Wildlife Emergency Response Services Data Provide Insights into Human and Non-Human Threats to Wildlife and the Response to Those Threats

Abstract

Our transformation of global environments into human-dominated landscapes has important consequences for wildlife. Globally, wildlife is interacting with humans or impacted by human activities, which often results in negative outcomes such as population declines, disruption of social bonds, biodiversity loss, imperilment of threatened species, and harm to individual animals. Human and non-human threats to wildlife can be challenging to quantify and tend to be poorly understood especially over large spatial scales and in urban environments. The extent to which such damage is mitigated by reactive approaches (e.g., wildlife rescue) is also not well understood. We used data from the main state-based Wildlife Emergency Response Services (WERS) in Victoria, Australia to address these issues. The data, which describe tens of thousands of cases of threats to wildlife annually over a ten-year period, allowed a detailed characterisation of the type and extent of threats in the state. We identified the main common and threatened species impacted by various threats and showed that the vast majority of them were anthropogenic (e.g., vehicle collisions, cat attacks, and entanglements). The extent to which different taxonomic groups and species were impacted by various threats differed and threats were dependent on locations. The Greater Melbourne area was identified as a hotspot for threats to wildlife. The WERS was able to source service providers for thousands of animals annually, facilitating their assessment, release into the wild and rehabilitation. However, every year, thousands of animals died or were euthanased and thousands more were left unattended. WERS case reports are increasing and there is a growing service–demand gap. Whilst studies reporting on the demand and response of WERS are rare, situations in other parts of Australia and the world might be similar. This highlights the urgent need to understand and mitigate human and non-human threats to wildlife, particularly in urban environments, where the rate of biodiversity loss is high. We discuss opportunities and barriers to doing so.