Wildlife Rehabilitation Internship

Essential Questions:

• How does treatment differ for different types of animals, wild and domestic, and how do you learn what types of treatment techniques are best?
• How can shadowing a professional veterinarian help me to better understand wildlife rehabilitation and release?
• How can learning the best methods to use when caring for injured/sick wildlife, help me to better care for animals on my farm (chickens, geese, sheep, and wild animals), especially since vets aren’t trained to support long-term health?

 

Statement of Purpose

For my senior project, I will be interning at the Ravensbeard Wildlife Rehabilitation Center. I will get to closely observe veterinarians and hopefully get to care for different species of birds, all of which will allow me to figure out if I want to become a veterinarian. I am very interested in caring for birds so this will allow me to learn what common kinds of injures certain species of birds are prone to, and how you can treat them.

 

Overview: Describe your topic and project to the committee.

This project is something I’ve always wanted to do and haven’t yet been able to, so senior project is a great opportunity to allow me to learn, and document all the good experience I get from this internship. I will be working for about 20 or more hours a week at Ravensbeard Wildlife Rehabilitation Center in Upstate NY, and they deal with injured birds (they take in a lot of owls, and other birds like woodcocks, ravens, pigeons, etc). This internship will allow me to watch and learn from professionals in this field, as well as get hands on experience working with these animals and helping to rehabilitate and release them back into their natural habitat. I have some prior knowledge is caring for farm animals, but other than chickens and geese, I haven’t worked with different kinds of birds, and haven’t given any animals extensive medical care before. This project will incorporate creativity, and courage because in order to figure out how to treat a certain injury in a bird, you have to first be creative in your approach to the situation. This internship will also incorporate courage because it’s very difficult to care for some animals sometimes because not all of them will survive, and I have to be prepared for that.

 

How will you measure your success?

I will have has a successful senior project if I am able to spend lots of time around animals and help veterinarians to care for and treat them. If I come out of these 5-6 weeks having more knowledge relating to caring for injured/sick birds then this will have been a successful project. I know I will learn new skills and figure out if this is what I want to do with the rest of my life. I’m also going to be recording and reflecting on everything I do/learn throughout this process, so I will be able to see on paper as well if it was in fact successful.

 

Learning Goals:

• Learn how a veterinary hospital/rehabilitation center is run, takes in animals, releases animals, etc.
• Shadow professional vets and learn from them the most efficient and effective ways to treat different injures in a variety of species of birds
• Document what I learn and takeaway from this experience, and figure out if this is something I want to continue studying in college, and as a future career (through reflective writing, poetry, photographs, film, etc.)

 

Resource List 

SPCA Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/DCSPCA

Ravensbeard website: https://ravensbeard.org/

Ravensbeard Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/RavensbeardWildlifeCenter/

American Veterinary Medical Association website: https://www.avma.org/journals

(I will also likely subscribe to a veterinary magazine as soon as I find a free online one)

 

Possible books I’m going to read (I haven’t chosen the ones I’m going to read just yet):

• Becoming a Veterinarian by Boris Kachka
• Leaders of the Pack: Women and the Future of Veterinary Medicine by Donald Frederick Smith and Julie Kumble
• The Bird Way: A New Look at How Birds Talk, Work, Play, Parent, and Think by Jennifer Ackerman
• Getting a Job in Wildlife Biology: What it’s Like and What You Need to Know by Stephanie Grace Schuttler
• My Double Life: Memoirs of a Naturalist by Frances Hamerstrom
• Never Turn Your Back on an Angus Crow: My Life as a Country Vet by Dr. Jan Pol

 

Daily Plan & Schedule

Week 1: April 11 – April 18 –> Start interning at Ravensbeard, check in with the cohorts every Monday and Thursday, continue taking calculus with Manjula twice a week at LREI

Week 2: April 18 – April 25 –> Continue interning at the organization, continue checking in with the cohorts, documenting my learning/experience (through photos, videos, writing, poetry, research), continue taking calculus, possibly start online course on animal behavior and welfare, start reading relevant book

Week 3: April 25 – May 2 –> Continue interning and continue to document and reflect on my experience though (through photos, videos, writing, poetry, research, etc.), continue meeting and taking calculus, continue reading relevant books/online resources, continue taking online course on animal behavior and welfare

Week 4: May 2 – May 9 –> Continue interning and continue to document and reflect on my experience though (through photos, videos, writing, poetry, research, etc.), continue meeting and taking calculus, continue reading relevant books/online resources, continue taking online course on animal behavior and welfare

Week 5: May 9 – May 16 –> Continue interning and continue to document and reflect on my experience though (through photos, videos, writing, poetry, research, etc.), continue meeting and taking calculus, continue reading relevant books/online resources, continue taking online course on animal behavior and welfare

Week 6: May 16 – May 23 –> Finalize reflections and put together photos, videos, writing reflections, poetry and other documentation materials gathered during this 6 week experience, continue interning for this week and taking calculus, as well as finishing relevant books/other online resources, and finish online course

 

Documentation Plan:

To document my work throughout the 5-6 weeks of my senior project, I plan to take photos, videos, as well as reflect on what I’m learning through writing at least a couple of times a week or possibly daily. I also plan to document the research and reading that I do relating to this project. I’ve also enjoyed writing poetry throughout this past trimester and I might want to somehow incorporate poetry into the documentation as well. I then hope to put all of these forms of documentation together into some sort of poster or something else, which would allow me to display it all side by side.

 

Material Needs

Out of school needed materials:

• Camera/Phone (to document everything)
• Notebook (To do daily/weekly writing reflections on my experiences)
• Etc.

(I don’t think I need to request any materials from the school as of right now at least)

 

Backup Plan

If somehow the internship I confirmed falls through, I have a couple of backup plans that still relate to my general topic, goals, and essential questions. One possible plan is interning at two other possible organizations (both of which I did initially contact and are in the proximate area in Upstate NY). Another possibility is shadowing a farm vet (already know a farm vet personally) and observe how she treats/cares for farm animals. Another idea is filming a documentary of my own farm other farms in the area, as well as large-scale commercial farms if possible to show the difference in process, and product. (However if I end up doing this project I would likely have to change my essential questions).