Lithuania

 From rescue to rehab – life with LiSPA

Dr Ben Noreikis describes the varied work of LiSPA and the Naturewatch Foundation in Lithuania.

Never a dull moment

Here at our LiSPA Central Office, we receive such a wide variety of telephone calls requesting assistance or information that we can’t always work towards achieving certain planned aims or campaigns, but need to be able to react immediately to any given circumstance. Such calls include animal cruelty complaints, barking dog complaints, a nestful of baby birds that has supposedly been orphaned, an injured animal lying by the roadside, a pet shop that is suspected of overcrowding its animals, a student who is objecting to being asked to dissect an animal as part of his or her studies, a livestock transport driver who is sitting in a local pub whilst his ‘cargo’ is parked in the sweltering sun, a newspaper reporter who is following a lead on a story, a city official, a police officer… and everyone who calls wants a qualified answer that will hopefully correct a specific problem.
 

LiSPA receives these calls not only on weekdays from nine till five, but day and night, weekends and holidays. Included in our after-hours answerphone message is a mobile telephone number so that a caller can contact a qualified veterinarian and/or staff member in the event of an emergency. To the caller, it’s almost always an emergency, including such enquiries as ‘At what age will my puppy stop chewing my slippers?’
 

An abandoned nest of red squirrel kittens
 

LiSPA nationally serves a population of 3.5 million people with only a handful of staff and one animal rescue vehicle. Our organisation is concerned with all animals – livestock, laboratory, companion, wildlife and exotics. There is always much involved in relieving suffering for these animals, whether by lobbying for better enforcement of animal welfare legislation, promoting humane education programmes in schools, improving the captive environments for zoo animals or providing veterinary assistance to an animal in need. With the scope of our work being so broad, the planning or performing of certain activities are often interrupted. This has primarily proved to be due to providing a new, time-consuming and 24-hour service.

Wildlife rescue and rehab

A couple of years ago, LiSPA recognised the need for a Wildlife Rescue and Rehabilitation Department, as there was no such service provided for wild animals in Lithuania. We are now receiving injured and orphaned wildlife from all the districts throughout the country and the numbers of animals we receive is constantly growing. Many animals are transported to our Rehabilitation Department free of charge via the public bus system. After an initial telephone consultation with the finder of an animal in distress, the caller is instructed to confine the animal safely in a box, take it to the nearest bus station and ask the driver of the bus to Kaunas to deliver the ‘package’. LiSPA is then notified of the arrival time and a member of staff collects the animal from the Kaunas Bus Station. This system is very effective and saves LiSPA both man-hours and petrol.
 

Summertime is a very busy season for our Rehab Department, therefore we needed to hire more staff and recruit more volunteers. Without Naturewatch’s assistance LiSPA would not have been able to hire two new staff members – Dr Kristina Sajute and Rolandas Olisevicius.
 

Kristina is a qualified veterinary surgeon who had shown a keen interest in our work for many months. She visited us often, would always inquire about our activities and offer to help. She really enjoys working for the benefit of animals and the rewards that follow. Kristina is very gentle and patient, not only when treating the animals, but also in dealing with the people that bring animals to us or to those that just pop in for a visit. We are very pleased to have Kristina on staff, but unfortunately she will not be with us for very long, as she will be leaving us this autumn at the beginning of the new academic year. Kristina is pursuing another field besides veterinary medicine – she is also studying law. The combination of these two professions can prove to be extraordinarily valuable in animal welfare work. We hope to see Kristina return to LiSPA whenever her schedule permits.

Rolandas Olicevicius came to work at LiSPA via an entirely different and unexpected route. LiSPA has a supporter (who prefers not to be named) who works for Lithuania’s Secret Police. This officer genuinely despises thieves and those that are cruel to animals. He’s a frequent visitor to our Rehab Department and sometimes would bring his friend Rolandas along. Soon thereafter, Rolandas began to visit LiSPA on his own and volunteer his free time. His free time was without schedule as Rolandas had his own car repair business, and so had clients calling on him both day and night. Rolandas has since relinquished his business and now has such a variety of duties at LiSPA that it is difficult to give him a specific job title! He is the principal driver of our rescue vehicle, keeping it shiny and in proper working order. He rescues and releases animals, makes deliveries, assists the veterinarians, answers the telephone, cleans and disinfects cages, does general housekeeping, and maintains records. Regardless of his workload, he always does it with a smile, even if it’s in the middle of the night.
 

All of us at LiSPA express our gratitude to the supporters of Naturewatch Foundation. Without your support, our work in Lithuania would come to a grinding halt. Even though we are now members of the European Union, local fundraising towards improving animal welfare is still a most difficult task. We believe, however, that with time our people will begin to show increased philanthropic tendencies towards improving the welfare of animals that play a daily role in our lives.

Thank you for your concerns for animals abroad.

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