questions to help determine what's going on with that animal.

Determining if a patient is in need of care is an important first step, since many of the calls we receive involve animals that are just fine, such as a white-tailed deer fawn resting alone during the day.

For a wildlife that is in need of care, the front desk staff's role is to help guide the caller through a safe and efficient rescue and transport plan.

A lot goes into the care of a wild animal before it even makes it to the center.

For eyes closed baby animals, or other species such as small turtles, it's often safe for a rescuer to pick up that animal and put it into an enclosure for transport.

But in some cases, we're referring callers to our volunteer transporters or the Department of Wildlife Resources for larger or more dangerous species.

Fortunately, not every injured or orphaned wild animal in the state of Virginia ends up here at the Wildlife Center of Virginia.

There are other wildlife hospitals, rehabilitation facilities, home rehabilitators and veterinarians all throughout the state, that are equipped to help with various types of wildlife problems as well.

In general, we try to refer callers to the closest appropriate resource to them.

But in cases of severe injury and disease, often those patients do come here due to the advanced medical care that we can provide at the center.

Wildlife rehabilitation depends on a network of agencies, organizations and individuals to care for wildlife.

Rehabilitators in Virginia are permitted and regulated by the Department of Wildlife Resources, and they depend on licensed veterinarians to help them provide medical care for their patients that need it.

Wildlife hospitals, such as the Wildlife Center of Virginia often receive all native species, while home rehabilitators typically specialize in a particular animal group.

This collaboration and cooperation is key to the successful care of wildlife in Virginia.

The wildlife care system definitely depends on rescuers and volunteer transporters to help get animals to places that they need to be for care.

As much as we would like to, we can't send a wildlife ambulance out to rescue every animal we get a call about.

The number of calls we receive each day and the distribution of these animals throughout the state would make that impossible.

For this reason, we really appreciate the rescues and transporters that are able to get animals here.

These individuals live all throughout the state and sign up to receive calls from members of the public as referred by our front desk team.

In cases of animals that may be intimidating to the general public, often, these individuals are also able to provide rescue as well as transport here to the center.

Transporters also help us move patients from one facility to another, and are also often involved in releasing our patients back into the wild.

The care that we're able to provide to wild animals here at the Wildlife Center of Virginia would certainly not be possible without these dedicated volunteers >>Here at the Wildlife Center of Virginia, we will admit about 3,500 animals each year.

But every single one of them, from the tiniest hummingbird to the largest black bear, goes through the same admission procedure when they are brought to our facility.

First of all, we obviously wanna know the species, the age of the animal, if possible, with gender if that's relevant.

But more importantly, we need to know other information that will help us figure out what's wrong, identify if the problem is with this one animal, or a bigger problem facing all wildlife, then develop a plan to fix it and get the animal back to the wild where it belongs.

And that means we have to know the exact rescue location, where specifically the animal was found.

Very important to the process.

We need to know the circumstances.

And sometimes that circumstance can be misleading.

Perhaps an animal is found beside the road, and the people say, "Well, it was hit by a car."

Well, we don't necessarily know that.

It may be poisoned, unable to hunt, and eating roadkill which has caused it to be beside the road.

So we take the circumstances just as a description of the scenario that was seen, not a conclusion about what's wrong.

We wanna know how the animal was behaving.

Was it lethargic?

Was it unconscious?

Was it trying to escape from the rescuer?

All of this is important information.

And also, what care did the rescuer or the transporter provide before it arrived at our hospital?

For an example, if they fed the animal, we won't be able to anesthetize it for x-rays for 12 hours.

So we recommend people finding animals, not to feed them, not to give them water, bring them directly in for care.

That's a lot of information to gather on every patient, but it's critical information, and it's all entered into our database known as WILD-One.

That's an acronym for wildlife incident log and database and online network.

It's used by more than 100 wildlife care facilities across North America, across Australia, and even in Europe.

It compiles information, not only to help the care provider manage the care of the individual patient, but to enable us to gather information on wildlife health on a grand scale; epidemiological information that will help us identify if problems are affecting more than just one individual animal.

It takes a lot of people and a lot of resources.

Now, when the animal goes through that admission process, it then goes to the waiting room; a darkened room where it awaits further care.

Now, for human patients, a stay in the waiting room can actually increase our stress.

But for wild patients, it actually is designed to decrease their stress.

Kept in a darkened environment where there are no noises, they're not being handled, helps them calm down after they've been rescued and transported and examined.

And then, when the time is right, the veterinarians will come in to see the animal, diagnose its problems and plan for its care.

(upbeat music) >>When a patient is first admitted into the center, the front desk team brings the patient into the waiting room, which is a calm, dark area for them to settle down after the stress of transport.

Some of our patients come in and are very stressed or afraid due to the circumstances which brought them here.

Some of our very small patients go into an incubator, or patients with respiratory distress sometimes receive supplemental oxygen.

Sometimes we know exactly what's happened to cause an injury to a wild animal.

This can be, if a conservation officer brings us a patient and knows the exact details of presentation, or if a private citizen observed an effect that happened at home.

Sometimes though we have no idea why the patient is presenting, and we have to make those determinations based on context clues from the physical exam.

Some of the clues that might be provided from the physical exam include if there are fractures, or respiratory distress, might point us to a sign that there's been some kind of trauma.

Or if the patient has punctures or skin wounds, that might mean that they've had some kind of predator attack.

We also run other diagnostic tests like x-rays and blood tests to look for other fractures or signs of internal trauma, or things like hypoglycemia or anemia which may change our treatment plan.

We see patients with a wide variety of injuries; everything from being orphaned, to being hit by a car, to sometimes being attacked by a predator.

We see a lot of patients that have been caught by domestic cats, unfortunately.

A physical exam is a complete medical exam of the patient, from nose to tail.

In this exam, I check all the body systems.

I listen to the heart and the lungs, I check the complete musculoskeletal system, check the skin and the feathers, the beak, the nose, the mouth; sort of an overall view of the patient to see exactly what's going on.

One of the big differences between doing a physical exam on a dog or a cat, and a physical exam on the wild animals that present to the center, is that we have to worry about stress in these patients.

So very often, we do things like covering their eyes with a towel, or in our raptors, we use a hood to cover their eyes and calm them down.

Other patients we sedate.

That may be for their safety and stress level, or even for ours.

In certain patients that come in, we need to make sure that they are secured so that our personnel can be safe as well.

If an adult bear comes in, that patient is going to need to be asleep for me to do my exam.

Some things are really easy to determine if they're treatable, if it's a small puncture, for example.

But other things are a little bit more complicated.

Something may see minimal on the surface, but have a more severe problem underneath.

That's why we do our additional diagnostics on top of the physical exam.

There's a lot of things to be considered when we're determining if something is treatable.

The species is important, sometimes the time of year is important as it will affect our time of release.

And there are other things to consider such as our treatment resources.

Do we have the right facility available for that patient in the right enclosure?

And can we keep it at the correct temperature and humidity for the patient?

Natural history plays a huge role in determining if we can treat a particular species.

We not only need to make sure that the patient is comfortable while we're treating it, but we also need to make sure that the condition is releasable.

Some species, like a box turtle can have an amputation and live a happy, healthy, full life in the wild.

But for other patients like birds, they need to have nearly perfect wings to be able to fly and be released.

Euthanasia is always a difficult decision; be it with our pets at home or the wildlife who come into our center.

There are a number of factors that go into this decision-making process.

Everything from, does the patient have a treatable condition, to is that something that would be releasable in this patient?

What we need to determine from there is, how we can make the patient comfortable as it goes through that process; which is dependent on each patient.

We generally decide if a patient can be treated during the initial physical exam.

While that's being finalized, we get everything ready so that the patient can receive its initial round of treatments.

When we do that, we also get everybody on staff all together to coordinate our efforts for this patient.

We also use electronic medical records to coordinate the treatments.

We make sure that the right patient gets the right medication at the right time.

Sometimes we have over 200 patients at once at the Wildlife Center, so it's a lot to coordinate.

Pain management is extremely important when treating wild patients.

We need to make sure that they're comfortable.

If they're comfortable, it will improve their treatment here and improve their prognosis in the longterm.

Many of the pain mechanisms that exist in wild patients are the exact same that exists in our pets and even in us.

Some of the medications are even the same for humans and for wildlife.

There are a variety of ways that we provide pain management for patients.

Sometimes it's an oral medication, just like if we need to take an ibuprofen, other times it's an injection under the skin or sometimes intravenously.

We also provide a number of other modalities to control pain; things like cold laser therapy, or even a simple ice pack or heating pad.

(upbeat music) >>When we admit healthy orphans to the Wildlife Center, they actually bypass our veterinary department and our veterinarians and go straight to the wildlife rehabilitators.

W will do a full physical exam on those patients from head to toe, and make sure that they are truly healthy orphans.

If we suspect any sort of injuries or illnesses, we'll go ahead and hand them to the vet staff for them to do a physical exam.

But if they're fine, we go back to our front desk staff and we ensure that they are true orphans, and that there's no way we could try to reunite them with their parents.

After the patients receive a full physical exam and they are deemed completely healthy, we wanna set them up in their enclosures.

So if their eyes closed, orphans, really tiny, we put them in our incubator because at that point they can not thermoregulate on their own.

If they're a little bit older, we set them up either in aquariums or wire cages, or maybe enclosure outdoors.

It just depends on the life stage they're at, kind of what they're ready for at that point.

We get them set up with the food and the nutrition that they need.

So if they require hand feeding, we'll start doing that, or we'll offer them a diet to go ahead and self-feed if they're ready for that.

Raising wildlife kind of comes with the concern that you might imprint or habituate those patients.

So that means that when they're really young, they would normally look to mom or dad to know that, I am a squirrel and I look for this type of food and I live in this type of a nest or habitat, and we can't teach them exactly that in rehabilitation, but we can do our best to make sure that we do teach them those skills and the behaviors that they need to know.

But in doing so, we wanna make sure that they don't look at me and think, "Oh, you are a mom, or you are someone that I should look to for these things."

So, we really limit our contact with those patients.

We pretty much mess with them just as many times as they need to be fed.

We don't talk to those patients.

We don't cuddle those patients.

We really just do the bare minimum in terms of time spent with them.

And we make sure that we put them back in their cages as soon as possible.

Additionally, it's really important to put them with what we call conspecifics, or others of the same species, so they can form that bond with a similar species or the same species, and know that they are who they look to for those things, not the individual caretaker.

Sometimes here at the center, we admit patients that aren't just healthy orphans but they're injured in some capacity.

So it could be juveniles or adults that come into us that say, maybe were hit by car.

Sometimes we admit, for example, hit by car squirrels that have broken one of their limbs.

At that point, the veterinary staff is able to splint that limb and have that bone heal and pass that squirrel onto the rehab staff for continued care.

So at that point, I look in that patient, once the limb is healed, I wanna look for proper range of movement in that arm.

I wanna make sure that we start them off in a small space, and that that patient shows me that it can ambulate or walk around normally, and use that limb at the same range, the same strength and in the same way as the other three limbs that it has.

As it progresses throughout its rehab process, I'm gonna move it outside to one of our mammal enclosures.

And I wanna make sure that that patient can climb the walls easily, can pick up its food and hold it for eating, such as items that are hard to eat like nuts, native nuts they have to crack open.

And I wanna make sure that they can jump from limb to limb, from walls to different branches, give them branches that are sturdy, and then some that are a little more pliable, so when they jump, they really have to grab and practice that balance.

So there's multiple aspects we wanna look for when a patient is injured, to make sure that they are back to 100% before they're released back into the wild.

Natural history is incredibly important within rehabilitation.

Every patient has their own unique, natural history.

And it will tell you things such as, what types of food they eat, where they live in the wild, what type of habitat they have, if they live in dens, if they live in nests in the trees, things like that.

It will tell you kind of natural predators that they may have; if they are a social species or if they're solitary.

So, it tells you everything that you need to know about that patient.

And that is incredibly important to know when formulating a rehab plan.

So whether it's a patient that we work with on a daily basis, such as a squirrel and/or an a possum, or if it's something new, maybe like a great blue heron that we don't get to see that often, it's important to familiarize yourself with the natural history, so you can create an environment in rehab that is as close to that as possible.

When an animal is cleared for release, there are a couple of steps that we go through before getting it back into the wild.

We wanna take a look at that animal's natural history and kind of what habitat it normally lives in, and what time of day that animal is active.

That's gonna affect when we release it and also where we release it.

We do have legal restrictions of where we can release an animal.

It has to be released either in the county it came from, or the county it was rehabbed in.

So we have to stick to those constraints.

But within those constraints, we wanna make sure it's in the best place possible for those patients.

So we'll do a little research, make sure we have the perfect spot.

Usually they go back exactly where they were found.

That's the best shot for that animal to kind of reacclimate to where it came from.

Know the resources of food that it can find and shelter to hide in, and potentially be back in its own territory where it is just intimately familiar with that space.

So we go through all of those steps of preparation and research first, and then we contact individuals; either the finder that brought that animal to us, or maybe a transporter or a volunteer that's willing to help us to come pick up the animal and release it for us.

(upbeat music) >>We are in Glasgow, Virginia, and we are in the release of an eagle.

>>And we had a successful release.

>>It made me happy because that I knew that my dad is the one that rescued it, and now it's out in the wild and it's home again.

(upbeat music) >>Oh, it was very satisfying to see it actually rehabilitate and fly away.

It was really, really cool.

>>Across the United States, there are more than 5,000 individuals and organizations providing care to wildlife; nearly a half million animals every year.

We are blessed to see the results of this collaborative effort, between caring people who rescue, transport, treat, rehabilitate and eventually release animals.

If you would like to get involved in this process, there are actually a number of things you can do.

First of all, be prepared to be a rescuer.

Pretty simple.

Just find your local wildlife rehabilitation center, or animal control agency that accepts wildlife, put their telephone number in your phone.

If you find an animal, if you need advice, or if an animal needs help, you won't have to waste time looking it up, you'll have it right there.

Now, perhaps you'd like to get more involved in a hands-on way.

Almost every wildlife rehabilitation center needs help from volunteers.

And we'll happily accept volunteers who are dedicated to helping wildlife on a regular basis, and who will put in the time and effort.

These organizations can be found either through your local veterinarian's office, through your wildlife agency in your state, or simply by looking online for wildlife rehabilitation in your community.

Give them a call.

Now, if you'd like to get even more involved and learn how to actually provide some of this care, consider taking classes.

There are many resources available.

Here at the Wildlife Center of Virginia, we offer the wildlife care academy, which has a whole curriculum of online classes that are available to people anywhere in the world, to learn about the process of wildlife rescue, transport, care and rehabilitation, and the natural history that goes along with it.

There are a lot of conferences; regional conferences and national conferences, and they welcome newcomers to come and learn and interact with the professionals that are there to share their knowledge and expertise.

You can also sign on with your local organization as an apprentice where you literally learn on the job.

It does take a village; a village of caring people with diverse skills to rescue, rehabilitate and release wildlife.

And you can be a part of that community.

>>Funding for Untamed is made possible by: (birds chirping) (upbeat music)