Juanita Browne: Helping wild animals — sometimes intervention isn’t the answer

An otter cub is fed by a WRI rehabber

Wildlife rehabilitation is a job for experts and hopefully, Ireland will soon have its own national Wildlife Rehabilitation and Teaching Hospital

In 2000, I spent a few amazing months helping zoologists from Australia’s National Parks service to monitor birds in the Simpson Desert — a vast beautiful desert in the centre of Australia. While we travelled around, doing bird counts, we camped overnight in the vacant quarters of old cattle stations. The ‘bathrooms’ consisted of a row of galvanised toilet cubicles, covered by a rough tin roof. With such easy access, the building attracted lots of wild visitors, such as snakes, lizards, spiders and amphibians. On day one of our research trip, I found a beautiful green tree frog inside one of the toilet bowls, so I carefully caught it and carried it outside to release it back to freedom. The theme tune to Born Free was in my head as it hopped away. Feeling good about this successful rescue, I told the others about it, but was very embarrassed when my Australian colleague said ‘why did you do that? That frog was living its best life, enjoying the only permanent water source for miles around!’