Whom do you contact if you find an injured hedgehog by the roadside or an abandoned dog at a motorway service station? The police, the fire brigade or a vet? The answer is not as straightforward in every canton as it is in the canton of Zurich. Here, for almost three decades, an organisation that is not affiliated with the authorities has been responsible for animal rescue – around the clock, 365 days a year.

Founded back in 1993 as an association of dedicated animal welfare activists, the ‘TierRettungsDienst – Leben hat Vortritt’ (AnimalRescueService – Life has Priority) charity has been caring for injured and abandoned animals since 2006. “The animal rescue service, the animal shelter Pfötli, and our educational and public relations work constitute our three core activities,” explains Managing Director Markus Anderegg. Based in Winkel, near Zurich Airport, the charity has grown over the years into a professional non-profit organisation with over 40 staff and around 250 volunteers.

At the heart of it all, is the emergency centre. It coordinates animal rescue and dispatches rescue drivers round the clock. In 2020, this happened 4,746 times – an average of 13 call-outs a day. The control centre is responsible for triage: Injured domestic and wild animals are taken to a vet or animal hospital, whereas abandoned, stray and weakened animals are taken to the organisation’s shelter, Pfötli. Wild animals, on the other hand, are taken to specialised animal refuges as quickly as possible.

Wild animals (wild birds, ducklings, hedgehogs etc.) top the list of rescued animals, followed by cats, dogs, other birds and other small animals (rabbits, guinea pigs etc.). Apart from these, there is hardly any species that the animal rescue service has not yet come into contact with. “We once had a case involving a young caiman, a type of crocodile,” says Markus Anderegg. “Someone rang us at night and asked if they could bring us the little crocodile they’d caught. The keeper on night duty initially thought it must be nothing more than a small lizard. But no, it was actually a caiman that had escaped or been abandoned. The owner was later traced, and it turned out that he didn’t have a licence to keep wild animals.”

Lack of knowledge is one reason why animals get abandoned. “People often underestimate how much work getting a pet entails,” says Markus Anderegg. He goes on to say that the costs of vet bills, vaccinations and food are also underestimated, and sometimes it is all simply overwhelming. “In many cases, we never even find out the real reasons because the owners can’t be traced, despite a report being filed,” says the Managing Director. “So what’s very important to us, and what we always say, is: Have the courage to hand the animal over to us. The main thing is that the animal doesn’t get abandoned, but is instead placed in good care so we can look after it.”

The Zurich-based animal rescue service is doing pioneering work in Switzerland. “At the moment, there’s nothing comparable in other cantons,” says Markus Anderegg. He acknowledges that there are individuals or small associations, “but there’s nothing else in Switzerland on the same scale as us.” His vision, an ambitious long-term goal, is to establish a nationwide animal rescue service. But first, the Managing Director wants his organisation to expand into other regions, so that it can save more animals. Growth is a major challenge though, and securing the necessary funding is anything but easy.

The foundation has no service agreement with the canton, nor does it receive any subsidies. Instead, it is funded almost entirely by donations from individuals and companies. “We actually start from zero again every year. Fortunately, we have a core group of benefactors who support us regularly,” says Anderegg. He explains that this has made it possible to successfully fund day-to-day operations in recent years, something that not even Covid changed, which was by no means a given. “Our benefactors stuck by us, so we were always able to keep rescuing animals as well as take proper care of the up to 250 animals at the shelter.”

The Managing Director regards the ongoing transition from a small pioneering institution to an organisation on the scale of an SME in which professionalisation plays a major role across the board as the greatest challenge. “The Covid crisis significantly accelerated the process of change, particularly in terms of digitalisation,” states Anderegg. Virtually overnight, it became necessary to ensure that his staff could work from home. “Covid also showed us that we are well equipped to cope with crises and can maintain operations and rescue services at all times.”

Nina Taddei, Head of Communications, says that the team became more close-knit during the pandemic. “Animal welfare is always at the heart of what we do,” she says. “We work here because we want the animals to thrive. You can feel this idealism everywhere. It unites us. All departments help each other as a matter of course. Covid reinforced this special sense of solidarity.”

The charity receives no public funding and, as a charitable organisation, is exempt from tax. 95 percent of its income comes from donations from individuals, companies and grant-making foundations (on a project-by-project basis), while its own services account for the remaining 5 percent. It is possible to support the foundation by making a donation to the PostFinance account 80-310078-8, for example, or by texting ‘Tierrettung’ to 488 and specifying the donated amount.