The reason is quiet simple – we love what they are doing! Wildlife Aid was recommended to us by one of our clients, and as soon as we heard about it, we wanted to learn more. We started watching Wildlife SOS series created by Wildlife Aid (you can watch them online for free on their Youtube channel here), and absolutely fell in love with their ethos, the people working for `Wildlife Aid, and what they are doing. It is a rare thing to see such dedicated people so passionate about their work!
After we wathced the series, we were very excited to contact Simon, the owner of the fund, and arrange the meeting with him in Wildlife Aid centre.
On arrival to the centre, we sat in the reception room waiting for Simon. In the meanwhile, someone brought in a big beetle, badly damaged by the lawn mower. We thought that, probably, the poor guy who brought it in made the journey in vain – no chance a place as busy as that (20,000 or more animals a year!!) would even bother with a beetle. However, to our absolute amazement, the beetle attracted lots of attention from the stuff – two people were looking at it and thinking about solutions to help the poor insect. They concluded that they needed to take the beetle in for further investigation. Needless to say, we were just speechless at that point…not being able to believe how lucky we were to come across such an amazing place with such high moral standards…
Beetle is not the only case of the strong ethical principles held by the fund. In one of the episodes of Wildlife SOS we saw how the fund’s vet team were performing an operation to stitch the skin on the back of the slowworm! Indeed, we found it absolutely incredible. Wildlife Aid team really does absolutely everything they can to try to save an animal, and once saved and able to survive in the wild, they always release it.
Indeed, this is the second amazing thing we found out about their fund – their policy of never domesticating the wild animals. The fund believes that each and every wildlife animal belongs to the wild, and keeping it in the captivity is against its wellbeing and nature. Hence, all the animals able to survive are released in the wild.
And it might seem as the most intuitive thing for everyone to do, however, looking at it from a closer perspective, there are actually lots of difficulties involved with releasing an animal in the wild after treating it in captivity. Quiet often the fund receives badly injured baby animals which it treats for months. With baby animals, it is vital to ensure they start training and living in the wild from the young age, otherwise their survival skills could deteriorate. Hence, the fund has to re-introduce animals slowly back into the wild after each and every prolonged treatment which take lots of time and patience. On top of that, there is always a possibility of getting attached to the wild patients, or the animals getting too accustomed to people, which could make them less cautious about the presence of people in the wild. But the fund has a solution even to this difficult problem. Caretakers are only allowed to visit animals for treatments and feeding, not at any other time. That ensures that animals get as little contact with humans as possible, keeping their wild instincts.
After we have met and spoken with Simon, we were completely sure this is the charity we would like to cooperate with. In fact, we were so amazed by the neat organisation, ethics, and the state of the fund and its animals, it inspired us to learn from the fund for our dream-project to create an animal shelter ourselves in the future. Indeed, we strongly believe that many people can learn from these amazing people, as their work really inspires and encourages to treat animals with more respect and care.
