Dear Supporters and fellow Wildlife Lovers;
I feel a pressing need to address you directly, as a person, as a wildlife rehabilitator, as someone committed to correcting the injustices our built world consistently inflicts on our wild neighbors, and also, and perhaps most significantly, as the person who is most directly responsible for communicating our work, our goals, and our needs to you, our supporters, followers and fellow wildlife lovers.
Talking about our work is easy. I am deeply committed to it. I love what we do. I feel privileged to be able to work so closely with wild animals. I am grateful for all that having been so close to unfettered freedom has taught me. Standing up in front of a room, putting my thoughts on paper, posting on the internet, is natural for me – as natural as rising early every summer morning and crossing the Arcata bottoms on my way to Humboldt Wildlife Care Center, our clinic in Bayside, to prep food for a couple dozen orphaned raccoons, offer mealworms to nestling songbirds, and return calls from people who’ve found an injured wild animal, or help them resolve a conflict with an animal who has wandered across one of our arbitrary and unnatural lines we’ve drawn between our world and theirs.
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My comfort zone includes some pretty awful things – broken wings, a car-smashed Opossum mother with babies still in her pouch, a thrush torn apart by a housecat and still breathing. My training and experience have taught me how to set aside immediate feelings and take action. It’s what I do. It’s what all wildlife rehabilitators do – every day of the year – here at Humboldt Wildlife Care Center, and in every other clinic – from well-funded organizations with a million dollar budget to the garage and shed of a “backyard rehabber” – which is by far the most common.
BAX supports all wildlife rehabilitators with education and workshops. As rehabilitators we know how critical good information is to do the job that we are each so passionate about – it’s one of our three primary missions.
We also provide direct care for wild animals in distress – at HWCC, but also as responders to oil spills around our state and beyond. One of our co-founders, Marie Travers, is currently in British Columbia, Canada, working with Focus Wildlife responding to a maritime accident that spilled thousand of gallons of fuel into a pristine habitat near the Great Bear Rainforest, one of the largest remaining unspoiled temperate rainforests in the world.
Promoting co-existence with the Wild is another of our critical missions. This takes many forms, including what you are reading right now. We go to schools. We go to conferences. We rely on the support of local media to help us bring a voice for the voiceless.
Arguing for justice is difficult and emotionally costly work, but it is very gratifying. The desire for justice, the urge to rise to the defense of the marginalized, is common, and who is more marginalized than the skunk hit by a car and carelessly, thoughtlessly, left by the side of the road, bloating and forgotten? There is an adage among conservationists, that “every victory is temporary, every loss permanent.” We feel the truth of this each day. And by and large, we remain undaunted.
But for me, there is one task that requires me to steel my nerves, gather my courage, and plunge in. And that is asking for your support – your money – your check. It’s obvious, of course, that all of what I’ve described above – the thousands of animals we’ve cared for, the thousands more we’ve prevented from becoming casualties, the people we’ve reached, the wild lives and the human lives we’ve helped – can’t be done in our world without money. So, regardless of my discomfort, I ask for donations. I ask often. Some people might be good at it. Maybe I am, I don’t know. I just know that what we need and what we have don’t match. So comfortable or not, good at it or not, I have to do it – just like I’m doing now.
Every month I set a goal. The last few months the goal was $7000 – honestly, that’s not quite enough, and if it wasn’t for the holiday and end of year fundraising, as well as a reliable foundation grant, we wouldn’t meet our needs on $84,000 a year – a terrible crisis – we can’t spend what we don’t have. Yet, the last two months we haven’t even come close to meeting our $7000 goal. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t worried.
Worrying about the care we provide is part of my job – I accept it – worrying about our volunteers and staff – that they’re being treated well and getting the opportunities to learn they want and need – is also part of my job. Worrying about the money? It’s part of my job, but it’s the one that scares me the most. The other aspects are in my control. Our quality of care, our intern program – those are ours to make as good as we can. The support required, well, that depends on me asking, but it really depends on our community providing. We are only as strong as you make us.
We have a relatively small budget. In our dreams, we’d have $250,000 a year to spend. We’d be able to fund every program we’ve designed and pay the staff meager salaries to get it done. As it is, we make it all work, for now, on about $100,000 per year. We have one full time and one part time staff person. Everything else goes to our patients and our wildlife ambassador birds. Right now, we are $10,000 short of our usual annual donations. So far, we are continuing to meet our mission – you can scroll though our past stories to see the work we’ve done – from returning a local Bald Eagle who’d suffered lead poisoning to the wild, to delivering our aquatic bird workshop to rehabilitators on the Oregon coast. Yet, we have expenses, such as food and medicine, still unpaid from our busy summer season. Our suppliers know that we work hard, but that doesn’t mean they give their products away.
Now as wintering seabirds and geese return to our region, our expenses will increase again. Additionally, this is the time of year when repairs and maintenance to our facility must be completed.
In short, we need your help.
As this year’s contentious election season comes to a close, and the anxiety of our uncertain future looms – climate chaos, toxic spills, international instability, here at home, no matter what happens, our wild neighbors will need us. Wild animals will still be the most marginalized victims of the hazards of the world we humans have built. And we’ll need to be here for them.
Only your support makes that possible. Which is why I fight my discomfort and ask for your generous donation. Please, we need you. [You can click here to Donate Now]
Thank you for your past support, and thank you for enduring my constant appeals.
Take care,
Monte Merrick
co-director Bird Ally X, director Humboldt Wildlife Care Center
A young Peregrine Falcon is given rehydrating fluids after an initial exam.
BAX co-founder Shannon Riggs, DVM instructs workshop attendee at recent 
BAX co-founder Vann Masvidal in a teaching moment at 2016 CCWR symposium.
BAX co-founders Marie Travers, January Bill, and Vann Masvidal teach a workshop on cleaning oiled marine birds at a workshop we delivered in Morro Bay in 2014.
BAX/HWCC staff and volunteers attended the Fish and Game Commission’s meeting in Fortuna where it was decided to ban all Bobcat trapping in our state!
Our Wildlife Ambassador birds visit hundreds of school kids of all ages each year with a message of peaceful co-existence with the wild.
In the winter, our “quiet” season is only a storm away from a major and sudden increase in our patients in care… we need to be ready for this at any time! Functioning pools and a freezer full of fish are mandatory!
Our patients vary greatly in mass, but in spirit each is exactly the same size – infinite.
HWCC rehabilitator Lucinda Adamson listens for adults while attempting to reunite this juvenile Western Screech-owl with his family.
The real reward of our labor – releasing healthy fully recovered patients, such as this Great Egret (Ardea alba) we treated this summer, back to their free and wild lives.
A juvenile Peregrine Falcon in care at HWCC in 2012. This youngsters only problem was that her (or his) first flight from his nest landed her on Eureka’s waterfront. Too young to know better, she was easily picked up by a well-intended person and brought to us. After a day of observation to insure she was in good health, we returned her to her family. 
Receiving medicine during initial examination.
Trying to evade the net while being captured for his release evaluation. 
Thinking outside the box!
A new volunteer on her first release – these moments are the joy of our work.
… back into wild, blue yonder …
A very young Common Murre, on admission day, rests in our incubator, exhausted and nearly starved to death.
After warming up, a full examination is performed. Supplements, such as vitmain B, and anti-parasitical drugs are given.
Each chick is given an identification band so that we can accurately track her or his progress.
Common Murres are colony-nesters and housing them with others helps ease the stress of captive care.
In our newly built seabird pool. Magnetic-drive pumps, unlike most swimming pool pumps, allow us to switch between fresh and saltwater, as the needs of our patients dictates.
Each bird ate nearly 50 night smelt each day. Over the course of two months, that’s a lot of fish!
Volunteer staff takes our three Common Murre patients to the bay for release.
As birds who spend nearly their entire lives on water, they don’t walk very well. We place them directly in the bay.
We do what we can. Yes it feels good to help. It’s one of the ways that we know that helping is the right thing to do.
Paddling out to deeper waters to join others out beyond the old formation. From 150 gram babies to nearly grown adults over 900 grams, this is the second chance that you provided with your support.
Orphaned raccoons in care learn that fish is found in the water, that bugs are found in the dirt, that fruit is found in trees, and that eggs are found in nests – all things they would have learned from their mother. 
Next comes the real river!
It’s healthy to approach new things with caution! A young raccoon takes her time leaving the crate. The wild is much bigger than any of us dream.
The gravel floor of our raccoon housing is made of river bed, just like this river’s bed. Everything is made of the wild.
After exploring independently, these two meet up in the river to compare notes. 
Off they go, into their real destiny.
Transporting back to our clinic, even in poor health the eagle is a wary observer.
A sick patient needs nutrition. We make sure they get it.
These feet are formidable! We take precautions with all patients, no matter how sick.
Our patient is at his worst. Fortunately he began to recover within a few days after getting the right medication.
A mighty eagle reduced to hiding in the aviary’s bushes might seem sad, but to staff, this is a photo of sure recovery.
Our patient had been in care for over two months before he was able to mount this perch!
His ability to burst into flight like this took months to recover: this was a happy day!
Staff rehabilitator, Lucinda Adamson opens the carrier.
Released back to his home! A powerful bird, restored. At the bottom of this valley is the river where he was found.
