Wildlife hospital

Kanyana’s hospital is open 365 days a year and accepts any sick, injured, orphaned, or displaced wildlife. After being assessed by our treatment people the animal is taken through the stages of intensive care, acclimatisation and then pre-release. Kanyana’s main aim is to release wildlife back into the wild.

Tracy BrownellSome animals are able to be released immediately, and some will be in care for months. It costs Kanyana around $45 to admit an animal into our hospital. Ongoing care and food costs at least $10 per day per animal.

The hospital is run by approximately 300 volunteers. The work is broken down into three shifts per day, and many volunteers complete several shifts per week. If you’re interested in volunteering at the hospital, please register for our next Information Evening.


Why can’t I feed wildlife?

All animals in the wild are put at risk when kind-hearted humans decide to feed them. Here’s what can happen:


The animals you feed often become dependent on handouts. Such dependency can even be passed to their offspring, threatening the species’ long-term survival.


Food trays attract close and unnatural groupings of animals. Communicable diseases may spread between them.

Population imbalances

Animals may converge on your home in unsustainable populations, disrupting their migratory patterns and displacing other species.

Pest problems

Food attracts rodents. Rodents attract snakes!

Reduces an animal’s natural wariness of people

Possums and birds may invade your home or campsite in search of food. Kangaroos, with their sharp claws and powerful kicks, may prove difficult to dissuade from coming back.

Upsets the animal’s balanced diet

By giving mince with insufficient calcium to birds, you can cause Metabolic Bone Disease.

Feeding our magpies to death

There are many kind folk in WA who love to feed families of magpies and other neighbourhood birds. The problem for the birds is that the kindness can kill them. It’s all to do with calcium.

When magpies are fed regularly on mincemeat and other red meat, they come to rely on the food source. But sadly mince, or even prime steak, doesn’t give enough calcium for magpies to grow strong bones and beaks. Nestlings that have been fed a human diet will often break their legs the first time they attempt to leave the nest. Beaks too can become brittle and break because of the kind-heartedness of caring people.

The best approach is to avoid feeding magpies and instead provide them with a birdbath and keep it constantly filled. Then you can enjoy their company without risking their lives.

Don’t feed the galahs

Putting seed out for galahs and parrots is a sure way to spread a deadly internal parasite. It’s called Avian Gastric Yeast and it is infecting big numbers of seed-eating birds.

Kanyana carers have a treatment but the death rate is still high. When people put out seed in trays or feeders, there’s a high risk of parasite contamination from bird droppings and this puts feathered lives in danger.

The great fear is that the parasite will get into out endangered populations of red and white-tailed black cockatoos. As with all birds, the best way to help them is to stop feeding them and instead, build a birdbath and keep it constantly filled.