Mallard Mothers Want Your Help.

Helping Wild Mothers on Mother’s Day (and every day)

mallard 2015 - 2

This year’s Mallard babies at HWCC. We have two dozen mallard babies in care already!


Every year wildlife rehabilitation facilities admit huge numbers of orphaned ducklings for care. In California, Mallard ducklings top the list annually for numbers brought in to our state’s permitted rehabilitators. This amounts to tens of thousands of young Mallards each year who are raised by people instead of their mothers.  The number of ducklings who die without being found is unknowably large.

The most common cause of separation is the death of their mother. Often, Mallard nests are far from water, safely hidden. But the journey to a pond, stream or river bottom that a mother duck must lead her babies on is fraught with hazards, and human activity is the most dangerous.

Automobiles and dogs are the primary reason the mallard ducklings are brought to our facility on Humboldt Bay. Humboldt Wildlife Care Center, because of our rural location, sees far fewer ducklings than facilities in San Francisco, Sacramento or the Los Angeles area, but still we get over two dozen each year.

So how can you help? There are many ways!

See Wild Animals:  Wild animals of all species need to be able to move from one area to another. Our complex of roads and highways makes simply getting around the world a life threatening activity. Watch out for wild animals. Don’t hit them with your car!

Contain and Control Your Pets: Wild animals have natural rights to live and thrive on Mother Earth. Be a responsible pet owner and don’t allow dogs and cats to roam unattended. The fawn your dog brings back to the porch, or the ducklings who are orphaned when your dog attacks the mother, songbird babies left behind from your house cat’s carnage would have fared much better if left to live and learn form their mothers.

Share the Wonder of Nature: Wild nature, of which we are a part, is a beautiful mystery. Happiness depends on our participation in this wonder. Wild animals have better chances when they are loved and respected by the humans who share their world. Be sure to love from an appropriate distance, though!

Help Wild Animals Caught in Society’s Traps: If you see a wild animal in trouble, call us! 707 822 8839 If you have a conflict with a wild animal, call us! If you have time, volunteer with us! If you have money, help us pay for our wild patient’s care. The injuries that our human world causes to wildlife is OUR problem. Help us fix it!

Juvenile Mallards in our specially built Waterfowl Aviary enjoy their duckweed!

Thank you for a being of our lifesaving work!

 

 

 

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Black Phoebe Fledgling Home Again!

Spring is in full swing now and wild babies are showing up in the world, getting found by kids, cats, dogs, and other suburban challenges!

Last week, a youg Black Phoebe, fresh from the nest, was found by students on the ground at East High, an alternative high school in Fortuna. Brought to our clinic, we quickly determined that the young bird was a fledgling, not injured. Although songbirds live among us, closer than almost any other wild animals, many people remain unaware that fledgling birds often spend up to a week not quite ready to fly, but more than ready to jump form the nest. This is a very vulnerable time for these little guys, but it’s a time that every adult bird you see has passed through. Of course our modern world, with housecats, dogs, and cars lurking behind every moment, presents some dangers that natural life on Earth doesn’t, but still the best place for a fledgling bird is with her or his parents.

After giving this Phoebe an exam and some food, we started to arrange for the best possible plan – reuniting the family.

Black Phoebe eating mealworms while in our care ………..   (video BAX/Lucinda Adamson)


Two days later, we took the little Phoebe back to Fortuna, back to the exact location where s/he was found. Adult Black Phoebes were flying all over the area. A hole in the wall of an outbuilding appeared to have a Phoebe nest. Our staff placed the young bird as close to the nest as possible, off the ground and hopefully out of danger.


 

BLPH re-unite 5:1:15 - 05Black Phoebe adults in flight – are these our guy’s parents?                                (BAX/Laura Corsiglia)


 

BLPH re-unite 5:1:15 - 01The young Phoebe sits waiting for parents.                                                                         (BAX/Laura Corsiglia)


Soon the youngster made a short flight to the roof of the building. Almost immediately an adult approached. Success! Soon the fledgling’s parents were bringing food. We stayed to make sure that all was well and then left this wild family to their own world, right out in the open, in the middle of our world, yet so mysterious!


 

BLPH re-unite 5:1:15 - 10

BLPH re-unite 5:1:15 - 11

BLPH re-unite 5:1:15 - 29

BLPH re-unite 5:1:15 - 31

Thank you for supporting our work! Your donation goes directly to our efforts to provide care for injured and orphaned wild animals, and to promoting co-existence with all of our wild neighbors. Please share our work, and if you can, donate today!

 

All photos (BAX/Laura Corsiglia)

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Mendocino County Suspends Contract with Rogue Federal Wildlife-Killing Program

County Will Review Tactics of Wildlife Services, Which Kills Millions of Wild Animals Annually

For immediate release:
April 13, 2015

Contact:
Megan Backus: ALDF, 707-795-2533, ext. 1010 (office); 707-479-7872 (mobile); mbackus@aldf.org
Amey Owen: Animal Welfare Institute, 202-446-2128; amey@awionline.org
Amy Atwood: Center for Biological Diversity, 503-504-5660 (mobile); atwood@biologicaldiversity.org
Kimiko Martinez: Natural Resources Defense Council, 310-434-2344; kmartinez@nrdc.org
Camilla Fox: Project Coyote, 415-690-0338 (mobile); 415-945-3232 (landline); cfox@projectcoyote.org

Mendocino, Calif. –In response to legal pressure from a coalition of animal protection and conservation groups, Mendocino County officials agreed today to suspend the renewal of the county’s contract with the notorious federal wildlife-killing program known as Wildlife Services, pending an environmental review that will include consideration of nonlethal predator control methods. The county’s decision came after the coalition, and a Mendocino resident, filed a lawsuit against the county in November for violating the California Environmental Quality Act. As a result of that agreement, the coalition has agreed to dismiss its lawsuit.

Mendocino County’s previous $142,356 contract authorized the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services program to kill hundreds of coyotes, as well as bears, bobcats, foxes and other animals in the county every year, without assessing the ecological damage or considering alternatives.

Today’s agreement was set in motion in July 2014, when the coalition, which includes Animal Legal Defense Fund, Animal Welfare Institute, Center for Biological Diversity, Natural Resources Defense Council, and Project Coyote, urged the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors to terminate the taxpayer-funded contract with the Wildlife Services program and conduct a legally-required environmental review. As part of that settlement, the county has agreed to fully evaluate nonlethal predator control alternatives submitted by the coalition. The benefits of nonlethal tactics like those used in Marin County will be highlighted during a coalition presentation by Project Coyote’s Camilla Fox on May 5. The community is encouraged to attend.

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Background

Nearly 15 years ago, Marin County replaced its Wildlife Services contract with a nonlethal predator control program that decreased predation by 62 percent at one-third the cost. And in 2013, in response to a letter from the Animal Legal Defense Fund, Sonoma County’s Board of Supervisors opted not to renew that county’s contract with Wildlife Services.

In California, 80,000 animals are trapped and killed each year by Wildlife Services on behalf of commercial agriculture. Nationwide, Wildlife Services has spent approximately $1 billion over the past 15 years to kill 1 million coyotes and a host of other wild animals. In 2013 alone, it killed at least 4 million animals. And former employees have reported that the program dramatically underreports the number of animals killed. Peer-reviewed research shows that such reckless slaughter of animals, particularly predators, causes broad ecological destruction and loss of biodiversity.

Wildlife Services has been the subject of increasing controversy in recent years. Its employees have drawn public attention to the program’s routine acts of reckless cruelty. One was charged with animal cruelty for intentionally maiming his neighbor’s dog with a steel-jaw leghold trap. Another posted pictures on social media of his hunting dogs mauling coyotes caught in traps. More than 120,000 people signed an online petition demanding this employee’s termination and requesting an investigation into reports of animal cruelty by other Wildlife Services employees. The program is currently under investigation by the USDA’s Office of the Inspector General.

The coalition was represented in the lawsuit by Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati.

Copies of the complaint and settlement are available upon request.

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As many will recall, last summer the same issue was brought before Humboldt County’s Board of Supervisors by the same coalition of environmental and wildlife advocates, plus Bird Ally X and Humboldt Wildlife Care Center. Unfortunately that body voted unanimously to continue violating the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) and renewed the county contract with this killing agency.

We are very heartened to see this development and we are working to bring a similar result in Humboldt (and the rest of California!). The era of killing our way out of human wildlife conflicts, which is ineffective, costly and morally repugnant must end. Let’s hope that our local elected representatives step to the new times and make some serious changes to the way they regard our wild neighbors. Co-existence is the only way forward. Restoration and rehabilitation of our relationship with Mother Earth is the only real work left to us. Let’s not delay.

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Preparing for wild babies…

Yesterday we admitted our first wild babies of 2015. For these little ones though we have almost no worries. Why? Because we admitted them while they were safely tucked into their mother’s pouch.

About ten days ago, a kind woman, Wendy, was driving back to her home in Eureka when she saw an all too familiar sight – an opossum (Didelphis virginiana) lying in the middle of the road.

Wendy pulled over to move the opossum. “I think it’s an insult to leave them to bloat right where they’ve been run down,” she explained. “I always move them off to the side, into the bushes.”

But this ‘possum wasn’t dead. She was twitching. So Wendy scooped her up to take her someplace where she could die in peace, back at her place, away from the busy road.

But the opossum didn’t die. In fact, she seemed to be waking up. So Wendy gave her some cat food. And after ten days, she realized that she couldn’t actually provide the care the little marsupial required so she found us.

Of course we were concerned that the young female had been badly injured. It was easy to imagine a pelvic fracture, a broken leg, or some other injury that might render her unreleasable. And at this time of year, we of course were concerned that she might have babies in her pouch.

Well, upon examination, her injuries were minimal, the worst being a fractured jaw. However the fracture is healing and she’s able to chew and feed herself. And yes, she has a pouch full of very young babies.

As it happens we’ve just completed a new addition to our facility, an improved opossum house (we call it the Opossumary).

Designed by staff and built by our dedicated volunteers (many of whom are college students learning to use power tools for the first time!) our new housing for opossums will be sent on its maiden voyage with this young mother and her babies at the helm.

While this opossum family was relatively lucky, many are not. The number one mammal that we treat at our Bayside clinic is the Virginia Opossum. Most of these patients are babies whose mothers died when they were hit by a car. Please! – the damage people do with their cars is already more than our ecosystem can take. Drive carefully, drive like we share the world. And if you find a wild animal in trouble call us. We can help.

And as always, thanks to our supporters who make it possible for us to provide quality care for injured and orphaned wildlife. Your support gives wild neighbors like these a second chance. If you have the means, a financial contribution goes a long way for us. (you can use donate button at top of page)

Scroll down for photographs of our recently added opossum housing! Your support and our use of recycled materials makes these improvements possible! Thanks!

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Our Letter to the California Fish and Game Commission concerning implementation of the Bobcat Protection Act of 2013

22 March 2015

California Fish and Game Commission
1416 Ninth Street, Suite 1320
Sacramento, CA 95814

Sonke Mastrup, Executive Director

re: Implementation of Bobcat Protection Act, in support of a statewide ban on Bobcat trapping.

Dear Sonke Mastrup;

Please include the following comments, submitted by myself, Monte Merrick with Bird Ally X/Humboldt Wildlife Care Center in the materials for the Commissioners as they work out the implementation of the Bobcat Protection Act. Thank you!

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The history of wildlife and environmental protection in the United States is the story of hastily enacted corrections to careless and often malicious disregard for the natural balance of earth’s ecosystems. The actions of European colonists on the flora and fauna of North America are a well-recorded disaster. Degradation of habitat, loss of biodiversity, arrogant ignorance and barbaric cruelty have been the hallmarks of the colonizing culture’s interaction with the natural world.

For too many species, watersheds, grasslands, coastal waters and more, conservation efforts have proven too slow, too cumbersome or too weak to adequately rescue them from irreparable harm or even extinction. Examples abound: the Mississippi River, the Eskimo Curlew, the Great Lakes, Wolves, the Carolina Parakeet, the Passenger Pigeon. The Bison teeters in a netherworld of uncertainty, revered as an icon while being converted into an agricultural product.

In varying degrees, we all understand that colonialism, resource extraction, privatization of the commonwealth and the race to harness all forms of natural energy is very bad news for those with whom we share Mother Earth. The evidence is everywhere for all to see. To assert otherwise is to obfuscate, to dissemble, to hold your listener in the lowest regard.

This is the lay of the land in which we now attempt to protect the predators who remain, conserve the scant remaining habitat and halt a planet-wide skid toward an incomprehensible ecological crash. The enormity of what our era faces has no adequate vocabulary. The scale of this disaster is wholly unprecedented, except by cosmic forces. 

We stand here, in this precarious state, attempting to alleviate the absurd and unjust pressure that Bobcats in California must suffer for what is only a pathological desire for inexcusable cruelty.

The rationale for trapping predators, if any, are few and even fewer for species such as Bobcat, who pose no real threat to human safety or the overly protected economic interests of agriculture. In fact, the language of the Bobcat Protection Act states that a primary reason for trapping Bobcat in California is the cash value of their skins in China. To require a persuasive argument that such a rationale for killing Bobcats is immoral, inhumane, wasteful and against the values of rational citizens of California is an affront to intelligence, an affront to self-evident truth.

Only the most thoughtless and cruel among us could dispute this. As it happens, and perhaps somewhat surprisingly, such are happy to make their presence known on this and other matters concerning wildlife protection and conservation.

At the California Fish and Game Commission meeting 4 Dec 2014 in Van Nuys, a representative of the California Trapper’s Association made several statements on behalf of trapping Bobcat. Perhaps his most ridiculous assertion was that a ban on Bobcat trapping would be “cultural genocide” – a shocking statement to make while standing on ground that once belonged to the Tongva people, in a state that once was home to over a hundred distinct human languages. In other words, a groundless statement diminished in its offense only by its total ignorance.

Still, putting aside the fact that to debate those who would trap and destroy Bobcat is a circus without merit, the current work being done to implement the Bobcat Protection Act has raised a few points that need to be addressed, if for no other reason than to satisfy our own respect and love for what is real.

Of the options for implementation currently being discussed, that is, (1) a statewide effort to create buffers around all areas where Bobcat trapping is not permitted, (2) the creation of North and South Bobcat trapping zones which would reduce by a factor of ten the number of exclusion areas that need to be delineated and described, and (3) a ban on Bobcat trapping in California, only a ban is feasible.

The dedication of resources required to describe buffers around each park, refuge, and monument, etc. is absurdly steep. Even the second option, which significantly reduces the number of buffer zones, is too expensive. California faces more than enough financial challenges, which will only increase as climate disruption and drought tax our basic services to a degree for which we might not yet be adequately prepared.

The Department of Fish and Wildlife is already tasked with a mission that is highly challenging and underfunded. Citizens of California have a right to sensible leadership that recognizes the current and predictable future needs of our communities and plans accordingly. How could anyone think that spending tens of thousands dollars ensuring that cruelty in the service of avarice, which is what Bobcat trapping amounts to, be protected and enshrined in Fish and Game code?

The third option, which was brought to the table at the aforementioned December meeting, is the only responsible action possible that will meet both the requirements of the Bobcat Protection Act and provide good husbandry of our limited resources.

The Bobcat Protection Act makes explicit (sec 4155, (b)(2), (e), (f)) the Fish and Game Commission’s authority to implement this law and “impose additional requirements, restrictions, or prohibitions related to the taking of bobcats, including a complete prohibition on the trapping of bobcats…”

Now, after centuries of abuse, it is imperative that our policies and programs reflect what we already know. A tradition of cruelty, a tradition of greed, a tradition of reckless disregard for the natural world that gives us our lives and which we barely comprehend is no tradition to protect. 

The only sensible plan is to ban commercial and so-called recreational trapping. The Bobcat Protection Act is intended to protect Bobcats, not Bobcat trappers.

Thank you for considering these points and for engaging in the hard work of implementing the will of Californians.

Sincerely,

Monte Merrick
co-director/co-founder Bird Ally X
Humboldt Wildlife Care Center

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Want to add your voice to the call for a ban on Bobcat trapping? Check out Project Coyote‘s list of things you can do…

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