The Wildlife Hospital - Dunedin

The Dunedin Wildlife Hospital is a project which has immense support from the Wildlife Community on the South Island. Currently there are no qualified Wildlife Veterinarians based on the South Island so critically endangered and threatened species are flown to one of the North Island Specialist Wildlife Hospitals for Veterinary care. This is stressful for the animals and often the time taken between finding the animal and it receiving suitable veterinary care is the difference between success and failure. The Dunedin Wildlife Hospital aims to provide prompt, expert wildlife veterinary care to all native species needing it. During a trial run of the hospital early in 2015 the success rate of releasing yellow-eyed penguins back into the wild was 17% higher then that of penguins sent to a lower North Island centre for care. When it comes to endangered species like the precious yellow-eyed penguin, 17% is a huge number as every animal counts when there are so few remaining.

The amount of support for this project is immense including recently being awarded an AMP scholarship to help get this project off the ground.

Dunedin is the wildlife capital of NZ so it seems right that there should be a dedicated wildlife hospital to provide much needed medical care not only for the endangered species but also for the more common but equally important local wildlife.

One of the major goals of the Dunedin Wildlife Hospital is to also provide support to veterinarians across the South Island who spend time working with wildlife. Having a referral centre on the same island will help us to jointly increase success rates for the wildlife that requires veterinary intervention. Continuing education is another vital service that the Dunedin Wildlife Hospital hopes to contribute to veterinary professionals on the South Island, upskilling so we can all work together to conserve and save our precious native wildlife.