Animal Rescue Volunteer (Southend-on-Sea)

Our Wildlife Casualty Volunteers (WCVs) support the vital front line work of our Inspectorate.

You'll be collecting confined birds (up to the size of a gull) and small wild mammals from members of the public and taking them to vets, approved wildlife or RSPCA facilities. In some instances you'll help release rehabilitated wildlife back into the environment from which they were rescued.

The WCV role is similar to a “first responder” type role. You'll receive details of collection tasks via our Volunteering App, Assemble. You'll need to maintain a rota to tell us about your availability to volunteer, and update the 'OnCall' status of your Assemble App when you start your shift. Our National Control Centre will then contact you when they receive calls about wildlife collections in your area.

For this role you'll need access to a vehicle and smartphone. We'll provide you with everything else you'll need including a lone working safety device, carry boxes and PPE.

You'll also need to commit to completing our comprehensive training programme for new WCVs. This consists of a series of online eLearning modules, which can take up to 5 hours to complete, and a day spent with one of our Inspectorate team out in the field.

Since 2017 our WCV volunteers across England and Wales together have carried out over 5000 collections.