Everbridge helps WIRES improve animal rescue response times in Australia

Everbridge helps WIRES improve animal rescue response times in Australia

Everbridge, a global leader in Critical Event Management (CEM) and national public warning software solutions, has announced the company is marking three years of proud support for Australia’s largest wildlife rescue organisation, WIRES (Wildlife Information Rescue and Education Service), a non-profit providing rescue and rehabilitation for sick, injured and orphaned native animals for over 35 years.

More than 5,200 WIRES volunteers – across four states in Australia and comprising 10 different wildlife rescue organisations – use Everbridge and its xMatters digital service availability solution to communicate and coordinate wildlife rescues.

“The recent severe flooding across Queensland and New South Wales was unprecedented in scale and impact on communities, the environment and our native wildlife,” said Lucy Clark, Emergency Response Manager for WIRES. “In March alone, WIRES received around 10,000 rescue calls. During this period, Everbridge proved to be invaluable yet again, providing us with the ability to get notifications out to volunteers in affected areas in a timely and efficient manner.

“We had hundreds of volunteers and key staff in these areas, many of whom were carrying out search and rescue. We were able to quickly create new communications groups to target for rescue notifications, allowing us to reach our primary response teams, maintain regular contact with them and allocate urgent resources to the flood zones.

“Access for rescue teams was extremely difficult in the immediate aftermath and we needed to focus on 24/7 phone support for people dealing with displaced wildlife in addition to urgent logistical support for our volunteers.

“Many animals in care needed to be evacuated. Without Everbridge working away in the background, this task would have been impossible. Hundreds of exhausted animals were rescued, including orphaned joeys, wombats and bandicoots, echidnas and many waterlogged birds.

“We believe that with our coordinated emergency response efforts and our sophisticated Everbridge software, we provided the best possible outcomes for our precious wildlife. We are so grateful for your support and state-of-the-art technology. Together we can achieve extraordinary things to ensure more animals get the second chance at life in the wild that they deserve.”

WIRES, in partnership with Everbridge, continues to expand its reach. Through this ‘collaborative rescue’ program, volunteers from other animal rescue organisations are incorporated into the Everbridge-WIRES platform, allowing WIRES to instantly broadcast notifications to appropriately trained volunteers, no matter what organisation they are from, getting help to more animals even faster.

“Donating our services to WIRES was an easy decision for us,” said Steve Foster, Everbridge Vice President – Australia, New Zealand and Oceania. “It’s critical that the growing number of WIRES volunteers receive and share the incident information they need to save these animals, many of which are already on Australia’s endangered species list. It is a no-brainer to help enable organisations like WIRES to supplement their skill sets in the same way we assist IT professionals in a business environment.”

In addition to supporting WIRES animal rescue and rehabilitation efforts, Everbridge powers the emergency alert system for the entire country of Australia, providing population-wide alerting to inform and protect the continent’s 34 million residents and annual visitors. Globally, more local, state and national governments deploy the Everbridge Public Safety solutions than any other provider, offering the ability to reach over two billion residents and visitors in more than 200 countries and territories.

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