Author: Monte Merrick

Moving HWCC: Next Level Unlocked! Property Found!

Posted on by Monte Merrick

Since we realized that we needed to relocate Humboldt Wildlife Care Center from its current location in Bayside to somewhere suitable and sustainable back in March of 2021, with less than two years to accomplish to the move, there has been a background of stress about our future that has added a layer of urgency to each day of operation – the clock is ticking!

After months of searching and considering multiple scenarios, at last, we’ve settled on a property that is available and accessible and meets most of the criteria we’d established. While the asking price is much more than we have, it’s also the most affordable we’ve been able to find. We’ve come to an agreement with the property owner for the lot, which, happily is nearly 6 times larger than our current leased quarter-acre. With this major step achieved, now we enter the next big challenge: secure the funds!

Sneak peek of future site of HWCC, once we secure the funding!

We don’t have much time now. We need to be on our new site and operating by the first of the new year, as well as have cleared our old site from our soon-to-be-former landlord’s land. This is a very tall order. We will not be successful without the help from our community, especially financially. Still, that we’ve even found a piece of property that we can use is very relieving – it hadn’t been looking too good for too many months!

The new location is in Manila, which has many advantages for our work. I think we will be well-placed to continue and expand our reach in our region. As the Crow flies, we’re just moving across the bay.

Another view of this future diamond in the current rough!

What a year it’s been! As the director of the Care Center, I don’t think we’ve faced a more challenging time – between my health problems (which thankfully are no problem at all now!), the ongoing pandemic, the record number of patients we’ve admitted over the last two years and the challenges of of this relocation, we are in a swirl of difficulties! Yet guiding us, as always, we have our mission – to serve our region’s wild neighbors in need, to serve the field of widlife rehabilitation with workshops, to educate new rehabilitators, and to help our communities develop the resources and perspectives needed to peacefully co-exist with the Wild, and end our society’s war on Nature. Our mission makes our challenges seem quite manageable indeed! And with your support, which has kept has going for over 40 years, Humboldt Wildlife Care Center will move into a new era of stability and growth.

If we had $500,000 dollars, we could purchase the property and fund the costs of rebuilding of our facility. That’s a lot to raise in such a short period. Realistically, we need to plan on having less resources available – we’ll need to creative and committed. Fortunately, we are well versed in accomplishing a lot with very little. I don’t know how we will do it, but I do know that we will.

Thank you for being here always. You’ve made quality care for our wild neighbors possible. If you’d like to support our work, our land purchase, or the costs of rebuilding, and invest in the continued care available for our wild neighbors, please DONATE! Every gift helps.


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Want to help us help our wild neighbors in need?

Posted on by Monte Merrick

You can help return an orphaned or injured wild animal to the wild! You can help keep wild families together! You can help keep our facility functional and clean! Volunteers are needed for all tasks. After putting our volunteer program on hold in March of 2020, we’ve been slowly rebuilding it, adding volunteers to our shifts as the pandemic has allowed, and now we are ready to add more.

Volunteers are a crucial element in the field of wildlife rehabilitation. All wildlife rehab facilitities operate on shoestring budgets and without the necessary help from volunteers, we’d never last. The pandemic has been brutal on staff and we are very happy to rebuild our core team of volunteers.

The life of a volunteer: One day you’re helping with an opossum, the next day a Bald Eagle.

Some of the tasks that volunteers help with:

1. Cleaning: First and foremost, from the newest, most inexperienced volunteer to the director of our facility, a major task for all of us is cleaning. Laundry, dishes, sweeping, mopping, sanitizing – these are mission critical in a hospital setting and your experience in your own life will serve here! If you’re new to this kind of maintenance, we can help you and you dont have to get a job in the food service industry to learn it (as many of us did, like me!). We also have to clean the patient housing, which means that you will be trained in how to work around a frightened wild animal, without making the stress much worse.

2. Feeding: Patient food must be prepared at least twice a day. Want to learn what it takes to emulate a diet that a wild diet in the setting of temporary captive care? It’s a great skill to have and it won’t be long before you’lll understand the intricacies, and the principles that support them, of feeding a wild animal a nutritional diet that is familiar and therefore stress reductive.

3. Examinations: Helping staff perform routine examinations of our patients. In order to perform an assessment of the condition of our patients, routine exams are given. Volunteers learn valuable handling skills that protect the caregiver and the patient from harm. Instructions, safety protocols, and personal protective equipment are provided as needed.

4. Transportation: If you can drive from Oregon to Laytonville and sometimes beyond, then you can help us with transportation for patients. The region we serve is huge and we have to travel as many 3 hours away to pick up orphaned and injured wild neighbors. Simply driving all day can be a very big help to an animal who desperately needs a second chance.

5. Rescue: Many times people report an animal in trouble, but they are unable to do anything about it. They call us. We go out on missions to rescue wild animals every day. Even as a new volunteer you can still participate simply by driving. Capturing wild animals in need is a skill, but you will be provided with the training and the safety equipment to be a hero!

6. Releases: Returning an animal to their birthright of wild freedom is a joy beyond compare. Transporting animals to their release site and helping to ensure their safe return to the life that they were born to is one of the regular bits of supreme awesome-osity that can be yours simply by being here helping!

7. Answering the phone: Helping people resolve conflicts with wild animals is an important part of our daily work. Keeping wild families together – in other words preventing wild babies from becoming orphans is a serious task, can be difficult, and largely happens on the phone in conversation with someone who may be at their wit’s end. Learn to advocate for wild animals in an effective manner by answering the phone in our clinic. It can be challenging, but that just makes our successes sweeter!

8. Humane Solutions! Sometimes keeping wild families together requires an intervention. In order to stop a trapper or some other cruel plan to get rid of an unwated wild animal, we go to the scene and work with the people to keep the wild family safe while conving them that it would be ebst if they moved on. This is delicate work that can also take us on an adventure through people’s crawlspaces and attics. Not for everyone, but if it’s for you, you’ll learn valuable skills in humanely solving people’s conflicts with a wild animal.

9. Ambassador: You can be a voice for the rights of Mother Earth and the Wild. Education and outreach are very important parts of our mission. Do you enjoy speaking in public? Do you have a passion for environmental education? Do you want to make people act right toward wildlife? We may be the droids you’re looking for!

Releasing an animal who was going to die without our care is one the greatest joys known to humanity.

These are some of the most common and important ways that we rely on volunteers to meet the challenges of our mission. Just about every wildlife rehabilitator working today began as a volunteer, and many still are volunteers. Many wildlife rehabilitators with their own facilities at their own houses are still volunteers! This is not a well-paid field, unless you factor in the job satisfaction, and in that sense, it’s unparalleled.

But satisfaction isn’t all that you’ll get out of helping us help our wild neighbors. You will get critical training that can be used here or in a larger context. As a member of the Oiled Wildlife Care Network HWCC/bax is your local path toward being qualified to help care for impacted wildlife if there is ever a catastrophic oil spill locally or across the state. Believe me, the only way to make these kinds of disasters less painful is being able to help repair and restore what was broken. Your desire to help begins here!

So if you want to help us help wildlife in a direct hands-on manner, let us know! CLICK HERE TO APPLY

And if your dance card or your plate is already full, you can always help us meet our mission with your generous support. Donations make our world go ’round. Without your financial help, our doors would close forever. PLEASE DONATE HERE

Thank you for your love of the Wild. Love is the most important ingredient in the conservation and protection of our natural home and our wild kin!




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Humboldt Wildlife Care Center Now Has A Dedicated Rescue Rig!

Posted on by Monte Merrick

One day last year our staff went out on a call about a sick deer. The people who called watched as we put the carrier with the deer into a small hatchback and they hatched a plan of their own. This Spring, when they purchased a new vehicle, they called to see if we could use their old car, a 1996 Volvo Wagon! They were very kind and wanted to be sure we could use the vehicle. We sure can!

The region we serve, Northern Menocino to Oregon, the Pacific Ocean to I-5, is over 20,000 square miles! (nearly twice the size of New Jersey, the state I was born in!) We put on a lot of miles and a reliable rig that is also safe is something we’ve wanted to add to our resources for years. And now we have one!

Now if you see a plain tan Volvo on the road, you never know, we just might be transporting a wild neighbor, who knows, a Northern Alligator Lizard or a Bald Eagle!

Or we might just be on our way to the North Coast Co-op, again, for more supplies for our ever increasing Spring and Summer caseload.

So to Fredyne and Gerald, who so generously passed their ride into our service, thank you!

And you know, not every donation is a car… without many small donations, we wouldnt be able to put gas in the car, or food in our patients’ bellies. If you can, please donate here. Thank you!!

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Great Horned Owl Spends the Night Stuck in a Wet Garbage Can, Released After Care.

Posted on by Monte Merrick

Not just an indignity! For a warm-blooded body the size of a Great Horned Owl (Bubo virginianus) to spend the night stuck in can with inches of water on the bottom is life-threatening! Fortunately the landowners found the owl in the morning and got the soggy, angry, owl to our facility in Bayside.

Minor abrasions afflicted the undersides of both of their wings and all over, their feathers were soaked and very ruffled. The owl was also fairly dehydrated. Warmth and fluids helped both problems immensely and soon the owl was much less soggy, but no less angry.

After spending some time in our large aviary, making sure that flight and agility were unimpaired, we took the handsome bird back to McKinleyville and the area where no doubt there are eggs or owlets glad to have both parents back on the case!

After leaving the box, the Great Horned Owl wasted no time putting distance between themself and us.

It’s our community’s support that keeps our doors open, our freezer full of rats, and an aviary suitable for a bird as large and magnificent as a Great Horned Owl. Thank you for making our work possible. If you want to help please donate!

video and photos: Laura Corsiglia/bax

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North Coast Co-Op Seeds for Change Roundup for HWCC all of March!

Posted on by Monte Merrick

Our month for the wonderful community support program of the North Coast Co-op has arrived! It’s a fantastic and simple thing, the Seeds For Change program of the Co-op. Each month an area non-profit, chosen by co-op members, is the beneficiary of customers rounding up their purchases at the checkout. It’s so easy and makes such a difference! And boy do we need it! Besides our ever increasing caseload of wild patients (last year we treated 1,612 of our wild neighbors!) and the coming of our busy wild baby season, but this is the year we have to find our new location and move there. We are extremely grateful for this opportunity provided by the membership and leadership of the North Coast Co-op! So please, this month, when you shop the co-op, remember us when you checkout and be sure to ask to round up your purchase to support our region’s injured and orphaned wild animals!

And thank you to everyone who supports our work! Without you we wouldnt be here at all!

Want to donate now? click here!

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Our New Mugs Have Landed

Posted on by Monte Merrick

Each year we produce a mug to commemorate the hard work our volunteers generously donate and a species who had it worse than many others. This year’s mug for 2021 is now here, and it’s the tenth in our series!

Featuring the Northern Fulmar (Fulmarus glacialis), a remarkable bird of the deep northern seas who only comes to land to nest during a brief breeding season, our 2021 mug honors the multitude of Fulmars we admitted in 2021.

Between 2012 and 2020, we admitted 35 Northern Fulmars, for a variety of reasons, but mostly just found stranded. Yet in 2021, we admitted 24 of these mysterious seabirds!


Northern Fulmars are a seabird with distinct challenges for any would-be care provider. In the early days of seabird rehabilitation, Fulmars were notorious for simply not making it in captive care situations – causing geat heartbreak and frustration for those of us trying to get them back to wild freedom. About 15 years ago, great strides in their care were made during a mass stranding in event in Monterey Bay, in which the team I was on provided care for nearly 100 of these birds. Because the facility where we were doing this rescue operation had a pool that used salt water brought in directly from the ocean, we made the fortuitous discovery that Northern Fulmars, and all procelliformes (or tubenoses) cannot thrive on fresh water, as most salt water birds can manage for short stays.

Once we started making sure that all Fulmars were housed on salted pools, our success rate began to climb. Now we think of them as any other seabird, still with challenges but within our abilities to treat and release. Of the 24 Norhtern Fulmars admitted in 2021, we were able to provide care for 9 (the other 15 either had injuries too severe to treat or were deceased on admission – a sad but typical toll). Of the 9 we attempted to treat, just over 50 % were successfully released – a result much more in line with the results we might expect from any species we admit.

HWCC/bax staff and interns display how super-cool you’ll look drinking your favorite hot (or cold) beverage from our new mug!

If you’d like one of our new mugs, drawn by Bird Ally X’s famed art director, Laura Coriglia, simply stop in at our clinic in Bayside (not for long, we’re moving at the end of this year!). We’re asking $10 for each mug.

Thank you for your support over the years, and for helping us improve the quality of care available for wildlife in Humboldt, in California and around the world. It’s serious work and we couldn’t do it without you! And if you can, please donate here! Thank you!!!!

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Hit by a car on Confusion Hill, Western Screech Owl battles back and flies free!

Posted on by Monte Merrick

The first patient of 2022 was a Western Screech Owl who’d been hit by a vehicle at Confusion Hill in Northern Mendocino county. The person who found the small owl was unable to transport them to our facility in Bayside, so HWCC/bax staff drove down in a heavy rainstorm to bring the owl into care.

One of the everyday challenges of our work here on the North Coast is the huge geographical area we cover. In other regions where the human population is greater and there are multiple wildlife care facilities, the idea of transporting an animal 2 or 3 hours is quite foreign. But here, it’s matter of course. And in the winter months it can be pretty stressful sending people into remote areas in bad weather and spotty phone coverage.

When the owl arrived at our clinic, his attitude was very depressed. While responsive to our presence, for the first few days, sleep was their preferred activity. On their third day in care their attitude had improved considerably and we were able to move the owl to an outside aviary. Within a day after moving outdoors, the owl was flying.

It’s fairly common with very small owls we’ve admitted after being hit by a vehicle that they present to us in the clinic with only neurological symptoms. Their lower body mass reduces the intensity of the impact. Larger owls, and other large birds, are more likely to suffer more traumatic injuries from these impacts, such as broken bones, and internal organ damage.

After a week in care, the owl was flying very well and had fully recovered from their misadventure. Now we only had to take him back to Mendocino.

All of our patients present challenges. From the moment we learn of a wild animal in need, we start a process that isn’t finished until the final outcome is realized. In our region, one of our common challenges, from the time of rescue to release, is the long drive. On a sunny Sunday morning the staff member who picked up the owl and a regular Sunday volunteer made the trip back to Confusion Hill to return this lucky owl to their wild freedom.

Thanks to your support, material and moral, we are able , everyday, to meet the challenge of our difficult work in often remote locations! Your support makes a huge difference in the lives of our wild neighbors in need. Thank you!! Want to help? DONATE HERE

photo: Laura Corsiglia/bax


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Thank you isn’t enough.

Posted on by Monte Merrick

In the first months of 2021, I was planning our year, finishing our maintenance schedule and prepping Humboldt Wildlife Care Center for another hectic wild baby season. And then in May, I was diagnosed with cancer. I still hate to say it, but it’s true, cancer. Well, you know, it’s certainly not what you want the doctor to say after the biopsy, but the diagnosis sets something in motion that keeps on under its own steam. A lot was uncertain after that diagnosis, but one thing was obvious – my season at HWCC was going to be a lot different than I thought.

Emergency wildlife response has taught me so many things, invaluable things, things that I use in life over and over – and the one thing above all else that I’ve learned is that a committed crew of passionate people can accomplish so much more than can be imagined. I knew that we’d survive, here at HWCC/bax, even if I didn’t – a worst case scenario that I was not yet sure had been ruled out. I knew that our staff would struggle without me, I am not superfluous, I hope, but I knew that a way forward would be found, just as we’ve met every other challenge, hardened as we are by our long passages without volunteers due to the pandemic. The talented and committed staff as well as the crucial interns and volunteers of Humboldt Wildlife Care Center has my gratitude in perpetua and for ever and a day.

Lucinda Adamson, Desiree Vang, Nora Chatmon, Brooke Brown, Jen Martin operated our daily wildlife hospital during the busiest part of our busiest year – it so happened that I was hospitalized for three weeks – three weeks that coincide with our busiest three weeks of the year – mid-June to early July. And for all that they have done to support me too during this time – by doing their work so excellently – they are a critical part of my recovery. I am so proud to know them, and grateful for what they give they world.

It so happened that my diagnosis in May coincided with the great honor we enjoyed of being the non-profit for the North coast Co-op’s awesome Seeds For Change program. Being selected by co-op members for this incredible benefit was already a wonderful encouragement and the money that was raised came at a time when we were in a more precarious position than we usually are in Mid June. The community support from this ended up not only supporting our wildlife hospital during our busiest time, already a boost to our season like we’ve never before had, but when I saw the check in the HWCC mail that was being brought to me in the hospital, I can’t measure the boost to my morale and therefore my recovery that it was. Suffice to say seeing that check at a time when my own ability to do the normal day to day fundraising that I do to keep our facility going – I knew we were covered at least until I was out of the hospital – that was a relief that quite literally still makes me feel kind of very weepy. So Co-op, co-op members, and everyone who rounded up in the month of May, the difference you made for wildlife in Humboldt County may be more than we’ll ever know. Thank you for being there for us.

Right before I went in the hospital, we set up some online fundraising and we appealed to our past and current supporters and we appealed to our friends in the wider wildlife rehabiltation community. The response was extremely generous – donations online and donations by mail from here and near, and far and away. It wasn’t money you were sending. It was raccoon formula; it was mealworms; it was crickets; it was frozen smelt; it was frozen rats. It was our rent and our utilities and the meager salary we can afford to pay. If we are a ship, you are both our store of supplies and what keeps our boards tight. We float and more we sail becuase of the vessel, crew, and equipment and all of the costs of our mission your support provides. I mean this as sincerely as I’ve ever meant anything in my life when I say that writing thank you notes for your support over the course of this Summer, something I ordinarily enjoy, was a very uplifting way to spend my time in recovery. Feeling the magnitude of your love for wildlife and your support of our work filled me with both joy and determination. Those are very useful things to experience let me tell you. So many beautiful kinds of support came to the rescue of HWCC and that also rescued me. What can I say, but thanks for making this last day of 2021 a possibilty for me. I had my doubts along the way, but none of you did.

Like everyone I think, I hate facebook. I say so on facebook regularly. I think to leave it all the time, and go “back” to some other kind of friendship “in real life” – but the simple fact is that the people who support our work on social media make us feel good. We like when people like us – one year we were nonprofit of the year! Do you know what a lift something like that can be when you spend your day dealing with the trauma of wounded wildlife? It’s a remarkable thing, and besides for the increased attention which increases the resources for our needs which means real advancement in the quality of care we’ve been able to provide over the last decade, which is what we work for everyday, and what we continue to strive toward, but the support of our friends, both organizationally, and for me personally, was a very important part of empowering us to do our work, to feel supported helps change the odds. Knowing people are as committed to good outcomes for wildlife, for a beautiful relationship with Mother Earth, feel the sorrow of orphaned opossums, and rejoice in a Pelican’s release – laying in a hospital bed feeling that support and having the well wishes of so many was a kind of support that I can’t quantify as easily as hours worked and checks deposited – I don’t think anyone can – the power of your goodwill – it lifed my spirits and I am quite certain that I do better work with my spirits lifted. I am quite certain that your support makes me do better than I would alone. Because of modern technology, I had this support available to me all day long every day. It was given freely across many different platforms and among many different groups of people “that you know on the internet” – this community, a digital community, did a lot of the work of helping me keep my eye on the ball all Summer long and my success at recovering so far has been partly your fault. Thank you my friends around the world who love wildlife and helped me along the way. The beauty of this community was shown to me in a way that I will never be able to deny. You’re a part of real life here. You really helped us out this year. And in the hours of the day when I was alone, you were there whenever I needed you.

The hours of the day when I was not alone was because my beloved partner, wife and fellow co-founder of Bird Ally X, Laura Corsiglia was by my side. When she wasn’t it was either past visiting hours (hospitalization fortunately timed: I avoided the stricter pandemic protocols that soon followed with the Delta variant) or she was on a mission for the Care Center. Laura provided a kind of support for me and the clinic simultaneously that of course filled me with relief, and happiness, and deep admiration and also, to be the recipient of the depth and breadth of her care and concern for me, and for our projects that we share such as the Care Center – I know the value of what she does for HWCC/bax (releases, rescues, photographs, graphic design, planning, administrative oh the list is long!) but going through this Summer of cancer and surgeries without her – I don’t see how I might have done it. She is the reason I got treatment in the first place and she was with me holding me up every step up the way, sometimes simply carrying me to the next place I could rest. The support that provides me is eternal and obvious and the support it provides HWCC and all of our patients is incalculable but apparent every day that we open. She’s brilliant and I love her so much.

To everyone who continues to support our work and will, thank you! You make our ship float. You provide the means for our mission.

Here’s to a very happy and increasingly healthy New Year! Thank you for the one thousand six hundred and twelve individual wild lives we were able to admit at HWCC in 2021. May 2022 be better for us all, and may all that we wish to preserve remain.

Thank you for all you do.

Monte Merrick

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New Wild Review – the BAX podcast – new episode – Moving Forward!

Posted on by Monte Merrick

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 39:44 — 45.5MB) | Embed

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It’s been a long time since we’ve had an new episode of our podcast, for a variety of reasons! Tune in to hear what they are, and join us as we move from this very challenging year to embark on our most challenging year ever!!! The year of our big move! And as always, thank you for your love of the Wild and your support of our wildlife saving work!!!

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