The volunteer wildlife rehabilitation sector provides specialised care and treatment for injured, sick and orphaned native animals and delivers an important service to the community.
The Office of Environment and Heritage (OEH) has been consulting with participants in the sector to better understand the work they do and the challenges they face, and to explore how the services they provide can be more effectively supported into the future. Opportunities to comment on the Strategy closed 12 April 2019
We prepared a strategy that:
- outlined the actions we will undertake to strategically support the wildlife rehabilitation sector
- incorporated actions for the sector already funded through the NSW Koala Strategy, to be augmented by additional funding provided by the Foundation for National Parks and Wildlife
- outlined a new system of accreditation for wildlife rescue and rehabilitation providers in line with new requirements under the Biodiversity Conservation Act 2016.
Strategy for the volunteer wildlife rehabilitation sector
The strategy and supporting documents about the review findings, recommendations and proposed accreditation system are available for download.
- Strategy document
- Support document – Review of the NSW Volunteer Wildlife Rehabilitation Sector
- Support document – Accreditation of wildlife rescue and rehabilitation services
- Support document – Wildlife rehabilitator compliance audit
Next steps
At the close of the public exhibition period, we will consider all submissions and prepare a submissions report. Submissions will be published on the OEH website where the authors have provided their approval for them to be published.
After considering all submissions, we will work in partnership with the wildlife rehabilitation sector to co-design a system of accreditation and finalise an initial transition process to accreditation prior to full introduction in late December 2019.
More information
Read more about wildlife rehabilitation.
For further information about the regulation of the wildlife rehabilitation sector please contact the Biodiversity and Wildlife team by email npws.bwt@environment.nsw.gov.au