Wildlife Rescue and Research Center veterinarian Hsiao Shun-ting (蕭舜庭) has called on the public to support the center so that it could treat more wild animals.
The center treats about 600 wild animals per year, of which 70 percent are birds, 20 percent are mammals and 10 percent are reptiles, said Hsiao, who is one of six veterinarians at the center.
He first worked at a veterinary clinic for pets after he graduated, but decided to work at the center after six months, Hsiao said.
“A vet’s job is to work with animals, domestic or wild, but pets have owners to decide what treatment they should get,” Hsiao added.
“It is a demanding job that requires around-the-clock service and a wide repertoire of knowledge,” as any animal, from a crab-eating mongoose to a Chinese box turtle or even a leopard cat, could be the next patient, Hsiao said.
Center veterinarians must base treatments on an animal’s habitat, its physiology and whether it is to be released back into the wild, he said.
Hsiao shared the experience of treating a turtle whose shell was broken, saying that it was similar to treating a fracture in a human.
“We had to piece the shell together and hold it together by fastening screws to ensure that it would heal,” Hsiao said.
Another case involved providing an intravenous drip for a pangolin cub after the person who found it accidentally fed it the wrong kind of food, he said.
Most birds treated at the center arrive with injuries caused by accidents, such as legs accidentally severed by farmers, Hsiao said, adding that they also treat baby birds blown out of nests.
People who find an injured animal should first check whether it is breathing and if it has external injuries, then it is up to a center veterinarian to attend to it and diagnose the injury or condition, he said.
All animals are kept for observation after treatment and processed for rehabilitation, before being prepared to be released back into the wild, Hsiao added.
Only 40 percent of the wild animals treated at the center can be released back into the wild, he said.
The center does consider using euthanasia if an animal is too severely injured or the center is running out of room for animals, although it houses some of the more friendly animals that are not fit to return to the wild, letting them help with training or education projects, he added.
The center, established in 1993, last year moved to Nantou County’s Jiji Township (集集), next to the Council of Agriculture’s Endemic Species Research Institute.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater