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 | |  |  |  | | Build Europe’s first wildlife teaching hospital | | Over the last 20 years, British accountant Les Stocker’s passion for the well-being of creatures great and small has gradually become his life’s work. Nine years after winning a Rolex Award for Enterprise, he runs a hugely successful wildlife teaching hospital – Europe’s first ever – and he has become a world authority in the field of wildlife rehabilitation. |
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Ask Les Stocker what is the smallest animal he’s ever treated and he’ll tell you about orphaned bats the size of your fingernail and baby mice no bigger than bumblebees. In fact, a child once brought him a bee that had lost a wing and rather than turn it away, or give it up as a lost cause, Stocker took it in and set it free in the garden.
"There’s not much you can do for a bee," he says. But the idea that every animal is worth saving, that no creature should be "put out of its misery" without at least an attempt to rescue it, is the philosophy behind Europe’s first ever wildlife teaching hospital, the project that in 1990 earned Stocker a Rolex Award for Enterprise.
An accountant with no medical training, Stocker started treating wild animals in his garden shed in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, 20 years ago. He quickly discovered that he wasn’t the only one with a lot to learn – knowledge of wild animals was lacking among veterinary surgeons and conservation bodies alike. So he came up with the idea of a teaching hospital dedicated solely to wild animals.
In 1991, Stocker was honoured by the Queen when she gave him the title of Member of the Order of the British Empire (M.B.E.) for his services to wildlife. That year, the idea for his wildlife hospital materialised, with the help of a Rolex Award, public funding and other major corporate sponsorship. Since it opened seven years ago, St Tiggywinkle’s, as the hospital is now officially known, after Beatrix Potter’s much-loved hedgehog washerwoman, has treated around 150,000 wildlife casualties – anything from deer that have been caught in fencing, to seals and seabirds that have been damaged in oilspills, to kingfishers that have flown into windows.
At any one time the hospital houses up to 1,000 casualties, referred by vets, or rescued by members of the public or many other animal welfare groups. The hospital also offers a 24-hour phoneline which deals with 70,000 calls every year, many of them international, and an around-the-clock rescue service. It prides itself on its ability to go to the aid of an injured animal at any hour of the day or night. Generous funding has been expertly managed so that the unique hospital is self-supporting and every animal is treated free of charge. Still, fundraising is ongoing to sustain and improve facilities and care. |
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Wildlife hospital
Set in six acres of countryside near Aylesbury, St Tiggywinkle’s is manned by 11 paid employees and some 100 dedicated volunteers. Four specialist veterinary surgeons are paid consultants and are constantly on call. The hospital already boasts a state-of-the-art operating theatre, X-ray unit, nurseries for juvenile birds and mammals, a convalescent wing and outside aviaries and pens where the animals gain weight before being released back into the wild, and a well-stocked reference library.
It is constantly expanding, too. In 1997, for instance, a new building was constructed to house a diagnostic lab, an intensive care unit for swans and a food store. In the same year, three tiled pools were put in for seals, otters and waterbirds. And last year the hospital gained a bat cave, adapted from an aviary, complete with ultraviolet strip light to attract insects for its resident bats. This year, Stocker and his wife Sue and son Colin plan to open a visitors’ centre, incorporating an educational walk for adults and children; a special unit where volunteers in wheelchairs can help with the rearing of baby birds and mammals; a classroom for teaching wildlife accident prevention; and a network of closed-circuit television cameras that will allow visitors to watch the animals being treated without disturbing them by their presence.
Raising awareness of wildlife issues is an important part of Stocker’s work, and he has already noticed a shift in public perceptions. "The hospital has made people more aware of what’s around them," he says. "We’re getting the message through to children that wildlife is not just lions and tigers and elephants, it’s what’s in your back garden."
More importantly, Stocker continues, ideas are changing about the need to save wildlife. These days, people are more likely to stop and help an animal that has been run over and left at the side of the road.
Out of necessity, the real work of the hospital goes on away from the eyes of the public. "Every animal that comes here is a trauma patient," explains Stocker. As a result of their injuries they are already in shock and by definition they are not used to the presence of humans. Even the volunteers are discouraged from looking an animal in the eye, in case such behaviour is interpreted as predatory. |
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The first 24 hours after an animal is admitted are the most crucial. "If we don’t lose them overnight, we’re surprised if we lose them at all," says Sue Stocker. During that time, the animal is stabilised and its injuries assessed. Stocker and his team play the part of paramedics, administering first aid and preparing the ground for the vet, who can then make a diagnosis and, if necessary, operate.
Each case is treated with the individual care and attention that is normally only accorded to domesticated pets. In 1997, for instance, the hospital treated four sick seal orphans that had been rescued from the Norfolk coast. When it came to releasing them, Stocker braved the elements to chaperone them back to their native colony.
"We hired a boat and took them out there in a force eight gale," he recalls. In another case, the hospital admitted a toad that had had its tongue severed by a lawn mower. The tongue was stitched up but the toad was no longer able to flick it to catch insects. It could not be released until it was able to feed itself, so Stocker spent painstaking hours training the toad to pick up food with its mouth.
Pioneering care
Because so little is known about caring for sick wild animals, many of the injuries treated at the hospital have no precedent in scientific literature. Stocker has learned by a process of trial and error and is determined to disseminate the information that he has gathered as widely as possible. "Through our own work and working with others, we have put rehabilitation on the map," he says. He is currently working on his fourth book on the practical care of wildlife, and he has also founded the European Wildlife Rehabilitation Association (EWRA), a network of people who discuss and debate a wide range of wildlife protection issues such as how to deal with oiled birds and the best way to release animals back into the wild.
Many of the techniques that Stocker has pioneered have been copied all over the world. Necessity, as the saying goes, is the mother of invention, and Sue Stocker confirms the veracity of the dictum. "He’s always inventing things," she says of her husband. |
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The innovative deer stretcher is one such example. Stocker learned the hard way that injured deer are difficult to handle because of their flailing legs, sharp hooves and sheer strength. It took him a year to recover from a strained arm muscle after a muntjac got the better of him. "With the muntjac it’s just a question of hanging on to it," he says.
But the experience inspired him to design a stretcher in which holes are cut for the legs. The deer is safely suspended above the ground on a trolley, with its underside resting in the stretcher and a couple of straps over its back to secure it. Once in, it is prevented from kicking. The design has already been adapted by a veterinary surgeon in South Africa for treating antelope.
He also invented an anaesthetic mask for baby hedgehogs out of a plastic syringe cap and, most recently, incubators for injured animals out of ordinary, plastic plant propagators bought from a local do-it-yourself store and adapted by feeding a tube from an oxygen tank into them.
As well as the practical use of equipment, the staff of St Tiggywinkle’s are also responsible for identifying conditions that had not previously been known to affect certain species, such as an intestinal fluke that can prove lethal to juvenile hedgehogs. Once a condition has been identified, Stocker and his co-workers follow through by testing out possible new treatments.
In the autumn, for instance, many juvenile hedgehogs die as a result of infection by parasites called lungworm and fluke. The problem is that the drugs which are normally used to treat the condition can also kill the hedgehog. But over the last few years, the team has worked out a drug regime that, when administered over a two-week period, kills both parasites without harming its host. |
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"This year we got most of them through," says Stocker, "It’s been a very good year." The regime has since been adopted by hedgehog care organisations all over the country.
Another example is cranial injury in birds. Kingfishers and sparrow-hawks are particularly prone to flying into windows, and often suffer damage to the head as a result. By using vasodilators, drugs which increase the blood flow to the heart and brain, Stocker and consultant vet Dr John Lewis have found that the bird’s chances of recovery improve markedly. The tip of a bird’s wing, the metacarpus, is also easily injured. The wingtip has a poor blood supply which, if damaged, could eventually lead to the loss of the wingtip itself. Almost by accident Stocker discovered that by rubbing the affected area with a cream designed for the treatment of haemorrhoids in humans, long-term damage to the wing tips can be prevented.
Setting patients free
Ultimately, the aim of St Tiggywinkle’s has always been to release the animals. "The theory behind wild animals is to get them back where they came from," says Stocker. Again, when it comes to reintegration, it has been a sharp learning curve. Many years ago, the first time he released a little owl (a type of owl), he took it back to the farm where it was found and let it go in daytime. The owl was immediately mobbed by crows. So from then on, Stocker released owls only at night. Badgers, on the other hand, are fiercely territorial animals and have to be released within yards of the spot where they were found.
Eighty per cent of the hospital’s patients are released but what happens to them after that is generally, says Stocker, an "unknown quantity." Only very occasionally does he receive feedback on how an animal has fared. |
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One success story involves a red kite that was admitted to the hospital last year with a damaged wing. Red kites are a highly endangered bird species in Britain – at one point their numbers fell as low as six – and are currently being reintroduced by "English Nature", the government’s advisory body on conservation matters. As part of the reintroduction programme, the injured bird had been fitted with a radio tag, and later, after it had been released, it was monitored and found to have integrated successfully back into the wild.
A 20-year study recently completed by Dr Pat Morris shows that hedgehogs raised in captivity and released back to the wild have as much chance of survival as those raised in the wild.
The Stockers are no strangers to endangered species. Over the years they have seen rare birds such as the wryneck, the bittern, and other endangered animals including a pair of great-crested newts (a kind of salamander), which were rescued after they had found their way into a warm, dry place under somebody’s floorboards.
One of the things that concerns Stocker most is the destruction of wildlife habitat that continues apace in Britain and elsewhere, to make way for human beings. And he is doing what he can to counteract it. Six years ago, 1,000 trees were planted on the land surrounding the hospital, and more were planted last year. "We’re planting as many native trees and shrubs as we can so that it will build up into a woodland," he explains.
St Tiggywinkle’s already offers training programmes for both the layman and veterinary professonials seeking experience of wildlife care. Although it has not yet received official accreditation as a training centre for veterinary nurses because it does not treat dogs and cats, Stocker is proud of having fulfilled his dream of 20 years ago – the foundation of Europe’s first ever wildlife teaching hospital – and is excited about its decidedly bright future.
Laura Spinney |
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Mr Les Stocker
Wildlife Hospital Trust
St. Tiggywinkles
Aston Road
Haddenham
Aylesbury
Bucks HP17 8AF
United Kingdom
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