Upon reporting from private citizens, law enforcement agencies and 118, our volunteers, equipped with mobile emergency units and capture and first aid equipment, intervene very quickly to rescue the injured animal and provide it with initial assistance.
The timeliness of our interventions is essential, especially in critical situations such as road accidents caused by a collision between a wild animal and a vehicle. In these cases, our promptness can make a difference not only for the health of the animal involved, but also for public safety, and this is why we are available and active 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
Every animal that arrives at the CRAS Rifugio Matildico in critical health conditions is visited very quickly by a veterinarian who establishes the necessary treatment plan, which in some cases may also include urgent surgical interventions.
For the entire period of hospitalization, the care of injured animals is carried out by our volunteers who assist them every day, feeding them, caring for them and treating them according to the indications provided by the veterinarian.
When the animals complete the process of recovering their full functionality, they are released into nature, preferably in the same area where they were recovered. This is our way of giving them back their freedom and contributing to maintaining the ecological balance. The intensity and importance of what we do is defined by the numbers of the service we carry out every year: we host 4,950 animals, of which 85% are reintroduced into nature, we carry out 1,000 emergency interventions and we travel 235,000 kilometers to recover the animals.
Within our CRAS we have looked after numerous wildlife species such as the hedgehog, fox, squirrel, porcupine, wolf, badger, roe deer, fallow deer, golden eagle, hawk, kestrel, owl, scops owl and many others.
We actively collaborate with Lipu, Legambiente, Enpa, SOS Riccio, State Forestry Corps, Ecozoophile Guards, Provincial Police and Carabinieri.
Our commitment does not stop here and goes beyond animal care, as we believe that awareness and education are fundamental to promoting an environment in which humans and animals can coexist harmoniously. We organize environmental education projects in schools and awareness initiatives to promote the protection of wildlife.
Furthermore, we constantly provide information on the distribution of various species and the causes of injury/mortality of fauna, allowing the collection of scientific health, biological and ecological data, useful for improving the management of wildlife resources and nature conservation.