San Jose Animal Care Center Trains Volunteers To Search And Rescue Injured Wildlife
SAN JOSE (KCBS)— San Jose is responding to the need for wildlife rescue volunteers. The city's Animal Care Center trained animal lovers search and rescue techniques for injured wildlife including raccoons, deer, wild birds and even skunks.
"These animals don't know that you're trying to help. What they know is that they're life is being attacked and that they're being threatened and that they're going to fight back with everything they have even if it kills them," said Rebecca Dmytryk with Wildlife Emergency Services.
That's why animal lovers were taught during training how to sneak up to animals and humanely trap them.
Dmytryk said there is a great need for volunteer wildlife paramedics.
"You have to have two people willing to go out into the field, be available to be on call and we can dispatch them. I have people coming from Los Angeles to San Francisco. I don't have enough of them, but that's a start.
She said only about five percent of wildlife hospitals have teams trained in animal rescue.
