The Ohio Inmates Teaching Baby Wildlife to Survive

Behind the brick walls and barbed wire of a correctional facility in Ohio, a small aviary holds rows of birdcages separated by species — swallows, robins, cardinals, blue jays, and finches. A gravel-bottom enclosure houses ducklings. Outside, cages hold rabbits, opossums, and squirrels. The animals are not pets. They are patients. And the men caring for them are volunteers.

The program is a partnership between the Ohio Wildlife Center, based in Columbus, and five correctional institutions across the state. Every year, hundreds of orphaned and injured animals that pass through the center’s hospital are transferred to incarcerated volunteers for the extended care they need before release back into the wild. According to Smithsonian Magazine, more than 60 inmates across multiple correctional facilities in Ohio currently participate in the program.

Why Prisons Work for Wildlife

The Ohio Wildlife Center’s wildlife rehabilitation operational director, Brittany Jordan, told Smithsonian Magazine that correctional facilities offer something difficult to replicate elsewhere: time, quiet, and consistency. Young songbirds may require feeding every 15 minutes. Baby rabbits are so sensitive to stress that even the sound of a dog barking can be fatal. Prison environments — free of domesticated animals, young children, and the unpredictability of a typical household — provide a level of controlled calm that benefits recovering wildlife.

“And, most importantly,” Jordan said, “they need time.” The men who volunteer in the program have that in abundance. They are taught to feed by hand, administer medication, monitor weight and behavior, and understand when an animal is ready to be returned to the wild. Because inmates do not have internet access, correctional staff serve as liaisons to the Ohio Wildlife Center, fielding questions and relaying guidance.

What It Gives Back

The animals are not the only ones being rehabilitated. Participants across the program describe the work as transformative in ways that are difficult to articulate but easy to observe. One inmate at Marion Correctional Institution, who has been incarcerated for five decades, was among the first to join when the program launched. “Some of these birds coming in, it crushes you to see them,” he told Smithsonian. “Then, to see one getting stronger and the strength coming back in it, the life coming back in it — it’s awesome.”

Another participant at Richland Correctional Institution described the work as helping him recover from post-traumatic stress disorder he developed during a cancer battle while incarcerated. The program, he said, gave him somewhere to direct his attention and something genuinely dependent on his care. Multiple participants told reporters that when they are released, they plan to continue volunteering in wildlife rehabilitation.

A Partnership That Keeps Growing

The Ohio Wildlife Center admitted approximately 9,000 animals from nearly 200 species in a recent year, according to its own data. Around 70 percent of the animals that require extended care after hospital treatment are placed with incarcerated volunteers — a figure that speaks to how central the prison program has become to the center’s operations.

David Donahue, the center’s development and communications manager, put it plainly in reporting by Richland Source: the incarcerated volunteers reduce the burden on the center’s other volunteers and allow staff to focus their efforts elsewhere. “They support us so that we can focus our efforts elsewhere,” he said.

A Quiet Kind of Good

There are no cameras at the moment a robin takes its first unassisted flight. No audience when a squirrel, raised on formula in a prison cell, finally disappears into the tree line. What happens in those moments belongs entirely to the people who made them possible — men who signed up to care for something small and fragile, and found that the act of doing so changed something in themselves.

It is, as one Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction official put it, a program where both the animals and the people are being rehabilitated. That is a rare thing to be able to say about anything.

References: Prison Rehab Rescue Animals | In Prisons Across Ohio, Inmates Are Rehabilitating Orphaned and Injured Wildlife | Ohio Inmates Find Meaning by Saving Orphaned and Injured Animals