On a chilly gray morning in mid-February, a juvenile bald eagle lay tangled in weeds in the McKenzie River off Deerhorn Road. The bird had been peppered with five shotgun pellets; they lodged near his spine and in his neck, just below the soaking wet head feathers that had not yet turned white. One pellet broke the ulna in his wing, which dangled limp in the frigid water.
Greg Montgomery of Springfield spotted the exhausted young bird and grabbed a catcher’s mitt. In waders, he made his way to the eagle and stretched out his hand in the mitt. Giant yellow feet grabbed the leather, and Montgomery towed the eight-pound bird to land. As the eagle huddled in the mud, too weak to move, Montgomery ran to call the Cascades Raptor Center — a Eugene nonprofit organization that for 20 years has specialized in the rehabilitation of sick and injured birds of prey.
Approximately 5,200 rehabilitation centers exist in cities and towns across the United States. Eugene is home to both the Cascades Raptor Center and Willamette Wildlife, which treats songbirds and mammals at its Morse Ranch facility.
Just up Highway 99 in Corvallis, staff and volunteers at Chintimini Rehabilitation Center care for wildlife ranging from ducks to bobcats.
Places such as the Cascades Raptor Center and Willamette Wildlife are typically nonprofits; a few paid staff members and a dedicated core of volunteers care for the injured animals.
“We took radiographs at Amazon Park Animal Clinic, and Dr. Cameron Jones reviewed them there,” Louise Shimmel, Cascade’s executive director, notes of the team that rehabilitated the gunshot eagle in February and March. “Dr. Devin Newman of Bush Animal Hospital does rounds up here and so saw him several times. Staff members did most of the handling. Trained volunteers were involved in catching him up for exams or moving him from cage to cage. Brian and Janell were the two who went out to pick him up from the riverbank — definitely a village!”
Six weeks after Montgomery pulled our bedraggled, hypothermic national symbol from the river, police detained three University of Oregon basketball players at gunpoint for shooting BBs at the resident ducks and geese at Alton Baker Park. Police reports indicate that none of the waterfowl were injured or killed by the small metal pellets; regardless, reactions from the community ranged from suggestions that coach Ernie Kent kick the young men off the basketball team to mandating volunteer time spent at a wildlife rehabilitation center.
Shooting was involved in both these cases, an action which is immediately identifiable as wrong and illegal. The truth is, however, that the majority of injuries to raptors do not come in the form of a shotgun or BB gun pellet; most causes of injury are decidedly less intentional.
Collisions with cars, windows, altercations with cats, hitting fences and phone wires — these bring in the most birds to center, with wounds just as devastating to the bird as those caused by gunshot.
Rehabilitation is not easy on wild animals. They must submit to intensely invasive procedures which, for a creature already leery of human presence, must be incredibly frightening. Staff members and volunteers at rehab centers undergo extensive training; they do everything they can to minimize stress, keep the animal in a calm and quiet environment and monitor progress around the clock.
Depending on its injuries, the animal may recuperate at a rehab center for a few hours or a few months. It may be handled as little as once a day or as many as eight times a day. There are bandages to change, tube feedings, medications to administer and many other procedures.
It’s not a vacation for the traumatized wild creature, nor is it for staff and volunteers. We respect the animals we serve. We love to see them live, but we’ve watched owls expire on exam tables and held dying eagles in our arms.
So why do we do it? Critics note that the common Western screech owls and red-tailed hawks we release into the wild every year make no statistical difference to their populations as a whole, and technically, that’s correct. However, such an attitude doesn’t take into account those birds that are rare or endangered — if the latter were to be injured, and there was no rehab center available because such a place wasn’t statistically efficient, then they would likely die. In the case of the northern goshawk or the northern spotted owl, the death of one in a rare species does make a difference.
Nor does such an attitude take into account the educational opportunities made possible by opening rehabilitation centers to the public. We at Cascade, for instance, hope that introducing children and adults up close to our resident raptors who’ve sustained permanent injures will inspire them to save many more birds every year than even our hands-on rehabilitation efforts.
To the hundreds of visitors and school groups that Cascade and similar centers serve each year, and most importantly, to the immature bald eagle just starting his life on the outskirts of our city, it matters that rehabilitators do the work that they do.
Two days after the three UO basketball students with BB guns shot at ducks and geese at Alton Baker Park—a crime for which Coach Kent mandated an undisclosed period of community service at Greenhill Humane Society — staff members at Cascades Raptor Center released the rehabilitated bald eagle in north Eugene’s Armitage Park.
The week of the bird’s clean bill of health coincided with the death of a longtime center supporter, and the staff organized a memorial ceremony that would begin with American Indian chanting and end with the eagle’s release.
“We like to be able to share the animal’s success with the community,” explains the center’s assistant director, Laurin Huse. “It only took one person to bring down the eagle, but 150 to help it fly away.”
On April 2, center volunteers and community members braved the late-afternoon chill to gather in a circle near the McKenzie River. Education Director Kit Lacy monitored the eagle, which sat in a sheet-covered box several hundred feet from the crowd.
As the chanting drew to a close, Lacy slipped on shoulder-length leather gloves and lifted the bird from the carrier. Staff members had placed a hood on the eagle’s head, covering its eyes so that it would remain calm for the car ride, the walk to the release site and a solemn journey around the circle of hushed onlookers.
Photos from those last moments of captivity show children and adults with eyes wide and mouths open, awed by the rehabilitated bird. As they watched, Lacy quietly transferred the eagle to a Native American volunteer at the center and removed the hood. In silence, the man released the bird, and as it flew into the air, he gave a joyful cry. The crowd — faces upturned to follow the eagle’s flight — echoed his delight.
It’s this moment of success that compels so many people to volunteer hundreds of hours a year in the service of wildlife rehabilitation.
The rest of us can aid their work by driving more slowly, taking down barbed wire fences, keeping our cats inside, and replacing poisonous pesticides with nonharmful organic solutions. We can resist the temptation to shoot the ducks and geese and songbirds that populate our city parks, the owls and hawks and eagles that soar through our still-wild skies.
Posted by carpepraedem 
Louise Shimmel falls asleep 
What goes on in the Cascades Raptor Center’s clinic every day? One of the few sections on the property not open to visitors, the clinic provides a quiet, calm location for recently injured birds of prey who need regular medical attention and often, frequent feeding. Young visitors at CRC on July 26th will have the chance to learn about how wildlife rehabilitators care for injured animals and birds, in a simulated clinic of their own.
Over 100 volunteers help the Cascades Raptor Center to run smoothly. Some offer professional veterinary care, while others donate construction or bookkeeping skills. Many volunteers sign up for a weekly four-hour shift during which they care for injured raptors both in the clinic and outside in quiet rehabilitation mews. They feed the permanent birds, clean their mews, interact with visitors, and care for the mice and chicks raised at the Center.
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