Wildlife hospitals provide emergency veterinary care for injured and sick wild animals, representing the frontline of human response to wildlife welfare crises caused by human activity.
Wildlife hospitals provide essential welfare care for animals injured by human activities — road traffic, pollution, entanglement, predation by domestic animals and disease. The animals treated represent a tiny fraction of total wildlife welfare incidents, as most injured animals are never found or cannot be reached. Nevertheless, wildlife hospitals provide genuine welfare improvement for the individuals they treat, and the expertise developed in treatment informs both individual care and broader conservation policy. The network of wildlife hospitals in the UK, coordinated through wildlife trust and charity structures, is an important safety net for individual animal welfare that deserves consistent public support.