If you have ever asked us our rates of “success”— the number of animals we actually release to the wild— you probably recall getting a polite non-answer. It may look like a red flag for a rehabilitator to not publicize their numbers, but the reason we don’t share them isn’t because our numbers are low. It’s because our numbers are misleading.
Take, for example, this year. We have only had one animal— Dammit the beaver— die in our care in 2025. We have had just two that were humanely euthanized. That doesn’t mean we’re doing an exceptionally good job compared to rehabilitators that have lost or euthanized dozens. It just means we’re taking the easy cases.
I (Juniper, the director) had major surgery to essentially have my leg broken and rebuilt in February, and I’m slow on my feet and my schedule is full of physical therapy. I decided early on that it would be inhumane and irresponsible to take newborn baby animals this year, during their most fragile stage, because I can’t be fast enough on my feet to bottle-feed thirty newborns six times a day and still manage to take care of everyone else. I also chose to take only a very small number of animals needing intensive care, for the same reason.
In other words, the high rates of “success” are a reflection of taking more stable patients, not a reflection of the quality of care. In the years when we’ve admitted tons of starved orphan newborns, animals with catastrophic injuries like disembowelment, and animals that arrived actively infected with fatal illnesses, our rates of both euthanasia and death in care were quite high.
At a conference, an instructor representing one of the largest and best-staffed rehabilitation facilities in the country asked the audience about what their actual rates of successful release are. Numbers were all over the place. Rehabbers who took only healthy older orphans, not sick or injured animals, had release rates of 90% or higher. Most people hung their heads and quietly said a number around 60%. A suburb-based songbird rehabilitator— someone who, no doubt, took in countless birds fatally injured by cats— quietly admitted release rates of less than 20%. The person teaching the class revealed that, after analyzing over a decade of records, her large, world-class rehabilitation facility only released 31% of animals admitted to their care— a result of taking many of the most hopeless cases, while less skilled rehabilitators often took the easier ones.
The reason we’re sharing all of this is because it’s important for the public to look at quality of care, not numbers, when determining which rehabilitators to support, and to understand why you’re unlikely to get an honest answer when asking about release rates. It’s also a reminder that success can take many forms.
Releasing an animal back to the wild is the success we always want. But ending the suffering of a fatally injured fawn, doing the best possible job with a critically emaciated newborn bobcat, or placing a disabled animal in an accredited education facility? Those are all successes too, even when they’re the ones rehabilitators don’t like to openly acknowledge.
For Fox Sake Wildlife Rescue 