What’s the Big Deal? Responder Experiences of Large Animal Rescue in Australia

Conclusion LAR is clearly a ‘big deal’ to animal owners, emergency response personnel. The management of large animals during disasters creates difficult operational environments that present several challenges to emergency responders. In order to be successful, it requires emergency responder personnel that have specialist training, access to resources, local knowledge, and coordination among various emergency service providers. This study would seem to suggest that the way forwards is not to ask emergency responders to change their current model or compromise their mandate to privilege human life, but rather to coordinate more effectively with organisations and services that are already established and experienced dealing with large animals in natural disasters, and also to build working relationships with owners. Unfortunately, the cost of not taking action in terms of coordinated LAR, is poor outcomes for animal welfare, the community, and emergency responders themselves.
Source: PLOS Currents Disasters - Category: Global & Universal Authors: Source Type: research