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Free keywords:
Conservation; Monitoring; Rehabilitation; Wildlife; Wildlife injuries; Wildlife threats
Abstract:
The ultimate goal of Wildlife Rehabilitation Centres is to release wild animals back into the wild, after providing care and treatment according to protocol. The data collected during the process though, can be an invaluable resource of information, and act as a proxy of the anthropogenic impact on wild populations. They can even help to propose mitigation and conservation measures that could reduce pressure on wildlife. In the current study, we analysed the records of ANIMA, a prominent Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre in Athens, Greece, over a 17-year study period. Using a database of 54,445 animals representing 353 species from 104 families, we draw con-nections between the magnitude of admission causes and their predicted outcomes based on the animals admitted. We found that while many animals that are admitted as orphans or after living in captivity have good chances of being released, that is not the case for victims of electrocution or domestic animal attacks. Illegal shooting is clearly present in our data and seems to also affect wild populations negatively. We highlight the importance of Wildlife Rehabilitation Centres' data towards understanding and defining human impact on wildlife, the importance of communicating the results to policymakers for biodiversity conservation and even proposing possible management directions. In that context, we also urge for more population monitoring field studies, so that admission data can be accurately combined and make meaningful predictions for the status of wild populations.
