Newly recorded public service announcements to help people help thier wildlife neighbors will soon be on the air around the Humboldt Bay area!
Author: Monte Merrick
WILD BABY SEASON IS ALMOST HERE!
Why did the Opossum cross the road? (spoiler alert: because someone thoughtlessly built it there.)
Every Spring and Summer, Humboldt Wildlife Care Center treats as many as 90 orphaned Opossums (Didelphis virginiana). We usually begin to admit them in mid-April – just around the corner! Nearly all of these young marsupials are brought to us after being found in the pouch of their mother, who’d been hit by a car. The second biggest human threat Opossums and their babies face that we see is being attacked by the family dog.
There are people who run Opossums down on the road on purpose. Who hasn’t heard some yahoo bragging about this very fact. Who hasn’t heard an endless array of roadkill jokes, complete with point systems for keeping score? In fact, both informal and rigorous studies have demonstrated that somewhere between 3 and 6 per cent of drivers will swerve to intentionally hit an animal on the side of the road. The number of animals who are killed intentionally when no swerving is required remains unstudied.
Now, the simple act of driving puts all of us at risk of unintentionally colliding with others, other cars, pedestrians, wild neighbors, family dogs and house cats. It is very distressing to unintentionally kill with our cars and most of us have probably done so, and we can all commiserate together.
Still, it seems obvious that many of the Opossums who are hit by vehicles, since they are large and easily seen in headlights (their name, “Opossum”, is an Algonquin word, purported to mean “white animal” or “white dog”), are hit intentionally.
Opossums, according to the internet, are very useful animals. That they eat a large number of ticks seems to be the chief reason to let them be… That a fellow traveler on this one green and blue Earth needs to have utility to human civilization in order that they be spared the worst our kind has to offer is perhaps the real lesson in that strategy of advocacy.
Intentionally running down Opossums may be hard to stop through education. Is it really simple, curable ignorance that would cause a person to act with such wanton destructiveness? Seems unlikely.
That makes it incumbent on us to find ways to protect Opossums where we can. Road designs that prevent small animals from entering the roadway and offer crossing sites that are easy and natural to use are a great idea, but expensive to implement everywhere that they’re needed. Being extra-vigilant and remembering that in a region like ours, with many rural highways following streams and criss-crossing the bottoms, wild neighbors are likely to be seen – to expect to see wild animals and be prepared to give them safe passage.
Also, we need to remember that wild neighbors have a right to move freely through the terrain, without being confronted by dogs. Supervising our family dogs’ night-time potty excursions is our responsibility.
An Opossum has quite the weaponry on board in the event of such a confrontation. First, they can hiss and show teeth. Opossums have a lot of pointy teeth. Second, if that doesn’t work, they can pretend to be dead and allow a foul smelling secretion to ooze from their rectum. Deadly.
In other words, Opossums present absolutely no threat to human households, other than the occasional ocurrence of an Opossum coming in through the cat door for some cat food.
And finally, when all else fails, if you find an Opossum who has been attacked by dogs, or hit by a car, even if apparently dead, check to see if she is a mother with live babies in her pouch. At least we can give these little ones a second chance.
Opossums have been a part of North America for a very long time – they have a right to be here. They exist from sea to sea, their range limited only by snow and winter cold.
Each Opossum we raise, of the 80 or so we admit each year, costs a certain amount. Milk replacer formula, heating pads, solid food, housing rent, caregivers, all of it is provided by your generous support. Without your help, we would not be here. Without your help, none of our wild neighbors would get a second chance. With your help, we can prevent some of these injuries and the need for a second chance, and with your support we’ll be here when care is necessary.
Thank you for your love of our wild neighbors! Thank you helping us all co-exist peacefully.
Help Us Make It Through the Year!
Last year, between the 1160 patients BAX treated at Humboldt Wildlife Care Center, and the 440 birds admitted during the botulism outbreak at the Lower Klamath Refuge north of Shasta, we provided direct care for 1600 wild animals.
We provided this care on approximately $110,000. (Thank you to everyone who donated!) While it is certainly the case that some patients cost more in care than others, still, this means that we spent an average of $68.75 per patient. Think about that. On less than 70 dollars per patient, we successfully treated and released hundreds of our wild neighbors.
Believe it or not, this remarkable success is also a failure.
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We never have more in the bank than what will get us through the month.
And at $70 per patient, we have absolutely no room to cut our expenses. Should we spend even less? Of course not.
Our goals for HWCC include expanding the care we provide, as well as expanding our education and outreach efforts promoting co-existence with our wild neighbors.
Yet, each Spring and Summer we struggle to make certain we have the food and medicine we need, that the electric and phone bills are paid, that our water bill is paid, that our rent is paid. Our staff is grossly underpaid and even so, meeting our payroll is a stressful struggle.
OUR GOAL FOR 2019: $150,000 RAISED BY THE END OF THE YEAR. We’ve set targets of $50,000 by April 30, $100,000 by August 31, and $150,000 by December 31! Right now we are $35,000 away from our April 30 target. Reaching it seems impossible, but not reaching it means another year entering our busy wild baby season uncertain of where the resources will come from. Please help us get close to our goal!
For the success of our mission, for the care of our patients, for the education and outreach that will prevent injuries, orphanings and other harms to our wild neighbors, we need to find more resources.
When Bird Ally X took over the management of HWCC in 2011, we took on an organization that operated on even less, with no full-time staff, with a facility that was only sporadically open, and with no capacity to provide quality care for more than a few species of raptors and songbirds. Aquatic birds (50% of our caseload) were sent 300 miles away to a facility in the Bay Area.
Frankly, in 2011, the reputation of this facility was in shambles. Since BAX took on HWCC, we’ve developed the clinic into a topnotch wildlife hospital which has the respect of our colleagues from around the nation and the state. We’ve established a program to train new wildlife rehabilitators that has seen over 60 successful graduates, many of whom have gone on to work in various aspects of serving wildlife here and around the country.
Often wild patients who are difficult to treat, or presenting unusual problems are sent to us from around the state. We’ve admitted and successfully treated an Osprey sent us from Modesto, an Albatross rescued from a ship in Brookings, Deer fawns from Redding, and more.
In 2011, HWCC was not seen as an organization fit to be a viable member of the Oiled Wildlife Care Network. Since Bird Ally X took over the management and operation of HWCC, we’ve joined the OWCN, and added valuable team members to the roster of pre-trained oil spill responders available to help in the event of an oil spill in our area, or across the state.
In short, our effort to build HWCC into a respected wildlife care facility that is also a teaching hospital as well as a working lab developing real world improvements to the care all wildlife rehabilitators can provide has been largely successful, even as our resources are scarce! Look what we can do with very little! Imagine what we can accomplish with a little more!
To sustain these advancements and build on them, we need your help now. A shoestring budget is common for missions such as ours, but we still need a sustainable flow of resources, especially as we move into our busy season.
Our goal this year is to raise $150,000 – and if we maintain the caseload of last year, that would raise our average sending per patient from $69 to $93 – still a fraction of our real costs, but a big improvement, an improvement that would reduce the stress on our staff, which by itself would enhance the quality of the care we’re able to provide
PLEASE HELP US REACH OUR GOAL! HELP US HELP OUR WILD NEIGHBORS!
PLEASE DONATE TODAY!
Hungry Hawks (and a Falcon)
Late Winter storms were tough on our region. Rain seemed to fall for days without ceasing and many of us suffered from chronic wet socks and an unshakeable chill. And that endless rain was tough on more than the human community.
In the last two weeks of February, Humboldt Wildlife Care Center admitted 8 birds of prey who were found struggling, their hunting grounds covered in water, or other challenges that caused more than a few area raptors to go hungry.
A Peregrine Falcon (Falco peregrinus) was found struggling near Lake Earl outside of Crescent City, too weak to fly, as well as two Red-tailed Hawks (Buteo jamaicensis) from the same area, Crescent City and Brookings, Oregon, just north of Crescent City.
As the Eel River began to flood we admitted five hawks, four Red-tailed Hawks and one Red-shouldered Hawk (Buteo lineatus), from its bottom lands, all of them displaced, wet, cold and hungry.
We can only surmise that there were other wild neighbors who didn’t survive the drenching storms of this winter. The last two weeks of February, during the rains, we admitted 31 wild animals for care, including several songbirds, ducks and gulls. During storms, simply because fewer people are outside, fewer struggling wild animals are found.
Right now, we are preparing for our busy season, yet also having a busy winter. Already our caseload is up 20% over last year, which was our busiest year so far. We need to raise $50,000 by April 30 to be able to stay open, with our staff and housing ready to meet whatever comes our way. These are trying times for many, and it’s no less true for our wild neighbors. We need to be here for them when they need us. Only your support will make that happen. Please donate today. Thank you for your love of the wild!! DONATE HERE
Gearing Up For Spring
In mid-February many of us are dreading the long wait for the return of warmer weather, and all of the joys of Spring and Summer. Here at Humboldt Wildlife Care Center, we are not dreading the long wait at all. For us, it’s right around the corner! By the end of next month, we need to have all of our ducks in a row and be prepared for the arrival of the first wild orphans of the season.
In the past, we’ve admitted our first orphan Raccoons (Procyon lotor) as early as March 31st. Meanwhile, we are keeping busy during our so-called downtime taking care of the injured hawks, seabirds, raccoons, songbirds and more. We’ve already admitted over 80 injured wild patients in 2019.
We have important projects to complete before Spring madness fully kicks in and we need your help.
- Our main building, a double wide modular that’s been our primary facility and office since 2006 is in need of critical repairs that will cost us over $2000.
- Our Seabird pools need a thorough rejuvenation – liners need to be replaced and pumps and filters need to be repaired, costing approximately $500.
- Last year we admitted close to a dozen orphan fawns, about the maximum we can handle. We need to increase that capacity and add a better yard. This will cost approximately $2000
- Not a project, just a regular fact of our existence, but we need to pay to use the land our facility is on at the Jacoby Creek Land Trust – our annual rent is $6000.
- All of this is in addition to the cost of caring for each of our patients. We accomplish a lot on very little. We have one full time paid staff person and two part time staff, whose contributions to our mission are invaluable. Already underpaid, if we were to be unable to maintain their positions, the care we provide our patients would suffer.
We operate on the proverbial shoestring. Each year we raise the funds and resources to complete our mission as we go along. So far, we’ve managed to get through each year with our bills paid. And each new year, we start again. It’s stressful, certainly, but it’s the only thing we can do.
So for 2019, we’ll be mounting three major efforts to gather the support we need to meet our challenges.
This Spring, our goal is to raise one third of our annual budget by the end of April. That’s $50,000! If we raise $50,000 by April 30, we will have paid not only the expenses of February, March and April, but we’ll enter May with the resources on hand and the facility prepared to begin meeting the following months, our busiest time, Half of the animals we treat in any year are admitted in June, July, and August. Your support this Spring will give us a strong place to stand as we enter the most difficult part of our year.
Our community’s support is how we meet the challenge of treating hundreds of wild neighbors each year, helping resolve thousands of wildlife conflicts peacefully and prepare the next generation of wildlife caregivers.
Thank you for helping us help our wild neighbors.
Five days left to comment! Let CA Department of Pesticide Regulation know you care that rodenticides are reaching nearly every wild animal in our state!
Now four years after second generation anti-coagulant rodenticidess were taken off store shelves and restricted to licensed applicator use (commercial, agriculture) studies have shown that these poisons are still increasing dramatically in the populations of many different wild species, from threatened birds of prey to Bobcats. Latest results show over 90% of wild animals test positive for rodenticide exposure!
The California Department of Pesticide Regulation (DPR) has begun the process of re-evaluating these terrible poisons for further action to address their mounting prevalence in the environment.
The deadline for public comments has been extended to January 16, 2019.
Our friends at Raptors Are the Solution (RATS) has this suggestion for commenting on the DPR action
| ” Please send a short email to Rodenticide.Comments@cdpr.ca.gov expressing your support for DPR’s proposed decision and urging them to follow through and remove all second-generation anticoagulants (SGARs) from use in California. Although the state banned SGARs for use by consumers in 2014, a giant loophole allows the pest control industry to continue using them widely. If possible, please forward a copy of your sent email to raptorsarethesolution@gmail.com. We would like to track the number of comments submitted. ” |
As always, your involvement makes a difference! Let’s start the wheels rolling to get all of these wildlife-killing toxins off the shelves and out of our lives! Thank you!!
Thank you!!!!
Thank you to everyone who supported us throughout 2018, and especially those who made donations during our crucial year-end fundraising efforts. We matched the amount we’ve raised other years, and we enter 2019 in the black! Your support is very alleviating of stress and worry!!!
Now for some real talk: 2018 was a very difficult year, with a workload that was nearly 50% greater than 2017, but over a 10% dip in available resources. If not for in-kind donations such as milk replacer for the orphaned fawns in our care last Summer (Thank you Anita and Jed!!!) we might not have been able to cover our expenses.
There are reasons for this drop, such as two major fires nearby, Redding and Paradise, that required our community to step in and help out, as well as very important mid-term election that had compassionate and caring people feeling that it was an “all hands on deck” situation. And it was! Hopefully we are in the midst of turning around the worst of the last two years on the national front.
As we enter another potentially challenging year, it’s up to us to remind all that our wild neighbors are important members of our community, and the care we provide them when they are in need is a critical component of the humane future we all seek
As the new year becomes familiar, with its own clamorous needs, we’ll be here, asking for support, offering ways to prevent injuries, and advocating for our patients and all of the wildlife with whom we share this beautiful world.
Thank you for your past support, and also, it’s not too late to help! If you’d like to pitch in, you can DONATE HERE today! Thank You!
So Many Screech-Owls
Every Autumn and Winter, as shortened days leave afternoon commuters driving home in the dark, as early evenings bring nocturnal wild animals out to forage and hunt, at Humboldt Wildlife Care Center we suddenly start admitting many more owls, mostly hit by vehicles.
Surprisingly, many owls survive their collision with speeding cars, especially smaller owls who have less mass to contribute to the energy of the impact. Less energy in the impact means the odds increase of the bird avoiding some of the life threatening outcomes, such as broken bones, dislocated joints, eye trauma and other injuries their larger cousins usually suffer when hit by vehicles.
Since the first day of Autumn 2018 until today, January 7, we’ve admitted 14 Western Screech-Owls (Megascops kennicottii) for care after they each but two were likely hit by vehicles. Sadly, this is a fairly typical number of owls for us to admit at this time of year. If past years are any indication, there are several more of these small owls yet to be hit by cars before Winter’ end.
While all but two of the 14 Screech-owls admitted this Fall and Winter were hit by vehicles, it’s also true that each came from highly rural, two lane roads away from the major highways of Humboldt County. Alderpoint, Carlotta, Bayside, Kneeland, Freshwater are the the most common locations of Screech-owls being hit by vehicles.
The Safety Corridor on US 101 between Arcata and Eureka is a special zone of mandatory headlights and a speed limit reduced to 50 miles per hour due to the businesses and intersections along those few miles of four lane highway. We know that there will be cross traffic and so we prepare for it. We slow down, we turn on our headlights and we raise our awareness, for the sake everyone’s safety.
We need to bring that same kind of awareness to our driving habits on rural highways.
The beauty of our region – the Redwood forests, the bay, the ocean, the mountains – is part and parcel of our love for our home. Here in Humboldt the Wild always makes itself felt and known – a strong sea breeze comes up from the bay through the mall parking lot, or across the Arcata Plaza. We live in a region rich in wild neighbors and to be better neighbors, we can anticipate that they are here – from Screech-owls to Spotted Owls, from Spotted Skunks to Great Egrets – we can accommodate their needs
Chiefly, we can slow down when we drive. We can remember that we steer our machinery through our neighbors’ homes. The least we can do is strive to not run them down.
Surprisingly, 14 Screech-owls admitted in 3 of the Fall/Winter months is not an unusually high number. In fact it’s well within what we call normal. The only means we have to reduce this number is to change our habits and raise our awareness. Seeing wildlife is a challenge for us all in these highly abstracted times when the natural world can seem an afterthought. Still it’s our responsibility to operate our machinery as gently as we can.
Bicyclists, pedestrians, even motorcyclists, know the horror of not being seen or expected by car and truck drivers. Share the Road! See Motorcycles! Stop for Me! Signs like these are all over our communities. Sadly the only real warnings we post about wildlife crossings are for those animals who are big enough to cause damage to people or property in a collision. We need to expand our concerns. We need Owl Awareness. We need Wildlife Watchouts!
Until we’ve managed to better share this world we don’t own, our work helping these Owls, as well as all the other wild neighbors who are orphaned, injured and in need, due to their collision with the human-built world, Your support makes it possible. Please help keep our doors open, our lights on and the frozen mice coming. Our wild neighbors in need, need you. Thank you
2018, Challenging, Unpredictable, Heartbreaking, Rewarding…
Dear Friends, Supporters, and fellow lovers of the Wild,
Henry Thoreau noted over a 150 years ago that “in wildness is the preservation of the world.” You could say it’s the corollary of a more recent observation making the rounds on social media right now, attributed to Muhammad Ali, that “it’s not the deer that is crossing the road, rather it’s the road that is crossing the forest.
WANT TO SKIP THE READ AND GO SEE PICTURES OF SOME OF THIS YEAR’S FAWNS AND RACCOONS BEING RELEASED? click here and here. WANT TO MAKE A DONATION NOW WITHOUT SCROLLING ALL THE WAY DOWN? click here
It’s not hard to see that our society has put its faith and effort behind expansion of villages, towns, nations, trading routes, mechanization, the lot of it; – all of which has been, intentionally or not, a war on the wild. As a whole, our society sides with the road, we side with efforts to tame, the efforts to neutralize the wild and wildness. In short, we betray our home.
Our society has been betraying the wild for centuries, if not millennia, and it’s not some great abstraction or controversy to be debated, over which we must wrestle with viewpoints that give humans dominion, or that find in the world only human meaning. The simple truth can be seen on the side of every road we drive right here in Humboldt County. How many raccoons run down by vehicles on the highway and left to bloat do we need to see? We all know from what our own eyes tell us every day that the modern world finds its pavement to be far more necessary than the wild it destroys. Our allegiance to our machinery is so old and, by now, so integral to our lives that trying to imagine a world in which a Raccoon mother and her four young ones are more important than getting to Arcata in ten minutes is largely impossible.
We live in a world we didn’t make. Yet we make it every day.
One morning on US 101 as it passes through Eureka, someone threw their leftover fast food trash out their car window. At Humboldt Wildlife Care Center that meant that we admitted two Western Gulls (Larus occidentalis) that day. Both had been drawn to the food on the pavement there only to be hit by cars, injured so badly that humanely helping them into the next life was the only real treatment possible. Both gulls were rescued from further injury and suffering by compassionate people who saw the terrible thing unfold and couldn’t just drive on by.
Ours is a world where none of us are safe from accidentally harming our wild neighbors. We come from nature, like the rest of our neighbors, yet we’ve made our alliance with the struggle to overcome her. As if there might be a place there, beyond the Wild, where we might stand. And there is: extinction.
Every morning this year, Humboldt Wildlife Care Center/bax opened its doors, turned on its lights, became alive with the activity of staff and volunteers launching in to the day’s tasks caring for our patients and responding to phone calls regarding wild animals in need. We sent out teams to rescue hawks from the bank of the Mad River, or a hummingbird trapped inside a storefront. We opened our clinic to what may come – traumatically injured owls who’d been hit by a car; a group of orphaned raccoons whose mother had been trapped and taken far away; a young fawn rescued from one of the many fires this year, too badly burned to survive; a wayward fledgling crow successfully reunited with her parents; – a Pelican rescued; – a Pelican released.2018 is the most active year in Bird Ally X history. Not only did we care for nearly 1200 patients admitted to HWCC/bax here in Humboldt, our staff from around the state (notably, two BAX co-founders January Bill and Marie Travers) responded to an avian botulism outbreak in Siskiyou County, establishing a temporary field hospital to care for more than 400 ducks and shorebirds. In order to accomplish this volunteers from all over California helped, including support from HWCC staff, interns and volunteers. Three of the six BAX co-founders also traveled across the country and across oceans responding to oil spills that impacted wildlife as a part of other organizations’ responses. We’ve cared for more patients and reached more people through our outreach programs and internet presence than ever before and we struggle each day, each week, each month to cover our basic expenses.
Each year we talk about the mounting challenges, the difficulties, the successes, the sorrows, the joys of our work rescuing, rehabilitating and releasing back to freedom our wild neighbors in need. Each year we note the worsening symptoms of Earth out of balance. And each year we are committed to providing treatment, to the best of our abilities, for all those wild neighbors who are orphaned, or injured, or sickened by their contact with the built world – by their contact with us.
Each year we do what we can to advocate for our wild neighbors, to at least reduce the numbers who are hit by cars, trapped, caught and maimed or killed by our pets, whose nests are destroyed, whose wild, free and innocent lives are interrupted by our thoughtless machines and our tacit acceptance of the havoc they wreak.
Each year we are grateful and appreciative of your many-faceted support, moral, financial, and even sweat equity. Many of you work hard to bring balance back to the human experience of living on Earth. Your contribution is seen, recognized and highly valued.
We don’t know what trials are coming our way, but we know that deep love for the wild, compassion, love for our world, commitment, hard work and education must be woven so tightly together that they seem as one.
We know that there is no way for a humane future to come that doesn’t include taking care of those who we’ve harmed. That’s why we’re here. That’s why you support our work. It’s why we get misty when you thank us, with words, with money, with towels, with your love, and with your labor.
It’s also why we need you to support us like never before. Our workload is increasing at a rate faster than our ability to pay for it. Our mission demands that we grow, that we are able to accomplish more, not less, on behalf of our wild patients – as well as our colleagues for whom we also work. If we are to accomplish our work, it will be your support that made it so. We look forward to leaning on you in 2019 and beyond. Thank you.
With deep respect, gratitude – working together in alliance with the wild for a more humane 2019,
Monte Merrick
co-director Bird Ally X
director HWCC/bax
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