What should you do and whom should you notify when you encounter a healthy or sick wild animal?
As reported by Gmina Warta Bolesławiecka:
An animal may be placed in a veterinary facility or animal rehabilitation centre if the centre agrees to accept it and finance the costs of transport and treatment. Such centres may receive funding from the Regional Directorate for Environmental Protection. If a resident of the municipality decides to take a sick animal to a veterinarian, they must be prepared to cover the costs of any clinical examination and treatment, as well as assume responsibility for caring for the injured animal.
The municipal authorities explain:
Within Gmina Warta Bolesławiecka, there is a public benefit organisation called “Ośrodek Rehabilitacji Dzikich Zwierząt Klekusiowo”, based in Tomaszów Bolesławiecki. It treats sick animals and then returns them to the wild.
What about the municipality’s financial responsibility?
Gmina Warta Bolesławiecka emphasises:
On the part of the municipality, there are no legal grounds for the local government to bear the costs of providing emergency assistance to wild animals that have strayed into built-up areas. The municipality is not obliged to finance treatment for a sick animal. Neither the Act of 16 April 2004 on Nature Conservation nor the Act of 21 August 1997 on the Protection of Animals provides for an obligation to cover the costs of treating wild animals. The Act on the Protection of Animals obliges municipal authorities to provide care only for homeless domestic and farm animals (livestock), with homeless animals understood to mean domestic or farm animals whose owner cannot be identified, rather than undomesticated animals living independently of humans.
And explains:
The Act of 13 October 1995, the Hunting Law, obliges leaseholders and managers of hunting districts, as well as owners, holders and managers of land, to notify the State Veterinary Inspectorate in Wrocław, tel. 71 367 70 16/17, the Municipal Office or the nearest veterinary facility of observed symptoms of disease in free-living animals. However, it does not impose an obligation to finance treatment.
It also points out:
However, if there is a reasonable suspicion that an infectious disease is present, you should contact an official veterinarian, who has been appointed to combat infectious animal diseases, or notify the District Veterinary Inspectorate in Bolesławiec, ul. Górników 8, tel. 75 730 10 86.