ANIMAL MAGIC

Founder of the Wildlife Hospital, Dunedin, Dr Lisa Argilla helps to care for and conserve NZ’s threatened species.

Veterinarian and founder of the Wildlife Hospital Dunedin, Dr Lisa Argilla is making a major contribution to the conservation of New Zealand’s rare and endangered species. In the two years since opening, the Hospital has treated more than 1,600 little patients.

Dr Lisa Argilla felt privileged to be recognised in the New Year Honours List 2021 for her services to animal welfare and conservation, but only after she was satisfied the email announcing the good news wasn’t a hoax. “I remember when I opened the email my first thought was, ‘Is this spam? Truly someone’s pulling my leg,’” she says. “I’d always looked at the people who received these honours every year and thought, ‘Wow, they have achieved such amazing things with their lives’. I’d never actually considered that I would be included in that group of people.” She needn’t have been surprised to have been made a

Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit – her work as a veterinarian treating sick and injured native animals has contributed to the conservation of rare and endangered species. In 2018, she opened the Wildlife Hospital, Dunedin, based at Otago Polytechnic. Since then, the hospital has treated more than 1,600 patients. Of those, around 465 have been yellow-eyed penguins (hoiho). By the end of January this year, the Wildlife Hospital had already treated almost 40 animals.

“More than a third of our patients are usually endangered or critically endangered. So we are making a significant contribution to the conservation of those species because those are species that have so few individuals, and every individual animal that you can save makes a huge difference,” says Argilla. “That contribution is something we’re very proud of, especially to hoiho. Those little guys were the driving force for opening this hospital.”

PENGUIN POWER

Prior to establishing the facility, Argilla had been working at Wellington Zoo managing its wildlife hospital. But time spent volunteering in the South Island helping yellow-eyed penguins revealed to her that there was a need for a wildlife hospital in Dunedin.

“I was starting to get a bit frustrated because I would find an injured bird, and I might be able to do the basics and patch it up in the field, but we’d always have to send

“I’M A REAL BIRD NERD. NEW ZEALAND IS THE PERFECT PLACE FOR THAT.” DR LISA ARGILLA

them to the North Island for continued care,” she says. “That’s where the idea started to form that we really needed a wildlife hospital here in Dunedin. It’s the wildlife capital of New Zealand. We’ve got so many beautiful species down here – a lot of them endangered.”

Argilla started setting the wheels in motion by gauging interest in the idea, contacting Otago Polytechnic, speaking to the Department of Conservation (DOC), running pop-up hospitals in the area and making contacts with people who had the expertise to help her get the hospital up and running. “Everyone was really passionate about the idea. So it just ended up all falling into place.”

Despite years of planning in the lead-up to establishing the hospital, Argilla still felt opening the doors to the facility was risky. “We knew we had funding for maybe six months, but we were reaching a point where it’s quite hard to continue to fundraise for something that hasn’t actually started yet,” she says. “It’s easier to fundraise if you’ve got something operational, to show potential funders. But we took the risk, I moved from Wellington to Dunedin and boom! Three years and we’re still here, and we care for so many beautiful animals, it’s just great.”

BARMY ABOUT BIRDS

As well as seeing a gap that needed to be filled when it came to caring for native species down south, Argilla was motivated to establish a wildlife hospital to further pursue the area of veterinary medicine that she is most enthusiastic about. Originally from South Africa, she completed her vet studies at Massey University, which made her realise she had “a real passion” for New Zealand species. “I’m a real bird nerd,” she says. “I’ve always wanted to be an avian veterinarian. So I found New Zealand to be the perfect place for that because the wildlife here is predominantly birds.

“There’s a general consensus that bird people can be a bit mad,” she jokes. “But birds are just fascinating and they’re very smart. I guess people always think birds are quite fragile, but they’re not as fragile as you think; they’re really tough animals. I just love them.”

SOCIAL SUCCESS

The birds’ quirky personalities make for delightful social media content. Followers of the wildlife hospital have been treated to the tale of a yellow eyed penguin love triangle, a tūī wearing tiny ‘jandals’ to help fix her clenched feet, and a ‘stomp comp’ to see whether a shag or a hoiho makes a better foot slapper. Argilla says telling the animals’ stories through social media is an important part of running the wildlife hospital.

“I guess the only way you can get people engaged and interested in a lot of these species and wanting to conserve them is if you can make them fall in love with the animals,” she says. “The best way that we can share the stories of the animals is to post on our social media, and we do get a lot of really positive feedback, which is awesome.” Virtually inviting people into the hospital through social media also helps with fundraising. “We are a charitable trust and we’re fundraising so that we can provide the medical care for these birds.”

For Argilla, there is no greater thrill than being able to treat animals and send them back into the wild to continue with breeding and living a happy life.

“Nothing beats the feeling of successfully helping an animal and getting it back to the wild because they certainly are not grateful for the work we do here,” she laughs, noting the countless number of times she has been bitten by penguins. But such occurrences prove that the animals have what it takes to thrive once they return to their habitats.

“We like things to be a bit sassy and then it just shows they’ve got a bit of spunk and some fight in them.”