Trevor Weeks is running out of the East Sussex Wildlife Rescue and Ambulance Service (WRAS) casualty centre, off the A22 between Hailsham and Uckfield, with a docile swan bundled up in his arms. “I’ve never seen so much blood in my life,” he says. “I’ve been working for 20 minutes to stop him bleeding to death. A dog attacked him.” This is as near to a standard day for Trevor as it gets, with constant phone calls from the public alerting him to injured wild animals, alongside caring for in-patients and dealing with the administration of running a charity.

“There will be calls all through the night,” he says. “There are so many animals out there that need help. It’s difficult because if we don’t respond people think we don’t care.”

This month will mark 25 years since Trevor began working in wildlife and conservation. At 38 years old, it’s a passion that has consumed most of his life.

“It means a lot to me,” he says. “It’s been in my life a long time and it’s been a constant.”

Trevor joined the Eastbourne Conservation Volunteers in 1985, at the age of 13, and an incident finding two oiled guillemots on the beach at Beachy Head led him to the Seaford Bird Hospital. The hospital was run by a lady called Meta Mann, who began to inspire the enthusiasm in a young Trevor that would see him eventually create WRAS.

Started in 2005, the registered charity now has a brand-new Casualty Care Centre in between Hailsham and Uckfield, treats more than 1,000 injured wild animals a year and fields upward of 3,000 phone calls.

It has been a turbulent journey though. Trevor suffered a breakdown in his teenage years and his mother died when he was just 21. “The voluntary work really helped me come out the other side,” he says.

The work has also seen him travel all over the country, rescuing birds after oil spills, looking after swans garrotted by power cables, and, once, helping to rescue and return a trapped dolphin to sea.

He says that despite the RSPCA and many other wildlife rescue organisations there is still not enough capacity to cope with the amount of injured wildlife out there, with fewer people working in the field now than when he started.

“It’s a damn difficult job. It’s a lot of responsibility and after a while people don’t want it. When you spend week on end nurturing something, trying to get it better and it still dies or has to be put to sleep, it’s hard.”

A lack of funding also put paid to people’s ambitions. WRAS stays afloat now thanks to energetic fundraising and donations.

Until last month, all Trevor’s work for WRAS was voluntary, his time funded by a three-day-a-week job at British Marine Dive Rescue. Now, International Animal Rescue are grant funding WRAS to employ him for three days a week.

“I do WRAS work in my spare time anyway so it’s like I’ll be working full time,” says Trevor. “I worked that out as getting less than £2 an hour! To be honest though, all I’m interested in is earning enough to keep a roof over my head and put food on table.”

And what about the swan?

“The swan is OK. Hopefully he’ll make it through.”

*For more information, visit www.wildlifeambulance.org