Caring too much can hurt bird rescuers
Warning signs that Scott and Tracey Bowman were overwhelmed running their volunteer bird rescue centre were clear last year.
‘‘There was tension between ourselves and with other people,’’ Scott said.
‘‘We try and be very professional on the phone, but I was getting to the point where I could tell the tingle in my voice when I was telling people why we couldn’t take their bird from them. It’s very hard when you are talking to someone who is trying their best to help a bird and you are saying you can’t help. They get frustrated and you get frustrated.’’
Scott said he and Tracey would end up taking frustration and anger out on each other.
Something needed to change at Oxford Bird Rescue, the North Canterbury centre they run alongside their normal jobs.
They had an open-door policy and took birds in from everywhere that needed help to survive.
But by late last year they were close to burnout and feared it would end with them having to quit the whole rehabilitation operation.
‘‘We have always tried to do everything, but we were getting absolutely slammed with sparrows and baby starlings, birds that are not endangered and are almost classified as pests,’’ Scott said.
‘‘Birds were coming in still in the nest with no feathers. You are feeding them every half hour from the time the sun comes up to the time the sun goes down.’’
A Massey University survey last year looked at compassion fatigue among New Zealand wildlife rehabilitators such as the Bowmans.
Compassion fatigue is exhaustion from prolonged exposure to the stresses of caring for sick and vulnerable animals.
It found that most were able to keep a healthy balance, despite the pressures of the role.
Lead author Dr Polly Yeung, of the School of Social Work, said wildlife rescue was rewarding, but profoundly challenging, and in recent years there had been a greater reliance on volunteers.
She said multiple factors put wildlife rehabilitation workers at risk of compassion fatigue, including too many patients, patients dying, and not enough money for the work.
‘‘However, the work can also have positive benefits for the worker, known as compassion satisfaction, which is the enriching feelings that result from caring for animals both personally and professionally. The balance between compassion satisfaction and compassion fatigue is what we call their professional quality of life.’’
The Bowmans worked out their own path to find more balance at Christmas.
In December, they closed down for a couple of weeks. It was the first time ever and it was a complete ‘‘closed for business’’ break.
They still had 150 birds in care and but took in no more. Scott said the two weeks off helped and they enjoyed the extra time with children and grandchildren.
Over the break, they decided the centre could only look after birds of prey, like hawks and owls, and maybe native birds.
Scott said this was what they were passionate about and focusing on this they hoped would help them keep it manageable. But he knew there would always be stress that needed to be handled.
One way he noticed they did this was by getting more hardened.
‘‘It hit home for me last year when a guy and his missus had brought up a hawk found on side of the road. I was quite flippantly saying ‘oh look mate it’s got a break on the joint in the wing so it can’t be repaired so there’s no chance of it surviving’ and ‘we’ll whip it up to the vet and put it down’ and I looked up and this big guy was just bawling his eyes out. ‘‘I could have put it a bit better.’’ Scott said they would take a bird to the vet for euthanasia much faster now than they used to. However, he believed they still gave birds more of a chance than someone who had been doing it longer, or a wildlife vet.
They also knew they were up against long odds.
He loves hawks and Oxford Bird Rescue had probably taken in about 700 over eight years, but only managed to release about 70.
‘‘Both Tracey and I have learned our lessons about getting attached. As a wildlife re-habber, you can’t get attached to birds because if they don’t make it, you are going to get hurt.’’
But there was also immense satisfaction in that moment when a bird that had arrived close to death was successfully returned to the wild.
‘‘That’s the pay-off. That’s the buzz. That’s the bit we love,’’ Scott
''You can't beat going somewhere and letting a bird go...''
Scott Bowman
said. ‘‘You can’t beat going somewhere and letting a bird go, or watching someone who brought you the bird, letting it go.’’
At Christmas the pair drove to the Ida Valley in Otago so people who found four owlets in a chopped-down tree could let them go. ‘‘That was an all-day trip, but that’s the pay-off.’’
Scott said they weren’t looking for sympathy: they knew what they were getting in to when they launched their rescue centre.
‘‘This is our journey and we didn’t think we’d get as busy as we would.
‘‘But we think with the changes we have made, it will be a bit more manageable.’’