what's One Health?

Put simply, One Health is a framework that recognizes how human health is closely connected to both environmental and animal health. In other words,  successfully keeping us all healthy at the local, national, and global level requires folks from each of these sectors to work closely together.

How exactly do we rehabilitate wildlife?

Wildlife rehabilitation is truly a "don't try this at home, folks!" field. Working with wild animals is quite different than working with domestic animals, requiring specialized diets, enclosures, socialization, enrichment, and protective gear.

We do not have a veterinarian on-site, so the Rockfish Wildlife Sanctuary specializes in caring for clinically healthy orphaned wildlife - a job we take very seriously! We work to understand the natural history of every species we work with so we can craft a rehabilitative environment that matches the care they'd receive from their wild parents to the best of our ability as humans. That necessitates a lot of hard work, whether we're feeding baby birds every 30 minutes from sunrise to sunset or setting up a naturalistic outdoor enclosure for fox kits in the 95° Virginia heat. The Sanctuary's team takes pride in going above and beyond when it comes to setting up our patients for post-release success!

Part of preparing our  patients for release is, well, keeping them wild. A wild animal in captive care is inherently a stressed animal, and we take great care to treat our patients with the professional attention they deserve without unnecessarily contributing to their stress. We never speak to our patients, cuddle them, spend unnecessary time with them, or provide any kind of environment that could lead a wildlife patient to become "habituated." A habituated animal is often a non-releasable animal.

All of this is to say: the rehabilitation team at RWS is highly trained and possesses all of the necessary permits and skills to provide such uniquely challenging care to our patients.  

A conservation tool that operates on the individual patient but is guided by ecosystem dynamics, environmental regulation, and One Health principles.

Providing professional care to injured and orphaned wild animals using  species-specific, natural history-informed techniques that ensure the best possible outcome for each patient.

What is wildlife rehabilitation?

One Health professionals include wildlife rehabilitators, veterinarians, physicians, epidemiologists, public health policymakers, ecologists, wildlife biologists, fish and game department officials, and so many more! By providing safe and professional care to wild animals, educating the public, training student interns and early-career conservationists, and lending our voice to environmental policy and research efforts, the Rockfish Wildlife Sanctuary strives to champion One Health principles and improve our world. 

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