Autumn began over three weeks ago and we still have baby mammals on milk. This is a month later than any baby mammals in our database going back to 2012. Sure, we’ve admitted late babies at the end of August, and early September who were still in care in October, but new babies this late? No. This was unheard of just a year ago. But in any case that’s the background of our work, the circumstances within which we must operate. Every day has always been a new challenge. Such is the nature of caring for the orphaned and injured wildlife our societies cause.
Adding to this, global weather systems are being pushed this way and that by a currently developing Super El Niño, an intense warming of the Pacific Ocean. Already a Kelvin wave of warm water is pulsing east at the equator and sloshing north as it hits the Americas. Warm water seriously impacts the productivity of the California Current, a wonder of cold ocean that keeps the Pacific Northwest, starting at our North Coast, free from the terrible seabird wrecks that are nearly commonplace on southern and central beaches of California. Yet during the last major El Niño in 2016 the breeding colonies of Common Murres (Uria aalge) in Oregon failed completely.
Since 2012 HWCC has admitted 571 Common Murres, 169 of which were adults. We look at adult numbers because chicks tend to come in when the breeding season is good and chicks are everywhere. More chicks equals more chicks in trouble. An increase of adults in trouble, however, likely indicates that times are hard for them, not good. Already in 2026 we’ve equaled our worst year for Common Murre adults and we still have two of the biggest months of our year for them to get through.
Of course what’s been happening to our South this late Summer and Fall is tragic. Hundreds of Common Murres have been rescued from beaches which means hundred if not thousands more are not being found. Wildlife rehabilitators of the Southland and Central Coast have been buried under a caseload of starving Common Murres, and also at the end of their busy season. Things, as they say, are tough all over.
If there’s any good news for HWCC, it’s that over the course of the last 3 years we have rebuilt our capacity after a nearly catastrophic sudden need to relocate. We have new pools and new staff trained and ready to care for a tough year for overwintering aquatic birds. Our resources (meaning moolah, money, dough, bread, dinero, cash) are extraordinarily tight this year, the reasons for which I can only speculate, but I can tell you the donations dropped of significantly leading up to the 2024 election and that decline has persisted. Perhaps people are contributing elsewhere. Maybe the ongoing global economic chaos is hurting people locally. Things really are tough all over.
So here we are on the cusp of this Super El Niño, which might finally be significant marker in the steady descent into environmental disaster, while fascists dismantle all existing frameworks of collaborative global effort. For us that means the beaches of Manila and Trinidad and Crescent City and Centerville and Mattole are going to have seabirds coming ashore, some alive and saveable and others for whom it will be too late.
All we can do is prepare and respond. To do so, we really do need your help.
We’re in it up to our eyeballs. We’re about to be in a real fix. Please help us meet the costs of the heaviest Summer caseload we’ve ever had and preparing for what seems to be the same for Winter.
Thank you for keeping our doors open and our bills paid.
