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Reading a draft of an essay on ethics for our profession.
Tag: wildlife rehabilitation
Happy New Year! Thank you for all your generous support in 2023!!!
Our 2023 Holiday Greeting!
Dear Friends and Supporters
Season’s Greetings! It’s hard to believe we’ve made it another year! After moving all of our operations to our undeveloped new property in March, the challenges were looming. The prospect of treating the 800 or so wild babies we admit each year in a completely unprepared facility was daunting. With your support however, we quickly got a workable pool for seabird orphans, an aviary for songbirds, other outdoor housing that we made work for everyone from Mallard ducklings to Pelicans and even a Gray Squirrel!
In the end, it was a season full of joys and successes! We treated and released dozens of baby Swallows – Barn Swallows, Cliff Swallows and Violet-Green Swallows – and we treated nearly 200 orphaned Opossum babies! 13 Raccoons! Over a dozen Striped Skunk kits and over a dozen Mallard ducklings too! We brought safe and humane resolutions to dozens of human-wildlife conflicts, keeping wild families together and protecting people’s homes! We even managed to take in the deer fawns from the Redding/Shasta area when the facility there became unavailable.
Ahead, in the Winter months, we’ll rebuild more of our capacity. We have support from the Oiled Wildlife Care Network to build three large seabird pools, we’ll soon finish the raccoon housing we started this Summer – an aviary for ducks, geese and herons will be started soon… Funding issues are forever – we’ll ask for your help again and again. Our community’s support has been awesome. Without you 2023 would’ve been a disaster! Instead it was the first year in our bold new era of independence and sustainability! Thank you!
As we enter the Winter months, with a to-do list that is exciting and challenging, we’ll continue to build a wildlife care facility that is as good as our Wild Neighbors deserve. I hope that 2024 brings all of us, near and far, the peace and prosperity that will help get the hard work done. Thank you for your support across the year, and the ages.
You make it all possible! May you have a joyful Holiday Season and a Happy New Year!
With deep gratitude
Monte Merrick, director HWCC/bax
First New Seabird Pool Going Up!
New Wild Review (v 4 e 1), Gratitude, Progress and some Despair.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 56:05 — 64.2MB) | Embed
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Our latest podcast, at last – an update on Summer, a big thank you to our supporters fro helping us out in our time of need, an avian botulism outbreak in the central valley, and a warming ocean spells disaster for us all…. stream or down load New Wild Reveiw, vol 4 episode 1!
Want to help us rebuild our facility and continue our pursuit of excellence in wildlife care?
Some links related to information in the podcast:
local coverage of leptospirosis outbreak in California Sea Lions
https://krcrtv.com/north-coast-news/eureka-local-news/leptospirosis-cases-rise-among-california-sea-lions
the wamring seas
https://www.sfchronicle.com/climate/article/marine-heat-wave-18283742.php
more sick sea lions
https://www.sfchronicle.com/california/article/sick-sea-lions-18357033.php
Oregon Dpet of Fish and Wildlife asks public to ignore suffering Common Murre chicks
https://www.dfw.state.or.us/news/2023/08_Aug/081623.asp
Avian Botulism outbreak in Tulare Lake
An Eagle Scout in the Making Makes a Huge Difference for HWCC’s Wild Patients!
(Manila) – A young man is a step closer to earning his Eagle Scout badge after raising $1,400 for Humboldt WIldlife Care Center!
The young man, Quentin Chase (17) worked with McKinleyville Ace to support the only wildlife hospital on the North Coast with hot dog sales on three Sundays of the Summer, with the proceeds to benefit our clinic!
When asked why he chose HWCC as the beneficiary of his effort, Quentin said, “I was thinking of the wild animals that get injured yearly and thought the money would go for a good cause.” giving up three Sundays in the Summer to sell hot dogs at the local Ace Hardware definitely requires commitment, but QUentin did much more than that! For those hours on those Sundays Quentin was representative of the idea that our wild neighbors in need deserve a place to receive treatment. And he not only advocated for our wild neighbors, but he accomplished palpable results! Beside his time tabling for HWCC and selling hot dogs, Quentin also put in some hard work helping to get our Racoon patient housing at our new facility finished!
“My favorite part was doing the work to get to the end,” Quentin said, “like raising the money and building some of the cage.”
Quentin said, “It’s rewarding to make something happen to give to someone else. I’m especially glad that the raccoons will have a chance of survival in the wild when they are released.”
For the future, Quentin said, “I hope that there is more wilderness, and wild animals will return safely over time to regrow the animal populations.”
For us at HWCC, Quentin’s hard work, compassion and generosity meant a signicant boost in a challenging time! His contribution helped us make significant progress rebuilding our facility after needing to re-locate. When asked what the experience meant to him, Quentin said, “I learned that it means a lot to others when you give up time out of your day to help others in need.” Characteristic of this thoughtful young man, he added, “Thank you for helping me go through this whole project, and thank you to the crew that help wildlife in need.”
Love for the wild is as natural as getting born. Turning into a fine young person ready to chip in and help takes some commitment. Knowing that our young people are ready to join us oldsters and take up the challenge of building a beautiful future while we help restore the damage our society has caused the Wild is a more important gift than proceeds and a day’s labor, important though they are! We really thank Quentin Chase for his commitment and follow-
through and very real contribution that made a big difference for the wild patients of our region. We’re glad to know that Quentin’s generation is coming, and they are ready to work!
If you want to follow this young man’s committed and generous example, please do so!! You can donate today to help wild animals in care today, tomorrow and sustainably into the future.
CODE RED!!!!!
About a month ago our resources to get through the Summer began to dwindle, getting dangerously low… ordinarily the support receive each day, each week, each month, gets us through – it’s a shoestring existence, and hand to mouth, but we get it done. Somehow, we get it done – the support makes a difference and we carry on, meeting the challneges of our mission.
This year is another story. First, we are in the middle of rebuilding our facility, as everyine I’m sure is tired of hearing about. But also we are treating the same number of patients as ever – we’re at nearly 1000 admissions for 2023! And our resources are at rock bottom! We cannot go on like this. Please help.
Your support goes directly to the care of injured and orphaned wildlife, from Mendocino to Oregon, from Weaverville to the Pacific Ocean. Our responsibility is enormous and your help is the only thing that will keep us going!
If you can donate anything, now, please do so! Your online contribution will be in our account within a few days! We need your help now. Thank you!!!
Barn Swallows! Cliff Swallows! Violet-Greens!
Every patient in our care has been through a traumatic experience, and had we our druthers, we’d wish that it had never happened and we never saw them in our clinic – their wild, free lives uninterrupted by human society.
Stil, providing care for young Swallows is a transcendental joy and a supreme privilege. This summer so far we’ve admitted scores of Swallows – Barn swallows (Hirundo rustica), Cliff swallows (Petrochelidon pyrrhonota), and Violet-green swallows (Tachycineta thalassina). Of the swallows admitted, 24 were nestlings (still in the nest, not fully feathered) or fledglings (fully feathered but still need a parent and may have just left the nest or may have fallen out too soon).
Of those 24, two are currently in care and 20 thrived and made it back to wild freedom!
Providing care for all of our patients is a joy and a privilege. Swallows can’t help it that their elegance and grace and delightful personalities are so terrific! For me, personally, stepping into the aviary to feed them is like a restorative vacation in the middle of the incredible caseload of Summer. Most of them are out there now, meeting their intended destiny. And the reason we had the aviary, had the food, and had the facility to provide their care is because of your support. Thank you for making our work possible!
video shot and edited by Laura Corsiglia
New Raccoon Housing Coming Soon with Your Help!
We’ve started building our raccoon housing at our new site, but it’s Summer and our resources are thin! We need your help! Please donate to help us develop our new facility and keep our patients fed – we have nearly 75 orphans in care! Thank you for keeping our doors open and always striving to improve!!!!
A Summer Like No Other!
Every summer at HWCC/bax is a hectic and frantic season of orphaned wild babies by the scores, long days, great sorrows and thrilling joys. We prepare for wild baby season each year as best we can, with regular trainings for experienced staff and new volunteers alike, marshalling resources, stocking up, and generally getting ready for five to six months of an intense workload.
This summer, 2023, of course is complicated by our recent relocation from Bayside to Manila. We took possession of our new location in early March and it was early April before we could begin the process of transforming our new building into a functional clinic. By early May we already had orphaned babies in care and by early June we were deep in the season.
We built some of our crucial new patient housing before the season really hit – we’ve got a songbird aviary, a fawn yard, housing for small mammals like opossums, and housing that we’d intended for chipmunks and squirrels but which has been dedicated to orphaned Mallards since the middle of May.
Since moving our operations to Manila we’ve admitted over 750 wild patients! I’ve said it more than once that we’re building the ship while we sail it, and it might seem impossible, but believe me, when Necessity is your only boss and a supportive community is your greatest ally, it’s astonishing what you can do.
There’s a lot more housing needed, such as a raptor aviary, more songbird aviaries, a pelican aviary, a proper aviary for ducks, geese and herons, more mammal housing – and for all of this we need time and materials – and that means your support!
Every year at this time we run low on resources – time is tight, patient needs are high, and spending a lot of time getting the word out and raising funds is difficult to accomplish! But the simple fact is we need you badly. In order to keep going through our busy Summer, feed our patients, pay our small staff, keep the electricity on, pay our mortgage, and so on, we need to raise several thousand dollars! We can’t print money, but with your help, that won’t be necessary! Please donate if you can! Our wild patients now and in the future need you!
