NSW launched a review of wildlife care in 2024. Now the results are in

The NSW government will inject $9 million into the state’s wildlife rescue sector after an 18-month review found systemic problems with lack of funding, volunteer burnout, poor organisational culture, and access to veterinary care.

Environment Minister Penny Sharpe has accepted the recommendations of the review in full, including to reinstate the popular Wildlife Heroes program as a central hub for information, and to strengthen the role of the NSW Wildlife Council as a quasi-peak body.

“We’ve known that our carers were under immense pressure and this review gives us a clear direction to support the work they do,” Sharpe said in a statement. “The work our carers do to rehabilitate our native animals is irreplaceable.”

The package includes enhanced training opportunities and mental health support for volunteers, as well as grants to cover food, bandages, medication and vaccinations. The review, led by NSW Parliamentary Secretary Trish Doyle, found the most consistent and urgent request was for reliable and ongoing funding.

NSW Wildlife Council chairperson Sonja Elwood welcomed the funding.

“The cost of wildlife care is significant,” she said. “Hearing that some of the funding will be put towards supporting small operational expenses and collaborative initiatives is most encouraging as the majority of our members fund these expenses out of their own pockets.”

Wildlife volunteers were grappling with a high number of flying fox deaths in the current heatwave, Elwood said.

Hills Wildlife Sanctuary chief executive Ben Dessen said $9 million was “a fantastic start”, but called for ongoing government funding, given the value of the sector was $27 million a year. While WIRES raised more than $100 million from international and Australian donations during the 2019-20 bushfires, and is yet to spend most of it, many smaller organisations operate on tiny budgets and volunteers’ own contributions.

Dessen, who participated in roundtables hosted by Doyle, said a lot of the sector’s issues were rooted in a lack of funds.

“If we had reliable ongoing funding to support the work that the sector does, we can support the carers,” he said. “We can support their mental health. We can take off the financial burden that they have at a personal level. We can build infrastructure. We can fund and build wildlife hospitals. We can have emergency response teams that can respond to natural disasters.”

Dessen noted that the government contributed $40 million to a wildlife hospital being built by Taronga Zoo, and that level of investment across the state, available to all groups, would be huge for the sector.

There were 7506 wildlife rehabilitation volunteers in July 2025, down from a peak of 8621 in 2022 but up from 5602 in 2019, before the Black Summer bushfires. The Doyle review found, based on surveys, that this was because of consistent turnover, with the number of volunteers leaving each year roughly matching those recruited. Dissatisfaction among volunteers peaked after six to 10 years of service, indicating that experienced volunteers were more likely to perceive organisational shortcomings.

There are 43 licensed wildlife rehabilitation providers across NSW, including 10 animal display establishments, eight central facilities, 17 home-based care groups and eight independent licensees. Most dedicated wildlife hospitals are in northern NSW, while western NSW, the South Coast and the Snowy Mountains are dominated by small home-based care groups that often struggle to access specialised veterinary care.

Most wildlife treatment occurs in general practice settings without specialised licensing, and less than half of veterinarians have received formal wildlife training in the past five years, the review found. More than one in three veterinarians treat native wildlife multiple times daily and less than one in five provide daily care, while most said they don’t charge for wildlife care.

Wildlife carers reported operational failures: forty-eight per cent rated executive-member conflict handling as poor and 47 per cent expressed dissatisfaction with timely conflict management. “These findings suggest systemic weaknesses in dispute resolution and member care,” the review said.

On the positive side, 72 per cent of volunteers found the government’s new and updated standards of care useful.

The review noted a range of submissions about WIRES, the largest wildlife rescue organisation in Australia, including concerns from some wildlife carers about independent oversight of the charity and the way its head office works with its branches.

However, the review did not provide any recommendations specific to WIRES. Instead, it proposed to bolster the NSW Wildlife Council, which represents 68 per cent of wildlife volunteers across 30 of the 43 providers, by offering closer collaboration with the Department of Climate Change, Energy, Environment and Water.

Elwood said working more closely with the government would boost projects such as emergency responses for wildlife, H5N1 avian flu preparedness, training, and the development and review of codes of practice.

WIRES, which is not a member of the council, declined to comment while it considered the review.

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