Hart Wildlife Rescue, Hampshire
Picture: HART Wildlife Rescue
During lockdown, sanctuaries struggled as volunteer numbers fell and charity shops remained closed; now, the cost of living crisis means that donations to charities and community organisations are drying up. Hart Wildlife runs a wildlife hospital in North East Hampshire, providing a rescue, treatment and rehabilitation service for wildlife from all over Hampshire and surrounding counties. Numbers rocketed last year with the centre treating over 3,000 animals, many victims of the accidental interactions between people and wildlife; now, the centre, like so many others, is looking for more support, particularly as challenges to British wildlife continue to increase.
One of the main threats, common around the world, is land use. Paul Reynolds is hospital manager at Hart. “The UK is relatively green but the vast majority is farmland,” he says. “Farmland has some benefits for wildlife, but it depends on how intensively it’s farmed, and what is being farmed.” Britain’s housing boom, with its emphasis on developing greenfield sites, also works against wild animals. Ten years ago, the sanctuary was surrounded by fields. “Now, it’s housing estate after housing estate,” comments Reynolds, ruefully. “It’s just not necessary; there are lots of ways of doing it that don’t involve losing more green space. The value of the green space isn’t just determined by the endangered species that live there. It provides an environment which feeds those endangered animals, whether it’s insects, amphibians or reptiles, on top of the mammals and birds. As well as an environmental impact, the loss of our green spaces has a human impact, in terms of psychological and health and wellbeing.”
The paving away of the British countryside means animals come in, shellshocked and tattered. “I’ve only been doing British wildlife for a couple of years and it’s unpleasant. The UK is built up so animals come in hit by cars, emaciated, diseased. Often, it’s about ending their suffering but one of the wonderful things about wild animals is their incredible resilience. There are animals who come in - and you just wonder how they are alive - but, with the right care and rehabilitation, working with our vets, we’re able to bring them through.” Last January, the hospital admitted a fox cub, very small, very skinny, covered in ticks. “At death’s door,” says Reynolds. “January is an unusual time to see a fox cub because they’re normally born around March. We called her Alex. She stuck in my mind because there were many times when I was resigned to the fact that she wasn’t going to make it - and she did.“ The pandemic didn’t help; as people pottered about gardens, trimming hedges, clearing out sheds, animals and their habitats were disrupted. “[Wildlife rescue] is a professional activity, not just something people can start doing at home,” says Reynolds. “We saw an increase of that with COVID. Somebody feeds an animal the wrong food, for example, and they don’t bring it into a wildlife rescue centre until it’s near death.” If you find a hurt animal, contact your nearest professional wildlife centre, he says: “That’s the only legal and safe way of ensuring the animal has the best chance.”
For several years, Reynolds and his partner managed a rescue centre in Costa Rica, rehabilitating a wide variety of animals from primates to snakes, before sending them off back into the jungle - “where they belong,” says Reynolds. One day, a baby greater grison was brought into the hospital. Greater grisons are pretty creatures, resembling crosses between otters and honey badgers - and fully as smart as both. “It was a big deal to have this animal,” remembers Reynolds. “But, because they’re so intelligent, you have to be careful how you rear them or they’ll figure out that humans are not necessarily all bad, which is not ideal for anyone.
“It took the couple six months to get him ‘wilded up’, which involved taking him into the jungle, actively discouraging interaction and getting him to hone his skills as a wild animal. Eventually, he got to a point where he stopped trying to interact with us,” says Reynolds. “So we took him deep into the jungle and we opened the carrier. And I was thinking, ‘please, don’t turn around and come over to us’. He walked out of the carrier and - I know it sounds a bit overly humanised - he turned and he did look at us. I thought ‘don’t do it’ but he just walked off. It was one of the most emotional animal experiences I’ve had and it was great to see him go.”
Just because few people in the UK will have heard of a greater grison doesn’t mean that the humble British badger and hedgehogs don’t count. “People often fantasise about the exotic wildlife of other countries and look at British wildlife and think, ‘I wish we had more exciting wildlife,’” laughs Reynolds. “But all wildlife is exciting, from a baby feral pigeon to a baby howler monkey or a baby lion. The skills involved may vary, but the feeling you get from saving then releasing that animal is exactly the same. Wildlife is wildlife, no matter where you are.”
Picture: HART Wildlife Rescue
This perfect storm of issues is currently alerting people - finally - to the value of nature and the threats it faces. Arguably, the most significant is climate change, currently accelerating at a rate at which most animals will not be able adapt. “[Climate change] is confusing for wildlife,” admits Reynolds, sadly. “It means more of them will end up in more trouble.” A good example is hedgehogs: with milder winters, persistent parasites on the animal’s body last longer, with detrimental effects on their health. “Plus, more and more hedgehogs don’t hibernate in the south and there are lasting consequences to that,” adds Reynolds.
Additionally, questions raised by the pandemic and its probable origins, continue to push forward. "Human beings interfering with the environment and having an unnatural amount of contact with wild animals: butchering them, eating them, keeping them in small spaces …. “ says Reynolds. “Nearly all the major nasty diseases that have gone to pandemic level in the last 20 years have come from us effectively abusing the environment.” He gives a domestic example: industrial farming, which throws anti-parasitics and antibiotics into local waterways, rendering wild animals in those areas resistant to treatment, which in turn becomes a contributing factor to superbugs. So there’s more appreciation that, by conserving the natural world, we are literally conserving ourselves. People don’t have to care about nature. They don’t even have to care about animals but they will at least care about themselves.”
“There’s been a huge shift in people’s understanding of the value of green spaces and of issues like climate change and conservation,” continues Reynolds. “It’s accelerated at a rate we haven’t seen in twenty to thirty years, to a general awareness among the population as a whole. Part of that is down to social media, how information is spread. Climate change is a political issue - ten years ago, politicians were claiming it didn’t exist - but now, even the current government accepts that it has to try and make the country carbon neutral by a certain time. It’s not to forgive them but the ones in power are our only hope.”
He is heartened by the work of community groups. “People want to get involved and the growth in community groups is a good example. There are groups dedicated to everything from bird watching to cleaning up the local environment to ‘friends of’ societies - friends of a local woodland, friends of the local pond. COVID-19, for all its terribleness, has also brought out many inequalities including access to green space.”
How can this re-embracing of the natural world be upscaled? “Education is key - and how it’s delivered,” says Reynolds. "Local wildlife rescue centres, volunteer days, children’s activities. Local Wildlife Trusts are great ways for people to keep in touch with what’s going on. You shift people’s understanding by showing them. And the more people see it, the more they will want to save it.” Community activism is rising, too. “There’s a beautiful site for wildfowl and migrating birds on the peninsula near Portsmouth that the authorities want to bulldoze to build a housing estate. It’s utter madness, a critical area for a whole variety of species - and the local Wildlife Trusts are leading the way on that.”
Chris Packham is a patron of the sanctuary. Who else inspires Reynolds? “I was lucky enough to attend a lecture by David Attenborough at university and it was a wonderful two hours,” he says. “Attenborough makes wildlife accessible to anybody with a television. My admiration for him has grown even more as he has broken with his old habits of avoiding politics and started working on showing the consequences of climate change. As someone widely respected across the entire political spectrum, Attenborough becoming more vocal about politics and the need for action is important. No matter where you fall on the political scale, caring about the planet and wanting to save wildlife is not some crazy hippy thing. This is not just for individual animals; it’s for ourselves and future generations.”
