Technology Mission Statement

The Wildlife Center of Virginia
P.O. Box 1557
Waynesboro, VA 22980
540.942.9453
http://www.wildlifecenter.org

Established in 1982, The Wildlife Center of Virginia is the nation's leading hospital for native wildlife. Each year, the Center provides state-of-the-art veterinary care to thousands of injured and orphaned wild animals with the goal of returning them to the wild. Bluebirds, bald eagles, bobcats, and box turtles are only a few of the species that are rehabilitated at our hospital in Waynesboro, Virginia. Every wild patient that we treat teaches us about the dangers wildlife face everyday and how people can help prevent injury. Additionally, the problems of these creatures offer valuable insights for measuring and improving the environmental health of our own communities.

The mission of The Wildlife Center of Virginia is "teaching the world to care about and care for wildlife and the environment." In this, the Center is unique among wildlife care and conservation organizations. In addition to actively using and promoting the use of veterinary medicine in mainstream wildlife conservation and environmental education, the Center teaches others to do the same. Furthermore, the Center brings its perspective as a wildlife hospital to important deliberations on matters related to wildlife and environmental policy. The Center takes an active role in a diverse array of wildlife conservation issues, ranging from the drafting of government regulations to the improvement of international conservation policies. By providing a consistent and credible voice for conservation medicine, the Wildlife Center's influence is amplified and extended across North America and indeed throughout the world.

A critically important part of this extended reach is the ability and availability to participate in relevant public policy processes and discussions wherever and whenever they occur. To remain effective, the Center must also actively participate and take a leadership role in professional associations, conferences, symposia and policy sessions on conservation and environmental issues. The Center must maintain a high profile, both within the conservation community and in the public at large, if its positions on policy issues are to continue to have significant influence.

Most of the training and public education programs of the Wildlife Center of Virginia have utilized traditional venues and presentation technologies. In nearly all cases, the presenter was in the physical presence of the students or clients. In the future, other options need to be explored. While traditional training will always have its place, new approaches will have to be considered for the delivery of training and support on a wider scale. It is simply impractical and inefficient to move people when it is information that really needs to move.

Distance Learning is emerging as an important vehicle for the delivery of academic courses at colleges and universities, as well as for professional training through associations and trade organizations. Technologies available to support such distant learning are developing at an astonishing rate. In the last five years alone, the Internet has become prominent not only in information exchange and commerce, but in formal training as well.

Computer technologies and interactive information systems provide many new opportunities for enhanced learning even in traditional classroom settings. These technologies are also being used in the field of medicine, allowing the expertise of doctors and technicians to meet the needs of patients half a world away. New facilities, developed for skills training, education, or any type of medicine, that fail to anticipate and incorporate these new technologies may be obsolete before they are completed.

The Wildlife Center of Virginia wishes to undertake a comprehensive examination of appropriate information and education technologies that can and should be incorporated into the design of both its facilities and new programs. This technology will include computer assisted learning systems for onsite students, and systems for the delivery of real time, interactive training and medical consultation to remote locations. The remote delivery of information and education will be especially critical as the Wildlife Center continues to expand its international training programs throughout Latin America and beyond. It is often impractical or impossible for students from other countries to travel long distances to attend short seminars or training programs regardless of how important the information presented may be to their activities. New methods for delivering this information must be found.

To achieve these goals, in the fall of 2000 the Wildlife Center began planning a series of carefully layered technology projects. Twelve technology companies and twenty-two professionals are volunteering services toward these projects, bringing expertise from broadband transport and network architecture to web design, database architecture to video streaming. Each finds they can research technology applications unavailable within their normal business operations while revolutionizing environmental education and wildlife veterinary medicine.

This exploration and evaluation will include onsite visits to training technology centers, consultation with experts and specialist in the field, and discussions with equipment providers. The results of this evaluation will be incorporated into the Center's new training programs and will weigh heavily in the final design of facilities expansion. Ultimately, the goal will be to develop a new training center that will fully and effectively utilize information technologies, and have the capacity to grow as the technology continues to expand and improve.