FEATURE: Kildare Wildlife Rescue — Year in Review

In January this year, a handful of wildlife rehabilitators and rescue volunteers met to discuss the possibility of starting a dedicated wildlife rescue organisation together in County Kildare.

These volunteers met with the hope of providing help for injured, sick and orphaned wildlife in the area.

Two months later, Kildare Wildlife Rescue (KWR) was formed, and in July, a dedicated wildlife rescue centre was opened in Kildare town.

Looking back at January, we cannot believe how much has been achieved already in this short period of time.

Orphaned Otter Cub Oisín

What started as a humble vision to set up a small community group to help wildlife locally has grown beyond our expectations.

Since we launched early this year, we have helped over 1,600 animals, more than half of those just with the help of our rescue and foster team before our Centre opened its doors in July.

As our dedicated email address for reports of wildlife casualties (info@kwr.ie) was set up in April, we soon realised that starting small was not an option — the reports started pouring in and we had to help.

Soon after, a dedicated team of experienced volunteers was formed to respond to the reports and queries from the public, covering the email and responding 7 days a week 8am to 11pm.

In just 8 months, the team has responded to over 3200 wildlife casualty reports.

Juvenile Fox admitted after being hit by a car

With experienced wildlife volunteers and advisors at hand, we are able to review videos of animals reported to us, give very specific advice to members of the public and get animals that need it into care in a timely manner.

We are so grateful for the reports we receive; it shows there is now a greater interest to help wildlife and people go above and beyond to find help for animals in need.

We would really like to thank everyone who has contacted us this year and taken our advice.

People were incredible, transporting injured wildlife to us oftentimes over long distances, reuniting young birds with their parents, treating foxes with mange in their gardens under our guidance and much more.

Many animals got help this year simply because the people who found them took their time to seek help and ensure the animals got the right care.

Kildare side to take on Wexford in O'Byrne Cup named

Strong starting XV for opening game of 2023

Pair of swans from Balbriggan Harbour rescued after being oiled

As we entered into what we call the 'Orphan Season' — the busiest time of year for wildlife rehabilitators in Spring and Summer — it became clear that without a dedicated rehabilitation centre to increase our capacity, we would not be able to cope with the number of reports we receive.

Wildlife needed our help not only in Kildare, the admissions started coming in large numbers from Dublin, Meath, Laois and surrounding counties and we were looking everywhere to find a suitable place for our centre.

Just when the season got busiest, we got the incredible news that we will be able to rent out premises for our centre right next to the GreyAbbey Veterinary Hospital in Kildare town.

This space provided more than we could ever hope for: enough room for critical care units, multipurpose stables, plenty of outdoor space for our waterfowl arena and a variety of outdoor enclosures.

Combined with the convenience of the location and close relationship with the fantastic teams of GreyAbbey Veterinary Hospital and MiNight Vet Kildare, we jumped at this opportunity and opened the doors to our centre on July 22; soon the space has filled up with gull chicks, injured swans and other birds, from smallest nestlings to injured birds of prey, as well as a variety of mammals including foxes, badgers and orphaned otter cubs.

Much more carpentry and other work is still needed at the centre to get it where we need it to be before next spring, but the spaces created already have provided fantastic and professional enclosures for patients of all species. 

KWR Manager Dan Donoher and Centre Supervisor Petra Francas tagging a Juvenile Herring Gull

We were expanding at an unprecedented rate and so was our need to recruit more volunteers across all roles.

As a voluntary organisation with limited income, we rely on volunteers for all aspects of our work: transport, rescue, animal care, carpentry and maintenance work, administration, fundraising, media… all these jobs are done by a team of dedicated volunteers.

Recruitment of more people was vital to keep us going and we have successfully completed multiple inductions and trainings, adding the much-needed new members to our team.

Coming from all walks of life and with a wide variety of skills and backgrounds, the team is now 100 volunteers strong and keeps growing.

We are very grateful to all our volunteers and the time they offer to help animals, whether directly at our centre and at rescues, or indirectly by providing vital support for the team with admin, maintenance and fundraising.

Many of our volunteers joined after they witnessed our work first hand when they themselves reported a wild animal in distress and wanted to help more and we could not be more thankful for their commitment to the cause. 

KWR Rescue Volunteer and Advisor Pearse Stokes and Volunteer Co-ordinator Niamh Redmond delivering a Wildlife Rescue Training session

The opening of our centre provided the capacity to accommodate more animals, but the foster team remained a vital part of our work.

Out of over 1600 animals coming into our care this year, the foster team accommodated more than half of these admissions.

With licensed wildlife foster homes spread across counties Kildare, Dublin and Meath, the foster team is able to step in for emergency admissions out of hours or take care of patients with specialised requirements or intensive feeding schedules.

From tiny garden bird nestlings to orphaned fox cubs, the foster volunteers gave the utmost dedication to the animals, feeding round the clock and providing professional care to all their patients from admission to release.

Amendments proposed for two apartment blocks in North Kildare

Kildare property prices fell by €5k between September and December - report

Nest of hand-reared Goldcrest fledglings in foster care

Kildare Wildlife Rescue is not a sanctuary — our aim is to always rescue, rehabilitate and release animals reported to us.

2022 was a fabulous year for releases, with our Release Team assessing suitable sites and establishing great relationships with landowners.

A number of soft-release enclosures were built in various locations where our grown-up fox cubs and pine martens were able to learn to be wild and from where they could be safely released back into the wild.

Great care is taken to assess the suitability of the habitat and the fitness of the animal before release and we were fortunate to witness many touching releases of animals running or flying back to where they belong.

The dedication of our release site owners to create a safe environment for wildlife was overwhelming and we could not be more grateful for their help with all stages of the release process.

Pine Marten in soft-release Enclosure

An unexpected blow came in early Autumn when there was an unprecedented media response to Avian Influenza cases recorded in Ireland.

With bird flu and other pathogens arriving to Ireland with migratory birds every year, we were taken aback how this year’s response to the cases by various bodies unfolded.

As we were slowly getting to the end of orphan season and expecting the number of cases to go down, we were suddenly the only organisation in our area willing to help injured birds, with veterinary clinics and other bodies stopping admissions of all birds regardless of species and conditions.

This became the biggest welfare issue we had to face to date, with many injured birds in Dublin, Kildare and surrounding counties being left without help and everyone being referred to us as the only organisation that could assist.

We had to act fast and do everything in our power to ensure we could keep helping as many birds as we could.

Multiple meetings with relevant bodies, comprehensive training on Bird Handling for all our volunteers and strict biosecurity measures across all stages of the rehabilitation process ensured that we could continue helping birds, but it meant longer journeys for the birds, a big strain on our already overstretched volunteers and higher expenses than we could predict.

Many sleepless nights later, we are proud to say that our volunteers did their absolute best work despite the strict restrictions, went above and beyond to respond to bird casualties, and, following all the guidelines, did not bring a single Avian Influenza positive bird into our care.

We are hopeful that this situation will improve soon and are committed to helping Irish birds as much as we can during this difficult period.

Juvenile Gannet

As the year is coming to an end, we are using this quieter period of time to plan for the year ahead.

We can expect to be even busier next year and will be relying on more volunteer recruitment, fundraising and support of the public to continue our work.

We would like to give heartfelt thanks to everyone who has been part of our journey this year: to our volunteers, patrons, supporters, members of the public who contacted us about an animal in need, veterinary professionals who helped us treating our patients, our release site owners, and everyone who has given us a helping hand this year, we would like to wish you the very best in the new year. 

We could not do what we do without you.

 — KWR Team