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Rehabilitation versus Conservation?
Or
Count the Cost of Survival
There are those working in the wide sphere of animal conservation who believe that giving
money to work involving Wildlife Rehabilitation is not only a waste of time but almost immoral in that the time and money could be better spent in areas such as research, improving the
environment or on lobbying organisations to raise public awareness. Indeed, it has emphatically
been mooted by one eminent Wildlife worker that "we should be concentrating on protecting
biodiversity rather than giving a short extension of life to individuals, and aiming to preserve a precious habitat which will benefit many hundreds of species for generations to come." A fine
sentiment, and few doubtless would not empathise with the desire expressed in the final phrase.
We cannot, however, leave it there. To take this argument to its logical conclusion would be to
suggest that hospitals for human beings are a waste of money and resources, the latter being
better spent on research, education and long-term projects in the name of medical advancement.
The suggestion, of course, is ludicrous. There is a need for both, as there is similarly in the field of animal treatment. The "short extension of life" is a relative phenomenon. Butterflies and some of the garden birds may only have a natural life-span of one to three years, and, therefore, at best we may only be giving them another year or two . During the first few weeks of its life, one such small bird may be brought into a Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre for any one of a number of reasons; very often, after perhaps a brief course of treatment, followed by a short spell in an aviary to convalesce, it will be released, hopefully to go on to breed for at least another one or two seasons. To deny the validity of such an exercise on the grounds that we are merely exing a short life (by human standards) by a short time is to display an ignorance of the wider context- no wild creature exists in isolation; each one, however tiny and however short a life-span, plays its part in the eternal cycle of living things.
A raptor expert has similarly declared that rehabilitation is "really nothing more than giving an individual animal a second chance".
Again, there is little to dispute in this statement except what is implied. I fail to understand why the concept of giving an animal a second chance should be so belittled. The vast majority of wildlife that come into a rescue centre are sick or injured because of man's intervention in the first place: hedgehogs, birds, frogs, snakes caught in netting, owls and foxes hit by cars, badgers and deer caught in snares that were intended for other species (the use of snares for any creature is utterly abhorrent), ducks and moorhens
hanging helplessly by their legs or wings from fishing-line caught in bushes, the thousands of creatures killed or maimed by speeding cars. All of the above we in Cuan House have seen and treated in the last year alone, but the list is endless. Many of these, quite often given simple treatment and a few days or weeks in care, will recover from their trauma and from their injuries and will be able to be returned to the wild and carry on living as before. Should we really be so presumptious and arrogant as to say to those who wish to help them that their money would be better spent else-where? What sort of a message does this portray - that compassion is a waste of time and resources, that life is so short and worth so little, and that a suffering creature should be left to continue in its suffering? By rescuing them and attending to their needs, and giving them the respect and compassion they so deserve, we are, after all, merely paying back in some small part the huge debt that we already owe our wildlife.
Megan Morris-Jones
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