The “too long, didn’t read” version? We pilot our ship on a wing, a prayer and the support of our communities. Please help us get closer to the resources we need to do the work we’re already doing. Please help us close out this year on a postive note for our work in the next year and decade. We need you. Our wild neighbors need you. Today, tomorrow and for all the foreseeable future. Help keep us here. Help us help our wild neighbors. On the last day of the year-end giving season, please support our work. DONATE
On the morning of New Year’s Eve, 2019 – the last day of the year and decade – Humboldt Wildlife Care Center/bird ally x has admitted 1332 wild patients this year. Barring any late day emergency, we likely will finish the year somewhere near this number. By about a 100 patients over 2012, the year we treated 250 fish waste impacted Brown Pelicans, 2019 is the busiest year ever in our 40 year history, and we had no huge emergency as we did in 2012 – this is just day to day work, answering the phone, going on rescues, treating those injured and orphaned wild neighbors that our human neighbors found in their yards, their basements, the beaches and the highways.
Also in 2019, BAX rescued over 250 wild ducks sickened by another avian botulism outbreak on the Lower Klamath Refuge across the coastal range in Siskiyou County. This is the second avian botulism outbreak that BAX has responded to in that area, prompting a partnership with the US Fish and Wildlife Service, the trustee agency for the refuge, to maintain a hospital at the scene for better preparedeness when another botulism outbreak inevitably happens again next Summer
Each year we treat more and more patients. Our daily caseload has been on a constant rising trajectory over the last ten years. Right now we are up 13% over last year and 2018 was 20% up from 2011. Besides the increased numbers of wild neighbors who are getting the help they need, what these numbers mean is that the effort our mission requires and the resources that our mission needs are also growing.
I love reporting our successes, sometimes I need to share our sorrows, but rarely do I want to say we are failing. But right now we are. We are not exeriencing a similar growth in our available resources to keep pace with our ever-increasing caseload .
In fact we’ve never enjoyed adequate resources to do our job. We’ve always had to sacrifice, usually in the form of critical staff working with little or no pay. We’ve managed, over the last decade, to feed our patients a high quality nature-based diet, to keep our utilities on, to expand our patient housing from essentially non-existent pre-2011 to the fully-functioning wildlife hospital we have today, open every day of the year.
We began 2019 with a stated goal of raising $150,000 by this day, December 31st. It was an ambitious, but critical, goal. Our budget and final tally for 2018 was $108,000, which we used caring for 1,159 patients at HWCC and another 440+ wild ducks and shorebirds on the Lower Klamath Refuge. That’s simply not enough to meet the needs of our work. Yet, in 2019 we have treated more wild patients at HWCC than ever and we are not even close to reaching our goal. In fact, as of today we are down about $6,000 from last year.
As I said at the top of this, we keep our vessel airtight and spaceworthy on elbow grease, good luck, clean living, personal sacrifice and the generous support of our neighbors who share our love for the Wild and want to ensure that innocent wild victims of civilization’s toxins, highways and towns get the second chance they deserve. Please help us close 2019 on a good number, like this one:
