Statements
Mission
It's our mission at NWCC to empower our community to connect with the natural world, and coexist with our native wildlife, by providing education, rehabilitation, and environmental stewardship.
We are able to accomplish this work by fostering wildlife education in community spaces, providing wildlife rehabilitation services, and connecting residents to their urban natural areas through meaningful, collaborative programs and experiences.
Background
Nashville Wildlife Conservation Center (NWCC) is a 501(c)3 non-profit focused on connections between humans and wildlife. Launched in 2016 to serve as a link between high-potential, low-resource youth in Nashville and native wildlife, NWCC has since grown to serve children, adults, families, and visitors in Nashville. NWCC also provides wildlife rehabilitation services within its animal hospital and guidance to prevent human-wildlife encounters via an active intake line and social media initiatives. For rehabilitation needs beyond our expertise and/or capacity, NWCC serves as a major referral site to other certified wildlife rehabilitators in the area.
Impact
NWCC is one of the only certified wildlife rehabilitation centers in Middle Tennessee with a particular focus on wildlife education. This distinct approach addresses the root of human-wildlife conflict through school programs, community events, targeted social media campaigns, stage shows, and partnerships with like-minded groups in Nashville. Major partners include Gaylord Opryland Resort and Conference Center, Metro Parks Nature Centers, Metro Nashville Public Schools, the Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee, the National Wildlife Rehabilitators Association, and a bevy of like-minded Nashville small businesses (High Garden Tea, The Good Fill, Turnip Green Creative Reuse, to name only a few). To date, NWCC has reached 14,887 participants across 340 events through collaborative educational programming with these partners.
A critical community resource, NWCC handles more than 1,500 phone calls annually regarding wildlife in need within Nashville and Davidson Country, offering daily guidance and sharing response protocols. This direct community engagement informs our educational programming, which centers around the evolving needs of our local wildlife. NWCC is also permitted to rehabilitate injured and orphaned reptiles, mammals, and most recently, songbirds, through its wildlife hospital. Our cadre of transport and animal care volunteers work closely with certified wildlife rehabilitators to provide research-based care to animals in need. This includes hundreds of animals each year that our team helps assess and transport to other certified wildlife rehabilitators due to our limited physical capacity. Our wildlife hospital also serves as a teaching tool for college-aged interns each summer and for our community volunteers, who learn strategies to effectively mitigate human-wildlife conflict through their work. In 2022, NWCC's wildlife hospital logged 1,746 volunteer hours and admitted 118 wildlife patients - 63 of which were Eastern box turtles, which are a species of particular interest and expertise for our group.
NWCC is now recognized as a leader in Eastern box turtle care in Tennessee by the National Wildlife Rehabilitators Association, who awarded our team a research grant to study outcomes associated with rehabilitating and relocating the species. Results of this study, which included extensive geolocation data, were published in 2023. By presenting this work at annual and state conferences, our team is able to extend our impact to other wildlife rehabilitators and foster best practices. Additional research projects are ongoing at NWCC's wildlife hospital, in collaboration with local veterinary clinics.
By teaming up with other groups in Nashville, NWCC is able to further extend our impact. We are a listed partner in Nashville's new Urban Bird Treaty, which aims to conserve urban habitat and reduce hazards for birds in our growing city, and is supported by The Nature Conservancy and U.S. Fish & Wildlife Services. Enacted in 2023, we look forward to spearheading education efforts citywide for this important initiative.
Wildlife education remains at the core of everything we do. We continue to remain true to our roots in providing free wildlife education to the low-income, high-potential youth of Nashville. To date, this consistent effort has been entirely volunteer-driven. We continue to maintain a presence in Metro Schools, designing hands-on activities that align with Tennessee State and Next Generation Science Standards, and we support our educational programming with a small group of trained, non-releasable Wildlife Ambassadors. Now, we have earned a Nashville Earth Day grant and funding from the Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee to support our work in Metro Schools through a series of targeted programs and events in 2024. We believe building ongoing partnerships is the best way to maximize our impact so the next generation can be empowered to love our Nashville wildlife as much as we do.
Needs
Top 5 most pressing needs:
1. Spread the word! Attend a program, follow us on social media, and learn how to connect, conserve, and coexist with backyard wildlife. Then, tell your friends and family.
2. We are actively growing and diversifying our board, to match the community we serve. We are in need of board members to join our team and share their diverse backgrounds and experiences.
3. Financial donations to support our wildlife hospital patients and infrastructure. Donations are critical to provide food, medication, trained staff members, specialty services (physical therapy, laser treatments, etc.), comfortable enclosures, and more.
4. Other organizations with similar interests to partner with, to grow our collective impact, and reach more people. Reach out if you'd like to co-host an event or fundraiser, or team up on an educational initiative.
5. Volunteer! In order to be there for our community and wildlife when they need us, we need people in our hospital, to transport animals, to help with education, and to teach people about coexisting with wildlife.
You can also see our current wishlist here: https://www.nashvillewildlifeconservation.org/ways-to-help
CEO Statement
With Nashville growing, wildlife is being forced to adapt and living alongside humans, which means conflicts are only increasing. While we want to help as many animals as time, money and other resources allow us, our main goal is to teach people how to coexist with wildlife and reduce human and wildlife conflicts- such as finding alternatives to pesticides and rodenticides, stopping the relocating of animals and opting for eviction, and mowing lawns on higher settings. That's why we are also so passionate about environmental education for behavior change.
It's scary to come across a wild animal that is severely injured, and not know how to help it. That's why we're here. Wildlife rehabilitation is an important service that needs to be available for the city of Nashville, but we strive to provide the best care for not only the animals, but also for the people that find them. We attend state and national conferences on wildlife rehabilitation, animal training, environmental education and leadership. The knowledge from these trainings not only allow us to provide great care, but to also foster a safe environment for the public to call about their wildlife conflicts, and get help. Change often happens with small steps, and by meeting people where they are, we can help them determine what their next steps are.
We focus our wildlife education in lower income schools, making repeat visits to foster appreciation and behavior change. When we first started, we would hear all about the tigers, elephants, and rhinos that students thought could be found in the forest of Tennessee. After three years of working in the same schools, the students learned which backyard wildlife they might find (and how incredible they are), how important each flower can be for an insect, and the sense of place that each student can find outside.
We want to continue to ensure that everyone (human and animal) we come across has a good experience with us, including our wildlife ambassadors. We focus on giving our wildlife ambassadors a good quality of life. While there has been a push for training methods providing an animal with choice and control in zoological settings and with domestic and exotic animals, we are lacking that in the wildlife community. We have helped other centers and people to transition to training methods that focus on what's best for the animal and the trainer.
Here at Nashville Wildlife Conservation, our values are community, well-being, and learning, and we can accomplish our goals by focusing on these values.
Board Chair Statement
Over the past seven years, NWCC has grown significantly. This is due in large part to a growing need. Nashville is one of the fastest-growing cities in the region. This means more development, tighter greenspaces, and more interactions between humans and wildlife. New residents arrive daily from across the country, and many are unfamiliar with our native flora and fauna. Our work has found that while so many of those who grew up in Nashville are a wealth of knowledge on how to coexist, others may not know about the many incredible species who share this land.
At NWCC, we're proud of the growth our city is experiencing. However, it makes our wildlife education and rehabilitation services all the more important. We work every day to provide data-backed, practical guidance to Nashvillians on how to connect, conserve, and coexist with the natural world -- and we help bandage up the animals who get the short end of the stick. But we can't do it alone. We make it a top priority to join forces with other groups, including city government and other non-profits, so we can provide a stable green framework together. Maintaining Nashville wildlife for future generations requires engaging and fostering a passion with our youngest residents. It also requires partnering with homeowners, visitors, and policymakers to make practical behavior changes in our community. With your help, we can.
Service Categories |
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| Primary Category: | Animal Related - Wildlife Preservation & Protection |
| Secondary Category: | Environment - Environmental Education |
| Tertiary Category: | Animal Related - Veterinary Services |
Areas Served
50% of the outreach programs happen in lower-income areas (average neighborhood household income under $40,000 a year).
| TN - Davidson |
| TN - Williamson |
| TN - Wilson |
| Local |
