Meet Peter our new Wildlife Keeper

I have always loved animals. In college I studied animal rehabilitation. Since then, I’ve held many animal related jobs, working with exotic, domestic animals and wild/native animals. Animals are my passion and luckily they’re also my job. I had been out of the wildlife rehabilitation field for about a year and decided that I needed to get back into doing what I love.

Most rehab facilities do basically the same type of work, rehab injured and orphaned wild animals. VINS is a special facility because of the education component to it. Every animal caretaker in the world has two jobs. One is the husbandry of their animals, and two is teaching the public about them. Education is so important because most animals that come in to rehab centers across the world are human caused, directly or indirectly. 

VINS has an incredible staff on hand, from our education staff to our camp staff to our administrative staff and of course the rehabbers, each employee is committed to their job. Together we work to heal wildlife and educate people to prevent more incidents. It is every animal caretakers dream to be out of a job, meaning that we do such a good job of teaching that we actually reduce human related animal injuries.

After all being said my first days here have been amazing! My first day we had about 5-6 patients come in. That was crazy in itself, not to mention that I have to learn the procedures of VINS on top of admitting new birds. Just last week we released a Turkey Vulture (TUVU) that has been in our care for two months! I am very happy here at VINS and very proud of the work we do here!