Wildlife rescues - building a safe bridge to recover wild populations in Vietnam
Résumé
In Vietnam, there are thousands of live wild animals confiscated from illegal wildlife trade incidents, however, the majority of them could not survive after confiscation due to lack of proper treatment. Wildlife rescues are not limited to saving and taking care of animals from confiscations but also rescue and rehabilitation, release and monitoring, conservation breeding program, capacity building, and collaboration to safely release them back to the wild, and to recover and secure wild populations. After 7 years of working, we have released more than 1200 confiscated animals back into the wild with a success rate of more than 60%, many of which were tagged and tracked post-released. Moreover, a Vietnam Wildlife Rescue Association is going to be established to support wildlife rescue centres through the network.
Classifications
Région
Ampleur de la mise en œuvre
Ecosystème
Thème
Conservation des espèces et interventions axées sur l’approche « Une seule santé »
Défis
Objectifs de développement durable
Objectifs d’Aichi
Défis
In Vietnam each year, thousands of animals are illegally traded for meat consumption, traditional medicine, pets and souvenirs. The majority of live animals trafficked, are often dehydrated, nutritionally-stressed, carrying diseases, or have suffered injuries from being trapped and hunted, many of them died right after confiscations without appropriate treatment. Poachers and traffickers often force-feed pangolins to increase their weight before selling them. Therefore, the animals are often weak and immuno-compromised that could be subject to zoonotic disease and easily die if proper care is not given.
Government agencies in Vietnam often release illegal trade-confiscated wildlife straight back into the wild without any health checks or quarantine and are often released outside of where the species is naturally found; this in turn can pose a threat to native wild populations.
Bénéficiaires
- Wildlife populations, especially wildlife and small carnivores
- Rescue centres in Vietnam
- Government agencies
- General public health and awareness
Blocs Constitutifs
Comment les blocs constitutifs interagissent-ils entre eux dans la solution?
All rescue, release, monitoring and capacity building activities have to be carried simultaneously to serve the ultimate goal is to release animals back to the wild and recover the wild populations. Activities are all connected and support each other. Rescue could provide founders and produce knowledge of breeding to support the captive breeding program. Moreover, study of captive populations (husbandry and health assessment) would help improve the rescue work e.g., suitable diet of the species, general health issues. Monitoring of post-release animals could give us information of animal’s ecology, diet and behaviours, which in turn, improves the husbandry conditions to assemble the natural conditions, increase welfare and breeding success of the animals.
Impacts
Our rescue work aims to reduce the number of dead confiscated wildlife and increase the survival and release rate. Our activity also prevents zoonotic diseases from emerging and impacting wild populations. We use our media coverage of rescues and releases, to help educate the public, and raise awareness of the impacts of the illegal wildlife trade. Most importantly, we use these rescues to encourage and motivate the government to continue combating the illegal wildlife trade.
- Collaborated with various governmental rescue centres to successfully rehabilitate and release more than 1000 animals with over 60% of animals rescued were released successfully
- Increase the Sunda pangolin population in Pu Mat National Park by releasing rehabilitated confiscated pangolins. This has been proved by photographic evidence of pangolin offspring sightings in the Park;
- Advocate for and promote the establishment of the Wildlife Rescue Centres Association of Vietnam;
- Many other rescue centres are receiving support e.g., technical husbandry and veterinary care to improve the quality of their centre
Histoire
In early 2017, there was one rescue incident of 113 pangolin individuals, the largest number of rescued animals ever at the organisation. The pangolins all came at once when we had only 30 quarantine cages and the capacity of humans and equipment was very limited. It was difficult to take care of all the pangolins at the centre. The director of the organisation had to mobilise all organisational resources to rescue the animals, even several staff had to work until midnight to support the pangolins. The work paid off when 80% of these animals could be released back into the wild.
Furthermore, the biggest achievement besides animal release was the change in the attitudes of rangers/responsible government officials towards wildlife rescues and how to treat animals correctly after being inspired by our work and love towards wildlife. We were most happy to gain the trust of the government, whenever there is a rescue case of small carnivores and pangolins, they will call our rapid response team and even ask how to give animals first treatment to maintain their health while waiting for our team. Moreover, other rescue centres also learn from us the standards of animal husbandry and welfare. Exchange of knowledge between rescue centres occurs more frequently than before, which is believed to increase the effectiveness of animal rescue and conservation.
Images
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