What exactly is Conservation Rehabilitation?

How wildlife conservation and animal welfare complement each other.

Please save the date for this year’s Big Give Green Match Fund campaign – 18^th to 25^th April - and watch out for more news on how you can make sure veterinary expertise gets to where it’s needed; on the conservation frontline.

Typically, conservation medicine tends to focus on population level interventions to help save endangered species from extinction. That could be by, for example, investigating the possibility of vaccinating packs of painted dogs against canine distemper virus, or looking at how better overall husbandry can prevent outbreaks of viral psittacine beak and feather disease in rare birds like the echo parakeet in Mauritius. Meanwhile, the care of individual sick or injured animals tends to fall more within the sphere of traditional animal welfare work, where every single animal is similarly deserving of resources and treatment, regardless of the status of its species; saving a feral pigeon is just as important as saving a tiger.

Equally part of caring for all life on our planet, where these two approaches over lap is when there are so few animals left of a particular species, or where populations of a threatened species are particularly fragmented, that conservation medicine can legitimately intervene to help any individual animal. If numbers are sufficiently low, any sick or injured animal that can be successfully treated and returned to the wild, or even taken into a captive breeding programme, has real potential to breed and contribute to the continuation of their species.

Sea Turtle Rescue and Rehabilitation

Take the example of sea turtles. With every species now threatened by extinction, and, in addition, as we come to better understand the integral roles they each play in maintaining a healthy marine ecosystem, it is right that a proportion of conservation efforts are directed at helping any sick or injured turtle that finds its way into a rescue centre. This is surely all the more justified given the anthropogenic nature of the main threats these extraordinary animals are facing, from entanglement in discarded fishing gear and ingestion of plastic waste, to boat strikes and direct attacks from fishermen.

At WVI we have been working with two flagship turtle rescue centres in the Mediterranean, where the record levels of plastic in the sea are a huge threat to marine life, for a number of years.

Partnering with ARCHELON Sea Turtle Rescue Centre

Since 2019, our WVI Turtle Team of marine specialist vet Tania Monreal and veterinary nurse Matthew Rendle, have been making regular visits to Greece’s ARCHELON rescue centre, Athens. Until recently, Matt and Tania visited one to two times a year to train and advise the permanent staff and seasonal volunteers, in order to maximise the chances of recovery of the turtles in their care. In between visits, Matt and Tania are always available to advise remotely. Improving husbandry and welfare for the turtles often means that they get better faster and the less time they spend in the rescue centre, the higher their chances of a successful return to the wild. A quicker turn around also means creating space to give more turtles a chance to benefit from a stay at the centre.

As a specialist in the care, rehabilitation and conservation of marine and aquatic animals, Tania has helped introduce appropriate veterinary protocols and techniques, while Matt has shared his expertise in wound care and healing, as well as in exotic anaesthesia. Both help with practical clinical work too, focusing on anaesthesia, blood sampling, and how staff and volunteers can get the best use out of their existing equipment. Tania excels at removing the trickiest of swallowed fishing hooks, often with fishing line attached, while Matt has demonstrated how turtles should be X-rayed, and even shown how physiotherapy can help rebuild flipper strength.

Matt and Tania have also advised on diet, enrichment and pain relief, to ensure that the mostly loggerhead turtles coming into the centre are given the best possible care in order to speed up their recovery and maximise their chances of recovery and successful return to the wild. They have been able to identify issues connected with uneven exposure to UV light, when turtles are moved between indoor and outdoor tanks. The change in levels can lead to calcification of blood vessels and other problems. In addition, Matt and Tania have advised on optimal temperatures for the tanks, as turtles that are kept in water that is too cold can experience significant slowing down of digestion and other processes, causing food to rot in the gut.

About a quarter of the turtles coming into the centre come in suffering from plastic ingestion or the consequence of collisions with boats. Another quarter will be victims of entanglement, having become caught up in fishing gear or other debris, which sometimes results in amputation. The majority of remaining victims will typically have been injured through the deliberate actions of humans. Fishermen often feel they are in competition with turtles and will attack those they feel threaten their catch.

Five years of working closely with ARCHELON has meant that the rescue centre team are now confident to carry out most of the necessary procedures themselves, but with the knowledge that expert advice is always on hand.

2023 Sea Turtle Health and Welfare Workshop

ARCHELON is well known to rescue centres from around Greece, who often transfer badly injured or very sick turtles to the team for more advanced care. In February 2023 we held our first dedicated Sea Turtle Health and Welfare Workshop at ARCHELON, for turtle rehabbers from across Greece and further afield. Delegates came from as far away as Dubai and Brighton, as well as from Rhodes, Crete, Kefalonia and other parts of the country. The workshop was very popular and helped disseminate information about many aspects of turtle care and medicine. Do you know, for example, that whilst manuka honey is generally great at promoting wound healing, it has to be used with great care on head wounds, as it will draw fluid away from any exposed brain tissue. Or that turtles must not be released too quickly after an MRI scan, given the risk that the magnetism to which they are exposed may disrupt their unique navigational ability, which uses Earth's magnetic fields. Overall the workshop was an opportunity to forge new connections between rescue centres, as well as expand access to Matt and Tania’s expertise, and has been followed by a second workshop in the UK, with more planned for the future.

Partnering with RAKSHA Jaipur: Operation Avian

2024 saw our second Operation Avian conference and workshops in India, held in partnership with local animal welfare NGO, RAKSHA Jaipur. WVI has been involved in supporting vets and rehabbers working with casualties of the Uttarayan festival, which marks the end of winter, for over a decade. The January festival is traditionally marked by the flying of kites, and sadly not everyone disposes of their kite string responsibly, resulting in thousands of birds, including some highly endangered species, getting entangled and seriously injured, especially by particularly deadly glass-coated manja strings.

We have been partnering with RAKSHA since 2020 and Operation Avian is the result. It’s the perfect forum for the transfer of vital knowledge and skills to vets and rehabbers working with injured birds, among them some of India’s most endangered species. The initial conference, covering all aspects of avian medicine and surgery, is followed by practical workshops just ahead of the opening of the annual Roadside Bird Treatment Camp for avian casualties, which runs for the duration of the festival. This has already led to a proliferation of similar conferences across the country, and although it’s undoubtedly a highlight of the year for our WVI Veterinary Partners, we’re hoping Operation Avian will be entirely Indian-run within the next five years.

Partnering with Dr Mikhail Goncharuk: Saving Tigers

Mikhail Goncharuk is one of the few wildlife vets working with wild Amur leopards and tigers in the Russian Far East. Misha was mentored for 14 years by WVI founder and passionate big cat expert, the late Dr John Lewis. In addition to being a lead vet for the Amur leopard reintroduction programme, Misha is now a veterinary consultant, with a particular emphasis on anaesthesia, for the Alexeevka tiger and leopard rehabilitation centre, which is the only one of its kind in the world. Thanks to his WVI training, he has been able to provide or oversee anaesthesia for a number of ground-breaking operations to save injured big cats. As well as mentoring the vet team at the rehabilitation centre, Misha has been giving talks and practical demonstrations to other wildlife vets and rangers, passing on much that John taught him. Although we cannot currently support work in Russia, we do stay in contact with Misha and are delighted that he is now involved in the planned reintroduction of tigers in Kazakhstan.

Individual animals can play a vital role in saving species from extinction

Whether it’s a loggerhead turtle that’s swallowed a fishing hook in Greece, a painted dog with a broken leg in Zimbabwe, or a vulture caught up in kite-string in India, where numbers of a species are critically low, it is vital to try to save sick and injured animals and give them the chance of returning to the wild and being part of the solution for their species. At WVI, this is often a vital element in our training of local conservationists, vets and biologists, alongside building capacity in wider disease surveillance, translocations and reintroductions of endangered species.

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