Organizational Goals of Pacific Wildlife Care What

Organizational Goals of Pacific Wildlife Care

What is the organization's current focus? What is the organization's overarching goal? The focus of the Pacific Wildlife Care (PWC) organization is found in its mission statement. The focus and mission of PWC is to rehabilitate and then return to the national world "…orphaned, pollution-damaged and injured wildlife"; in other words, when a mother opossum is hit by a car and killed, but her babies in the pouch are still alive, those babies are taken to PWC and raised until they are ready to be returned to their natural habitat. And when a hawk is injured on a barbed wire fence or though another incident, that bird is transported to PWC for rehabilitation by a wildlife veterinarian -- and later after healing, is returned to the wild.

Beyond the rehab and release dynamic, the overarching goal is to "…educate our community to value wildlife," which includes the important need to "respect the environment we share with them" (PWC). The PWC is a nonprofit organization (501-C3) licensed by the California Department of Fish and Game and by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service and operates with donations from individuals and groups.

What are the organization's training needs? How do they relate to the overarching goals? Because PWC is a mostly volunteer organization (the veterinarian receives a salary) there is a constant need for training new volunteers to help run the operation. The areas in which training is vital include: data entry (all animals received and released must be recorded); hotline (every day when calls come in about injured animals a phone volunteer takes those calls); transporters (volunteer drivers are contacted by the hotline volunteer and the injured animal is brought to PWC); animal care volunteers actually do the feeding, medicating, and they assure that injured wildlife are kept in clean surroundings while being cared for; and educational outreach (people must be trained to take "wildlife ambassadors" -- like a blind owl and a falcon that can't fly -- to schools, service organizations, etc., as part of educating the community). All of the volunteer positions relate to the overarching goal of rehabilitating injured / orphaned wildlife.

What effect does the organization's focus and goals have on prioritizing the type and amount of training? Clearly the volunteers that basically make the organization effective must have adequate training. There are monthly training sessions for people who care about wildlife and have signed up to help but are not familiar with the particulars when it comes to approaching an injured bird (you immediately toss a sheet or blanket over the bird's head so it is calmed and can be picked up for transport). Feeding an injured opossum or raccoon at PWC requires special training as well. Hence, the training and the mission / goals of PWC go hand-in-hand to make this organization effective and respected in the community.

How would you prioritize specific training needs based on the organization's needs and current focus? First, a potential volunteer must have the desire to be trained. Just being interested in helping wildlife is not enough. So the priority for those doing the training is to sort through the volunteer applications and find those individuals with some experience or skill relating to wildlife -- or at least experience in a volunteer environment, such as a humane society facility, or a homeless shelter or some community organization where specific skills are required. Second, if there are not enough volunteer transporters to bring the injured and orphaned wildlife to the center, then that becomes a priority for training. If a citizen calls the hotline because an owl is caught in barbed wire, the volunteer transporter must also know how to rescue that bird safely and place it in a carrier with minimum harm to the animal.