Wildlife rehabilitation is the treatment and subsequent release of injured wildlife. Wildlife rehabilitation benefits individual animals receiving care, but also supports Conservation Medicine approaches by providing opportunities to monitor wildlife health, contaminant loads, and disease prevalence. However, it is typically considered to have negligible effects on population growth, and has not traditionally been acknowledged as an effective tool for wildlife conservation. To explore whether rehabilitation and release could directly support population recovery in some cases (i.e., increase population growth rates), we considered five case study species along a spectrum of life-history strategies (Raccoon, Painted Turtle, Blanding’s Turtle, Snapping Turtle, and Little Brown Bat). We simulated populations over 200 years, while varying two parameters: 1) the rate of severe injury (0, 1, 2, or 5 % of the population); and 2) how many of these injured animals are successfully rehabilitated (0, 10, 25, or 50 %). The effect of the rehabilitation scenarios was largest when additive severe injury rates were highest (5 %). Species that were most sensitive to increased adult injury rates (turtles and bats) also exhibited the greatest population-level responses to rehabilitation and release interventions. We conclude that wildlife rehabilitation can support in situ recovery and help stabilize declining populations when 1) injury is an ongoing source of high additive mortality, 2) the target population is small, 3) the species exhibits a K-selected life-history strategy, 4) rehabilitation can be combined with other interventions, including in situ threat mitigations, and 5) rehabilitation efforts do not jeopardize or limit in situ conservation interventions.

野生动物康复是对受伤的野生动物的治疗和随后的释放。野生动物的康复不仅有益于接受护理的个体动物，而且还通过提供监测野生生物健康，污染物负荷和疾病流行的机会来支持“保护医学”方法。但是，通常认为它对种群增长的影响可忽略不计，并且传统上没有被认为是野生动植物保护的有效工具。探索在某些情况下，恢复和释放是否可以直接支持人口的恢复（即，增加种群增长率），我们考虑了一系列生活史策略（浣熊，彩龟，斑丁龟，鳄龟和小棕蝙蝠）中的五个案例研究物种。我们模拟了超过200年的人口，同时改变了两个参数：1）严重伤害的发生率（人口的0、1、2或5％）；2）这些受伤的动物中有多少成功康复的（0％，10％，25％或50％）。当加重严重伤害率最高（5％）时，康复方案的效果最大。对成年伤害率增加最敏感的物种（海龟和蝙蝠）也表现出对康复和释放干预措施的最大的种群响应。我们得出的结论是，野生动植物的康复可以在原地提供支持当1）伤害是造成高附加死亡率的持续来源时，2）目标种群很小，3）该物种表现出K选择的生命史策略，4）康复可以与其他干预措施结合使用，从而恢复健康并帮助稳定数量下降的种群，包括减轻现场威胁，以及5）修复工作不会危害或限制现场保护措施。