[…]environmental impacts,” stated Tara Zuardo, wildlife attorney with the Animal Welfare Institute. “Through this lawsuit, we hope to ensure Mendocino County officials follow through on the obligations they agreed to in our settlement agreement.” Mendocino County’s previous $144,000 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 fully assessing the ecological damage or considering alternatives. Although hundreds of county residents sent postcards and letters to the Board of Supervisors and showed up to make public comment at two meetings, […]
[…]day. Over the course of two months, that’s a lot of fish! 2016 on our coast was a bad year for Common Murres. There simply hasn’t been enough fish. Lack of fish, leads directly to fewer young seabirds. Common Murres are long lived and can absorb the occasional bad year. If fish populations recover, so will they recover. But current conditions don’t seem to be signs that we are living in a time of recovery. Agricultural runoff introduces nitrogen in to the sea which increases the frequency of harmful algal blooms. Plastics and other garbage pollutants wreak havoc on the food chain. […]
[…]proposition. Find the parents; let the young one out of the box where they can see her or him; stand back and watch. As with most families, they are excited to be together again. Unfortunately, for this Raven, the parents were not in the vicinity. We spent a few hours looking, but night was falling and without knowing with certainty that her parents were present, even though the rescuers had said that they’d seen them earlier in the day, we couldn’t leave the youngster to fend for herself overnight. Reluctantly we took her back to our clinic. We had planned to try […]
[…]was worried. “There’s a cat nearby,” he warned. This was easy to believe. Feral and free-roaming cats are everywhere. The truth about their impact on wild animals is so alarming that many people have a hard time accepting it. Even if this had been a case where the bird was supposed to be out of the nest, cats still pose an enormous and relatively new risk. It wasn’t that long ago that a Warbler could jump form nest to ground without worry that a cat was near. Still, all the birds flying today made it through their fledgling stage. We […]
[…]at the clinic – banshees scream; they don’t dive.), meaning when we tried to capture for an exam, he would slip beneath the water and swim laps around the pool, staying down for minutes at a time. It’s a simple, inescapable fact that none of our procedures are done with the consent of our patient. This fact demands that we bring our A-game to all of our actions, but especially in our empathy for the indignities of our handling. Swift, gentle, decisive and accurate are the qualities we strive for in all our dealings. Acknowledging the stress and trauma of […]
[…]well as internships. Public education Our Wildlife Education Team brings presentations to schools and community groups throughout the area. We advocate for wild animals, addressing issues and public policy from a rehabilitation […]
[…]we hope, and raise owls of his own some day, here in Rohner Park, and the struggle for life, and for co-existence, and for more will continue, here in our small corner of the wild blue world. A cautious young owl hopefully grows to be an old wise one. The young owl did not want to leave the box after first opening. It’s good when a juvenile shows reluctance to venture into a new territory or new situation. Caution is not a bad course of action, especially when you are completely ignorant of what awaits. The owl was offered a […]
[…]case numbers, their care givers and their constraints and return, healthy and strong, to their free and wild lives. We have no real way of knowing, but it has been estimated that for every animal killed by hunters, two or more are wounded and not recovered. While it matters to those few who we are able help, there is much work to be done if we are to minimize or eliminate this kind of suffering. Meanwhile, our facility, capable of treating everyone we admit, from songbirds to aquatic birds to land mammals to raptors is open every day for those […]
[…]called, a long, suffering death awaited her, all due to fishing line lost into the wild and forgotten. During her exam, the kingfisher was clearly dehydrated, as her “squinty-eyes” attest. We quickly placed a net below her to support her weight while we snipped the line. No apparent injuries were seen – the line wrapped her left wing’s primary feathers, but no bones were broken, nor was any skin. She was exhausted and dehydrated. She was still willing to fight. We brought her back to our clinic. After a complete exam – she was in relatively good shape, a healthy […]
[…]where brutality, where thuggery, and hatred for mother earth are elevated, we will still need compassion for the injured, for the orphaned, and for the marginalized… and no one is more marginalized than wild animals… just drive down any road in your town and see the raccoon dead on the shoulder lying there bloating with not a resource turned her way. Many people in our line of work shared emphatically their sense that this was our last shot at correcting the horrifying course that we’ve been on for decades, even as we likely all knew that we couldn’t stop this […]