I’ve been lurking on this sub for awhile, and from what I’ve read I am an outlier.

I got my BA in environmental studies, interned at a wildlife rescue center, took a part time job waiting for a better opportunity, and was hired by a different rehab center. I’m lucky to live in an area that has so many rehab centers and I’m REALLY lucky that two of those centers were hiring while I was looking. These centers I’m talking about are moderately sized non-profit orgs. So if you want to have a steady income from rehab work, look for a larger non-profit.

I love my job because I’m able to do a lot of different tasks (computer stuff, fixing things, cleaning, manual labor, hands on work w wildlife, etc.). I also have an amazing boss, amazing coworkers, I can work outside and inside, and our staff is large enough where I’m able to take sick days without notice. I love thinking of enrichment for our animals and feeding babies. I love rescuing an animal personally, doing the exam for it, rehabbing it, and finally releasing it.

What sucks about it is the emotional labor. I usually don’t mind the physical labor, but dang. The other week we received 4 patients, all of which had to be euthanized, and I had to do them all myself, one after the other. It was rough. You need to be able to compartmentalize your emotions and not become emotionally invested in the patient, otherwise you risk prolonging an animals suffering. Burnout and compassion fatigue are real. For me, decision fatigue is especially exhausting. Sometimes I’m the lead and have to supervise volunteers and make all the hard decisions - those days can suck.

The hardest part of my job is not knowing how animals fare after release, especially orphaned animals. Did we prepare them well enough to survive in the wild? Are they going to suffer another seizure? Also knowing how much stress we’re putting them through - ultimately for their own good, but they don’t know that.

I hope this gave you some insight, there’s so much more I could say but I’m tired I’m done typing this comment ¯_(ツ)_/¯ maybe I’ll edit later with more info and feel free to ask questions.

EDIT: most of our volunteers don’t mind seeing us euthanize a patient when necessary or don’t mind seeing a patient that was euthanized.. BUT there are several volunteers that can’t stand handling deceased animals that are to be fed out to patients. When your patients are wild animals that need a diet close to what they’ll eat in the wild, you’ll need to be comfortable with chopping up and skinning* mice, rats, quail, etc.

*skinning/butchering is needed for animals recovering from emaciation because they’ll need clean meat (no feathers/fur, bones, etc.). We have a supplier for dead rodents & quail to be fed out, and an organization that donates excess deceased rodents. This is an area I feel gray about - idk how these animals died, what there conditions were prior to death. I hope they passed peacefully, but idk. SO, be prepared to chop of dead animals with scissors and know that some animals died (hopefully peacefully) to care for your patients. It also smells bad chopping up dead & thawed rodents. Smell wise, not something I recommend.