The Spiritual Ecology Emerging From the Experience of Wildlife Rehabilitation

Wildlife rehabilitators and rescuers are partaking in intimate and transformative experiences with nonhuman animals regularly. They engage in perceptual reciprocity and cultivating personal ecosophies, and often act outside regulatory and social norms employed by government agencies and environmentalists to protect humans and nature from each other. This paper examines the unique relationships forged between wildlife rehabilitators and the animals in their care, and how those relationships create a kind of spiritual ecology.