A couple has claimed that the animal charity ignored a call-out to rescue a sea bird that they were trying to help.
In a separate complaint, Islander Charlotte Reilly said on Facebook that when she asked the charity to rehome a wild rabbit she had rescued, but could no longer care for, the JSPCA responded by saying they would have to euthanise the animal.
Ms Reilly later took to Facebook in an attempt to find the rabbit a home. She said that while she had had some interest, the rabbit was still in her care.
Kevin Keen, the JSPCA’s interim voluntary chief executive, said that he was launching an investigation into both complaints. Mr Keen, a well-known ‘business fixer’ was brought in last year to rescue the charity, which was reported to be losing £1 million a year.
He said: ‘With regards to the sea-bird complaint, we are launching an investigation and hope to have more information soon.
‘In the case of the woman who called in about the rescued rabbit, what I would say there is that we recognise she did an amazing job in rescuing it. However, we would usually never advise people to try to domesticate a wild animal, as we want to see them released back into the wild.
‘But we are also launching an investigation into this to see if there was anything that we could have done better. We know that people got quite upset about this, but would ask that people bear with us and [we] want to thank everyone who has supported us.
‘We want Islanders to know that we take the welfare of all animals very seriously and while we do thousands of things right, if we find there is something that we could have done better, we will hold our hands up and let Islanders know.’
