Last year, a record 7,730 animals representing 121 different species passed through the doors of the hospital, which is located inside a veterinary school on the outskirts of Paris. This number rises every year, as the expanding French capital outgrows animal habitats, and as wildlife strives – and sometimes struggles – to adapt to city life.
“You don't have to go to the other end of the world to meet wild animals,” said director Céline Grisso, wearing an olive-green lab coat. “They are increasingly found in urban areas, because these wild animals come to find refuge when there is no place for them, because their territory is being encroached upon. These animals have an amazing capacity for resilience.
Whether it's warthogs in Rome and Japan, otters in Singapore, leopards in Mumbai, or the ubiquitous urban foxes in London, wild animals have learned to live alongside humans, and often out of sight.
The Paris program is motivated by the idea that city residents and veterinarians need to look beyond pets and care for the wildlife in their midst as well.
Injured and sick animals admitted to Faune Alfort receive medical care in the hospital and are then rehabilitated in a barn or cage. The goal is to prepare them for release, and return them to where they were found, or to another suitable habitat.
For their long-term survival, they must leave with a healthy fear for people's safety. So the center's staff and volunteers are trying to help them recover while minimizing human interaction.
Down the hall, across from the hedgehog, employees were feeding the birds, no larger than the palm of a hand, with tweezers and syringes. One of the recovered birds escaped the hands of a caretaker and landed on top of a shelf.
Two ducklings are paddling in a tub filled with water with a fluffy gray goose left behind by their mother. When he grows up, the goslings must be separated from the ducklings, so as not to confuse his natural instincts, but for now he has found a temporary family.
Gray herons, tawny owls, bats, seagulls, groundhogs, badgers, rabbits, and even the occasional fox or warthog from the suburbs were treated at the hospital. The swans roaming the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris and the small, abandoned pigeons along the banks of the Seine will end here.
The reasons why these animals are hospitalized varies widely: many are children, others have been hit by cars or attacked by predators. Throughout her eight years with von Alfort — first as a volunteer, then as an employee and now as manager — Griso remembers seeing animals caught in leg traps (although they have been banned in France since the 1990s), and falcons with multiple wing fractures being protected. Species with gunshot wounds that continue to survive several surgeries before being released back into the wild.
On top of the city moving into these animals' habitats, there is also the impact of the changing climate and many of their victims end up at Grisot's door. She gave some examples, including a desert sandstorm that struck Paris in 2022, destroying many swallows' nests; High temperatures due to the heat wave, which prompted the young to emerge from their nests and onto the pavement in search of comfort; Hedgehogs wake up early from hibernation due to moderate temperatures and the inability to find enough food.
The staff spoke softly to keep the animals calm, so the only sounds were the squawking and chirping of the birds and the chirping of the animals eating breakfast. Down the hall, away from the smaller birds, is the raptor room, which on this particular day was home to a partridge, crow, hawk, owl and greenfinch – all kept in separate cupboard-sized cages.
Aside from the hustle and bustle of cleaning wounds and hand-feeding the animals — some babies need to be fed every hour or two — there is an enormous amount of housekeeping that goes into caring for so many animals. The washing machine is always running to ensure there are clean towels, Grisot said.
The steel shelves are lined almost to the ceiling with food containers of all shapes and sizes, labeled “pigeons,” “hedgehogs,” “magpies,” and so on. The refrigerator is full of dead mice and worms. Bags of pellets and other grains line another wall of the storage room. There's even a plastic tub filled with stale baguettes.
Veterinary students and volunteers support the small team that cares for thousands of animals each year.
The hospital, which occupies a narrow wing of space up several flights of stairs on the far edge of the capital's veterinary school's sprawling campus, received just €20,000 from the municipality in 2023 and maintains its precarious existence by relying on donations and sponsorship.
About 90 percent of the animals are brought here not by animal control officers but by Parisians or suburbanites who notice an animal in distress and try to help, wrapping a fox in towels or putting a bird in a shoebox and delivering it here.
Grisot said it can sometimes be difficult to see her team's impact. “We put on a few band-aids. That's all we can do,” she said.
Real change, she said, requires humans to imagine themselves in a completely different way: to understand that they are one animal among many living in the city of Paris, coexisting with dozens of species on any given day.
“When you look at Paris from the sky, as soon as you move away from the center, you find that you are surrounded by forests and green spaces,” she said. “We have to become more humble and make an effort to make as little impact on the environment as possible.”
