Spring Break 2015

Danielle Maros

MGT 341-001

March 23, 2015

Spring Break Behavior

Over spring break I had the opportunity to visit North Carolina on a service trip through the University of Alabama. This was a school sponsored community service trip where myself and 24 other students would be assisting a wildlife rehabilitation center.

Over the course of a week I got to work in a small wildlife rehabilitation center focused mainly on rehabilitating injured animals and then releasing them into the wild, however if the staff at the center does not feel that the animal would be able to survive in the wild they keep it at the center permanently to give it a good home. In the beginning I believed, wholeheartedly, that this was an extremely noble thing for these volunteers to be doing; I felt that helping wounded animals was an extremely positive way to give back to the earth and the community.

However, one of my fellow volunteers pointed out to me halfway through the week that she felt that we were helping the center commit what she called “borderline animal abuse”. At first I wasn’t completely grasping what she was trying to tell me, but she eventually explained to me that the center did not have enough space for all of the animals, so it appeared that a lot of them were crammed into cages together – which made the cages get dirtier faster, with no one to clean them for a whole day sometimes. She then asked me, who were we and the other volunteers to be deciding if these animals were well enough or strong enough to make it in the wild? To that I had no response, but it did get me thinking that we might have been messing with nature by not allowing these animals to live as nature intended them.

While I still feel that what the volunteers at the wildlife rehabilitation center were trying to do something good, I have to wonder if it was almost borderline unethical because of a lack of funding and space. I feel that they could take better care of their animals if they...