Rehabilitation
Animals go through untold suffering as a product of mankind’s folly. AWARE aims to redress this balance by providing quality veterinary care and rehabilitation to wild animals that have been injured directly or indirectly at the hand of man. AWARE believes that every animal’s LIFE is precious. However if rehabilitation will cause undue stress on an animal, it will be humanely euthanased.
AWARE also recognises disease threats in wildlife and aims to treat sick or disease-threatened animals either individually or on a ‘herd health’ basis.
The Trust believes in utilising whatever resources are available to perform immediate and necessary tasks. However, it is AWARE’s long term vision to provide, as headquarters, a purpose-built animal hospital with facilities to deal with all wildlife species. This will include in-house laboratory facilities and state of the art diagnostic equipment, which may be used as a referral centre for other veterinarians. The Trust ultimately aims to offer a flying veterinary service especially for wildlife emergencies in remote or inaccessible areas.
To date, we have been relying on local small animal veterinary surgeries to loan us the use of their facilities to deal with wildlife cases. AWARE is slowly procuring its own set of medical and surgical equipment for use in the field.
Latest updates
Owlie
‘Owlie’, a beautiful spotted eagle owl that was hit by a car in February, is currently in a large aviary being ‘babysat’ by Fiona Saunders. He continues to improve and is no longer balancing with his left wing on the ground, but is holding it in an anatomical position. His right foot is now able to extend and support him on a perch. We intend to “soft release” him at Bally Vaughan Animal Sanctuary as soon as Sarah comes back from honeymoon!
More about Owlie's story in our April 2009 newsletter
Lions moved to new homes
Lone lionesses at Bally Vaughan Animal Sanctuary and Imire Game Park received new mates, when Nduna, a 3 year old lion, and Teddy (pictured on our home page), a gorgeous retired 10 year old stud were translocated by AWARE vets from a lion breeding programme in Gweru. Poppy, a spayed female at Imire, is besotted with Teddy – who wouldn’t be! – whilst he displays arrogant male indifference to her. Kadiki, meanwhile, who doesn’t really know she’s a lioness, is jealously guarding her toys and water trough from this new interloper. Hopefully, her hormones should soon start persuading her that it would be worthwhile to form a bond with Nduna – even if he has been vasectomised by AWARE vets! More in our next newsletter.
Leopard in northern suburbs
There have been no further sightings of a leopard that killed and ate a Boerbul dog in Harare’s northern suburbs in April. AWARE was granted a permit by Parks and Wildlife Management Authority (PWMA) to trap the animal and translocate it to Mana Pools. However, the leopard had other ideas and has not been seen since.
