Debbie Sykes

speaker

340 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Aug 2026 last heard 6 Aug

Debbie Sykes’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 1.

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Animal Training Academy: Making Ripples · Shifting Perspectives in Wildlife Rehabilitation with Debbie Sykes [Episode 73] · 6 Aug 2026 podcast

Because the way that not only our reptiles and amphibians survive the wintertime in the South, but all the other, you know,

I try to emphasize the reptile amphibian part, not so much the bug part, because that's not as exciting for people to help the bugs survive the wintertime, but they really need the leaves to help them form a nice thick blanket that insulates them, especially when it gets to, you know, negative 17 and it's,

freezing for days at a time.

The other big one is if you come across a turtle that's trying to cross the road, instead of trying to relocate it, right?

Because you're thinking, oh my gosh, this turtle is in a very dangerous place.

Chances are it's a mom, you know, if it's an aquatic turtle, it's a mom going to either lay her eggs or going back to her pond after laying her eggs.

Or it's an eastern box turtle just trying to get to wherever it wants to be in its habitat.

You just help them cross the road in the direction that they're traveling.

So those are kind of our big ones.

That's a longer CTA, but to kind of shorten it, leave the leaves, help them cross the road in the direction they're traveling.

And it's such a game changer because, again, we used to bring all these animals to programs and talk about, you know, this animal, this animal, this animal.

but it wasn't getting to that end goal of the behavior change, but bringing in a turtle and turtle shell, showing them where the spine is and talking about, you know, how the lawn, when the lawnmower goes over them, it actually is spinal trauma.

So they have to learn to walk again, you know, like all those things along with here's a cool turtle really made a lot more of an impact.

Favorite.

Well, I feel like I learn so much every time I get to work with an animal or human.

The most recent one that comes to mind is at the wildlife center I work at now.

We had a rookery or a huge communal nest of birds.

in this case, it was herons and egrets, was purposely cut down.

And a lot of them did pass, but the surviving ones were brought into the wildlife center.

So all at once, we had 13 babies come in and we needed to make protocols and help volunteers basically learn how to care for these.

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