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
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.
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!!!
Last year, your votes placed Humboldt Wildlife Care Center in the marvelous Seeds for Change program of the North Coast Co-op. Every month the Co-op gives shoppers a chance to round up their purchase to support an area non-profit organization, as chosen by the Co-op members through voting. In May of 2021, we were very fortunate to be the beneficiary of this program – which made a huge difference in our ability to meet the challenges of our very busy wild baby season, which happens at the same time. Also, as it turns out, it benefited even more than usual since our director was sidelined by major health issues right at the start of the season. The funding that this program provided us helped in both measurable and immeasurable ways, making our work easier at a time when we were very concerned about just how difficult the 2021 season would be. Thanks to you, we did more than survive, we thrived.
Now the time for voting is here again! (VOTE HERE)There are many organizations to choose from to be supported during 2022, all with a valuable service to our community. (see list of orgs here) We are asking you to please include us in your choices. Next year is going to be a defining year for us. Besides continuing to meet the growing challenge of our daily work (admissions are up nearly 5% above 2020, our busiest year to date in HWCC’s 42 year history), we are unable to remain in our current location and have to move our entire facility by 2022’s end.
An old saying teaches us that you can re-build a ship at sea, as long as you do it one board at a time. 2022 will be like that for us, and the extra support that the Seeds for Change program provides will make sure we have the boards and nails needed to keep our vessel afloat and performing its functions while rebuild it, at sea, for a more secure future serving our neighbors, both wild and human, for the decades to come.
Thank you for making our work possible. And thank you to the North Coast Co-op for providing such an awesome program that makes supporting the good and neessary work of our region’s awesome non-profit organizations.
For this post, I’d like to take a more personal approach so that we can acknowledge, thank and just generally celebrate the incredible staff of Humboldt Wildlife Care Center/bax. So while our staff is definitely a part of the neighborhood – everyday people, you might say, they are anything but ordinary people. Our staff are everyday heroes.
https://youtu.be/4DQAQd-uy-0
Please enjoy while enjoying photos of the incredible staff of HWCC/bax
Many of you may already know that I was diagnosed with a cancerous tumor in the middle of May, right at the start of our busy wild baby season. Every year we know that our lives will turn hectic and overworked in the middle of Spring when the season fully arrives in our area. But this year my health really complicated matters. On reduced staffing for over a year, and with our volunteer program only restarted at the end of April after 13 months in suspension, all due to COVID-19, my diagnosis couldn’t have come at a worse time.
Already overworked and underpaid, our staff would be even more burdened by my treatment and hospitalization, which would keep me out of the clinic.
If there ever was an ocassion to rise to, this was it and did they ever rise. The last patient I rescued before my treatment began was a baby Barn Owl, case #21-438, stranded alone on the Hammond Bridge over the Mad River. Since then, our staff has cared for nearly one thousand more patients and prevented harm from coming to hundreds of wild babies through our humane solutions program, which focuses on peaceful co-existence with our wild neighbors, as well as the important work of keeping wild families together.
In keeping with a ten-year trend, 2021 is shaping up to be our busiest year in the 42-year history of HWCC, with a 3% increase over last year’s record setting caseload to date.
Each year our work becomes more vital to our region’s injured and orphaned wild neighbors, and each year our young staff grows in skills and experience. My pride and pleasure in their accomplishments is overwhelming, especially as I’m able to gradually return to a full time schedule and I see what an excellent crew has been forged by their successful navigation of another Spring and Summer, – a time filled with the intense, difficult and emotionally challenging work of wildlife rehabilitation.
It was ten years ago that I became the director of HWCC, when Bird Ally X took on the Care Center with the goal of making it into a top notch wildlife care facility that also trained the wildlife rehabilitators of the future. Watching our staff in action from my sick bed and through my radiation and chemotherapy and through my recovery has been one of the most profound things I’ve ever seen.
The daily phone calls with staff I had while I was in the hospital in June and July were a joy to participate in, as we discussed the caseload. I dont know if they’ll ever know how critical their excellent handling of the season was to my recovery. By competently taking care of business, our staff not only met our mission in difficult times but, on a personal note, they’ve made my recovery possible, sustaining our life-saving work while I could only get on with the business of healing.
Please enjoy these photographs of our dedicated staff in action and join me in thanking them each for their service to our community, a community that is both human and wild.
Courtney Hernandez, an awesome intern, who just recently left us to return to SoCal where her skills she learned at HWCC will hopefully soon be making the lives of wild animals near Big Bear and Riverside better! Courtney was an integral part of our staff for the last four Summers while she completed her degree!
Staff rehabilitators Nora Chatmon (l) and Brooke Brown (r) prepare for a routine examination of these two Barn Owl babies who are nearing readiness for release!
Wildlife rehabilitator, bird ally x board member and full time HSU student, Nora Chatmon puts some warm milk replacer in the belly of this orphaned Raccoon.
Each week all the raccoons in care are given an exam and weight check to make sure everything is going acording to plan! Brooke Brown and staff rehabilator Desiree Vang (facing away) make short work of handling thise fiercely smart little mammals.
New intern Ceshawny Crosby assists with a Rock Pigeon examination. Ceshawny may be new, but she’s rather instantly become a critical member of our crew. She made our Summer better by a mile.
Now and again, after recovering from surgery, I was able to come in and help. Not nearly as much as I would’ve liked!
Our newest staff member, Jen Martin, joined our crew after an internship just in time to cover big gsps in the schedule left by my absence.
Katharine Major, an intern veteran of 4 seasons delicately handles an orphan Gray Fox during a weekly exam. Katharine has filled many roles at HWCC, and we’re lucky to have her on board./
Intern Val Rodriguez (l) and acting Rehabiltation Manager Lucinda Adamson express the happiness that can only come from successfully reuniting a juvenile Peregrine Falcon with their family!
Courtney holds a Sharp-shinned Hawk for an examination.
Desiree and Lucinda wrangle a juvenile male (so small!) Bald Eagle.
Lucinda observes our Barn Swallow patients in the Songbird Aviary. This year we’ve treated more Barn Swallow chicks than any other year previously.
The resumption of our volunteer program means the resumption of training! Leading new and old staff in a discussion of the ethical practice of our work is one of my favorite tasks – one I’m glad I was still able to perform!
One last shot of Brooke Brown, here examing a Common Murre chick with another of our terrific interns Bekah Kline. Brooke is leaving HWCC after nearly two years on staff and one year as an intern. In their time with us, Brooke took on our Humane Solutions program and nearly single handedly kept dozens of baby Raccoons safely with their mothers, as well as successfully resolving dozens more human/wildlfie conflicts so that no one suffered or was hurt.We’re going to miss Brooke more than we can say and wish them great happiness in all their future adventures.
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Thank you, too!! Your donations at a time when I was unable to ask for them as often as I should made a huge difference. Keeping a wildlife care center afloat is a problem that “throwing money at” really does help! Thank you! And if you’d like to express your gratitude for our excellent staff with a donation today,just click here!
On April 4th, Humbodlt Wildlife Care Center admitted a Golden Eagle (Aquila chrysaetos) who’d been found with an injured wing struggling on a gravel bar of the Klamath River, not far from Happy Camp, deep in the mountains of Northern California.
We suspected a fracture in one of the huge raptor’s wrists, – a fracture of a carpal bone. After making sure the Eagle was stable we arranged for transport to BAX co-founder and co-director, and excellent avian orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Shannon Riggs, DVM, who is Director of Animal Services at Pacific Wildlife Care in Morro Bay.
For the story of this wild neighbor’s care and eventual return to home on the Klamath River, check out this video!
Your support is what makes our work possible. It really is that basic. Thank you for keeping our doors open and our lights on.
22 years ago, June 22, 1999, I attended my first volunteer shift at the Progressive Animal Welfare Society (PAWS) Wildlife Center, just north of Seattle. A couple of weeks prior, at a party in the University District in Seattle, I met a woman who was dating a friend of mine. Jenny Schlieps is her name. We were in the smoking area. I could tell immediately she was a badass, with her army shirt sleeves rolled up tight and an expression that let me know that if she thought you were a fool she might knock you down the stairs. So I struck up a conversation with her. I asked her what she did for work, and she told me she was a wildlife rehabilitator at PAWS.
Three months earlier, I had been watchng the coverage on the Northwest Cable News Network of the wreck of the New Carissa, grounded on the beach in Coos Bay, Oregon. The ship had run aground and the hull was breached and the bunker fuel, one of the lowest grade products of petroleum, had covered the beach. The situation was bad, and I was riveted to the coverage for days. On one of the segments, the network interviewed a man who was riding around on an ATV searching for a small threatened shore bird, the Western Snowy Plover who might be impacted by the toxic spill. I was astonished and thrilled that such an effort was being made. The man’s name was flashed on the screen, Curt Clumpner, and it said he was a wildlife rehabilitator. I turned to my then-partner and said, “did your guidance counseler ever tell you about this profession, mine sure didn’t.” I was 36 years old at the time.
Over the next several weeks I kept looking at an ad in the Opportunities section of the local weekly – “Help return an animal to the wild! Volunteers needed at the PAWS Wildlife Center.” It was intriguing and it had gotten under my skin. So when Jenny told me she was a wildlife rehabilitator at PAWS, I immediately told her that I’d been strongly considering volunteering there. I didn’t tell her that I’d been craving something meaningful and non-bookish for a while, that I was tired of encountering the world through reading and other abstract pursuits. I had been struggling to make it as a short fiction writer – it had been my goal for years. But also, I was hungry for something real, tangible, mineral and concrete, although I couldn’t say what it was. She asked for my address so she could mail me a volunteer application and then we went our separate ways.
Three days later, an application was in my mailbox. I filled it out and put it back in the mailbx with the red flag up. If Jenny could work fast, so could I, I thought.
Bird Ally X co-directors: Marie Travers, January Bill, Shannon Riggs DVM, Monte Merrick, Laura Corsiglia, Vann Masvidal (not pictured)
I was called in for an interview, a short little conversation – I picked a four hour weekly shift – Tuesday 1-5 – and then I committed to come to that orientation on the 22nd, which was coming up soon.
At my orientation I felt as if I’d been there before – things clicked. I went every Tuesday. Within 10 months I was hired for one of the Summer seasonal positions. As a ‘seasonal’ I worked with Peggy Faranda, Corrie Hines, and others. The permanent staff, Jenny, Kathleen Foley, Jen Szucs, John Huckabee, Jennifer Convy, Laurie Johnson, Lauren Glickman and more, quickly became friends. My first Summer there as an employee I couldn’t believe I got paid for taking care of baby Squirrels, Opossums, Raccoons, and songbirds more numerous and diverse than I had ever realized.
It’s a remarkable thing to fall into something new that feels like has always been yours. But that was exactly what happened. My first day as a volunteer I met a guy, Ken Brewer, who was building a songbird aviary. It turned out that Ken had worked on the New Carissa spill. He told me it had been a blast and described a lot of the aspects of the work in detail. I wanted to know more. I asked him how to get a job doing what he does. He said, “everybody wants my job, but there are only like 20 of us in the world, so not much of a chance.”
Well, here we are now, 22 years later. I ended up working with Ken on spills around the continent, from the Bering Sea to the Kalamazoo River. I’ve been part of the care of tens of thousands of injured, orphaned, and oil impacted wild animals. Now, I’m the director of Humboldt Wildlife Care Center, a part of Bird Ally X, a collective of wildlife caregivers of which I’m a co-founder, along with Laura Corsiglia, Shannon Riggs DVM, January Bill, Marie Travers and Vann Masvidal. And now, after nearly ten years at HWCC, I’ve had the unbelievable privilege of training a whole new generation of wildlife rehabilitators, several of whom now make up HWCC’s intensely talented and dedicated staff: Lucinda Adamson, Brooke Brown, Desiree Vang, Nora Chatmon, Jen Martin. Over 60 interns, mostly brilliant young women, have passed though our program.
I had wanted to have a big party this year – something I’ve looked forward to for a long time, my 22nd anniversary on the 22nd of June (it was the same with my birthday, turning 11 on the 11th back in 1973 had been a fantastic thrill!!) but that is not what fate had in store for me. Instead, for the first Summer since my first Summer, I’m not at work. I’m writing this in a hospital bed, being treated for cancer – not immediately life threatening, but pretty serious all the same.
Hopefully today, but if not then soon, I’ll be transferred to another facility in San Francisco for reconstructive surgery. When that is over, I come home for radiation treatment and very likely chemotherapy too.
But no matter. Even if this disease kills me, I’ve had the incredible privilege of helping so many wild animals, either by caring for them until they can be released, or ending their suffering and getting them out of the horrible jam of having thier lives be completely over, yet still being alive.
I am so thankful for all of the people who I’ve worked with over the last 22 years: mentors, colleagues, friends. This has been a crazy ride and if I get another 22 years to work I’ll take them. When I’m 80 and I’ve been at this 44 years, please can we have a days long rager to celebrate my 44th on the 22nd?
Thanks to our community for voting for HWCC/bax to be a recipient of the North Coast Co-op‘s awesome Seeds for Change program. Every month a local non-profit organization working in our community is selected to receive the rounded-up donations of shoppers. It’s a terrific program that generates much needed resources for local organizations that are often underfunded and overworked – just like Humboldt Wildlife Care Center! And this month it’s our turn. Thank you!
All you have to do to support us is round up your purchase to the nearest dollar when shopping at the Co-op and that will go directly to us, which means directly to our wild patients – and at this time of year, that means orphans by the carload!!
15 of this year’s baby Opossums getting their regular checkup today.
Already this year we have 32 Opossum babies in care. Opossums, as you may know, are North America’s only marsupial! For years considered to have been introduced by ‘settlers’ in the American West, more recent science has demonstrated that Opossums expanded their range north into California from Mexico on their own steam! The name Opossum is derived from the Algonquin word “apasum”, which is said to mean “white animal”. Opossum babies are most commonly orphaned through one of two tragedies: their mom is hit by a car and they survive in her pouch, or a dog attacks a mom and kills her, leaving her babies in her pouch. With litter sizes routinely between 8 and 12 babies, it’s very easy for our Opo (our shorthand name) caseload to climb.
Caring for our regions orphaned and injured wild animals is a privilege, but it isnt cheap! The support we’ll receive from shoppers rounding up in the month of May will help us immensely as our caseload increases to epic proportions this baby season!
And if you dont shop at the Co-op, you can still support our work by donating directly to help injured and orphaned wild neighbors in need!
As the conditions brought on by the global novel coronavirus pandemic continue to lighten here in Northern California, we will be resuming our volunteer program, although on a limited scale at first. We have room for 12 new volunteers and interns on our crew and we think it might be you we’re looking for!
Critical tasks include: Laundry! Dishes! General housekeeping! (that’s the bulk of what we all do!) And of course other tasks include providing care for orphaned wild babies, like opossums, House Finches, raccoons, seabird chicks, and more…
Last year we treated 1,568 wild patients. Half of them, 790 of our year’s caseload, were admitted between May 23 and August 23 – so yes, our Spring and Summer season is intense! And that’s why we need your help!
Sign up today (click here), and plan to attend (via Zoom) our first ever livestreamed orientation on April 25!
A passing motorist crossing the top of Berry Summit, about 30 miles East of Humboldt Bay, witnessed a hawk getting hit by a car. She pulled over quickly and found the bird, who was stunned, unable to stand, let alone fly. She took the hawk home to Hoopa, and contacted Hoopa Tribal Forestry’s wildlife department. The injured raptor, a juvenile Red-tailed Hawk (Buteo jamaicensis) was brought to us by staff at the tribal Forestry agency.
Fortunately, the youngster hadn’t suffered any broken bones. WIthin a couple of days, he was standing and eating. Soon after we moved him outdoors where he made a few tentative flights. Unlike with illnesses, where the patient has suffered a chronic disability for an extended time, this Hawk, other than his disorientation and lethargy from the traumatic blow, was in decent physical condition. After nearly two weeks, he was moved to a larger aviary where we could better assess his flight.
RIght out of the box, the young Hawk surveys his new situation… a situation called restored freeedom...
We gave him another week of thawed rats and room to fly before we felt he was ready to go. With his blood parameters in good shape, his physical condition strong and his attitude fully returned, we took him back to Berry Summit.
Your support is what keeps our doors open, ready to receive injured wildlife from all over our region. From Oregon to Willits, from Weaverville to the sea, we are here for our wild neighbors in need. Thank you for making our work possible.
