Wildlife Heroes volunteer training

The Wildlife Heroes team has been supporting the many volunteers within wildlife rehabilitation since 2019. The sector (like many others) has been battling to get back where they were before Covid 19 lockdowns which interfered with normal volunteer recruiting and organisations’ general morale. When we asked the wildlife groups what Wildlife Heroes could do to help reinvigorate the sector they said, ‘we need more training’.

The Wildlife Heroes team have answered the call and put together a plan which we just keep adding to.

 

A brief run down

• Wildlife Heroes is supporting National Parks and Wildlife Services to deliver training that will improve wildlife response in emergency situations (like bushfire). There will be two emergency scenario workshop days in June.
• Wildlife Heroes has provided the two pre-requisite courses needed by volunteers to be able respond to wildlife emergencies, and to be able to attend the above workshops:
  • Basic Wildfire Awareness (BWA) and
  • Australasian Inter-service Incident Management System (AIIMS)
• To improve wildlife volunteers’ safety, Wildlife Heroes worked to provide:
  • First Aid training, and
  • Venomous snake handling courses
• To improve volunteers’ skill sets Wildlife Heroes has supported:
  • Raptor rehabilitation training
  • A series of Wildlife Webinars that included:
    • Ecology of Bare-Nosed Wombats
    • Antibiotic resistant bacteria in wildlife
    • Snakebite
    • Turtle shell mending (upcoming)
  • To improve the wildlife treatment knowledge base of Vets and Vet Nurses across NSW, Wildlife Heroes has partnered with Byron Bay Wildlife Hospital to provide 9 live training sessions that cover the most common wildlife types that present at vet clinics with illness or injury.
  • For all the volunteer instructors that are training other volunteers and want to polish their skills, Wildlife Heroes has provided Train the Trainer courses.

 

Thank you

Heartfelt thanks go to the hardworking wildlife volunteers who respond 24/7 to wildlife in need. We hope the above training package will assist your work.

Many thanks also to the Conservation Programs Branch at National Parks and Wildlife Services with whom we have worked very closely with on providing this training.

 

Stacey Mole, Wildlife Heroes Project Manager

The NSW Wildlife Heroes Project is managed by the Foundation for National Parks & Wildlife with funding from the New South Wales Government through its Environmental Trust.