A New Wildlife Care Center
This fall, Bird Alliance of Oregon will enter a new era in our efforts to provide outstanding care for injured and orphaned wildlife and promote an ethic of wildlife stewardship across the region. We will tear down our existing 35-year-old Wildlife Care Center and replace it with a new rehabilitation facility that more than doubles its size, modernizes its medical facilities, and increases opportunities for the volunteers, the public, and wildlife professionals to interact with the rehabilitation process. We will add a surgical suite for full on-site medical capabilities and expanded opportunities for veterinarians to volunteer at our facility. In a second phase, we will replace and expand our flight cages. Some work has already been completed—visitors to Bird Alliance of Oregon’s Wildlife Sanctuary can see large, new enclosures to house our non-releasable Animal Ambassadors: Ruby the Turkey Vulture, Julio the Great Horned Owl, Aristophanes the Raven, and Xena the American Kestrel.
We are incredibly excited about this project. The existing building was built at a time when wildlife rehabilitation was much less advanced. Since its construction, the Wildlife Care Center has remained open 8 to 12 hours a day, 365 days a year, no matter the weather or situation. In a typical year, we treat about 3,000 animals and respond to 10,000 phone calls. During the pandemic, more than 5,000 animals passed through our doors. Over the past 35 years, nearly 100,000 animals have received a second chance at life in the wild, and our staff and volunteers have responded to nearly half a million requests for wildlife information. The old building has had an amazing run, but today it is worn and frayed, too small to meet the demand, and it lacks the necessary modern amenities to provide the best possible care for the animals, the safest environment for staff and volunteers, and the expanded services and educational opportunities for our community. The animals deserve a facility that provides state-of-the-art care, and the community needs a facility that can provide expanded services to promote wildlife stewardship.
A Pioneer in the Field of Wildlife Rehabilitation
Wildlife rehabilitation runs deep in Bird Alliance of Oregon’s DNA and dates back to our founding in 1902. Founder William Finley, the great naturalist and conservation activist, is best remembered for his successful advocacy to establish the first wildlife refuges in the western United States at Malheur, Klamath, and Three Arch Rocks. However, at his home in Jennings Lodge, he and his wife, Irene, also cared for a wide array of injured and orphaned wild animals that they came across on their adventures or that were brought to them by the public. Finley noted in a 1932 article in Nature magazine that “people have gotten in the habit of sending me wild animals to take care of…Well, this day the box was strangely quiet…Off came the lid. We looked in and…three baby mountain lions.”
Finley traveled about, giving presentations and lectures with a captive California Quail named Don Q. Quail and an orphaned California Condor named The General, and he wrote prolifically for national publications about the animals he cared for. His prodigious correspondence with prominent scientists, conservationists, and political leaders of the day, advocating for some of the most important conservation initiatives in the western United States, is interspersed with updates and anecdotes about the wild animals in his care. Although the term “wildlife rehabilitation” did not exist at that time, Finley created the template that we still use today: use the power of these animal stories to advance conservation.
Finley traveled about, giving presentations and lectures with a captive California Quail named Don Q. Quail and an orphaned California Condor named The General, and he wrote prolifically for national publications about the animals he cared for. His prodigious correspondence with prominent scientists, conservationists, and political leaders of the day, advocating for some of the most important conservation initiatives in the western United States, is interspersed with updates and anecdotes about the wild animals in his care. Although the term “wildlife rehabilitation” did not exist at that time, Finley created the template that we still use today: use the power of these animal stories to advance conservation.
In the 1930s, Bird Alliance of Oregon established what was, as far as we can tell, the first formal wildlife rehabilitation program in the United States. Lillian Post Eliot, wife of Willard Aryes Eliot, who at that time served as both Bird Alliance of Oregon’s president and its caretaker, began accepting injured wildlife and caring for them in their small cottage on the edge of our sanctuary. Her work was documented in board reports throughout that era. The late, great biologist Dave Marshall told me tales of visiting the Eliots as a boy and seeing rehabilitating nighthawks perched on the hearth.
The modern era of wildlife rehabilitation at Bird Alliance of Oregon began in 1977, when local rehabbers Scotty Steeves and Joe Schables brought together a coalition of agencies to discuss reestablishing a rehabilitation program in Portland. Bird Alliance of Oregon agreed to house the center in the Eliots’ old cottage—by then a rat-infested caretaker’s shack—under the condition that the center be financially self-sustaining and that each of the coalition members share equally in the cost…a commitment that quickly evaporated.
In its first year of existence, the new center accepted 372 animals for care and was run entirely by volunteers. The Care Center’s longest-term resident, Owen the Barn Owl, arrived in 1978. Taken from her nest and raised by humans, Owen arrived far too imprinted to survive in the wild. She quickly took up residence on a perch above the refrigerator and became Bird Alliance of Oregon’s first education animal. Although she is more than twenty years gone, we still have people stop by today and tell us about meeting her as a child.
Construction on the current facility began in 1985, made possible by extensive fundraising efforts by volunteers and the generous donation of time by general contractor Robert Evans. Built on the proverbial wing and a prayer, Bird Alliance of Oregon newsletters from that time talk of volunteers having weekend bake sales to fund the purchase of additional lumber to advance the project. In August of 1986, the new Care Center opened, and Owen the Owl was moved into a specially built enclosure complete with barn and heated perches. In 1986, wildlife intakes surpassed 2,400 animals.
The Care Center Today
Over the past 35 years, the Care Center has become known not only for its lifesaving treatment of wild animals but also for its cutting-edge programs to promote wildlife stewardship and reduce wildlife hazards. Some of Bird Alliance of Oregon’s most innovative programs have emerged from the Wildlife Care Center. The animals we treat help inform the issues we prioritize, and their stories are often the most powerful catalysts for change. The Care Center birthed campaigns such as Cats Safe at Home, Bird-safe Buildings, Lights Out, Anti-Poaching, and Get the Lead Out, all of which address some of the biggest challenges wildlife face on our landscape. Every call, every intake is not only an opportunity to save a wild animal, it is an opportunity to reduce the hazards that bring these animals to us in the first place.
An amazing cadre of people contribute to make this work happen. Volunteers are the heart and soul of Bird Alliance of Oregon, and the Care Center is our biggest volunteer program. Over 150 volunteers a week cover shifts, answer phones, provide field rescue, and work with our resident Animal Ambassadors. A small but incredibly dedicated staff ensure the highest levels of care and public service. The local veterinary community has always been generous with their support, and since the hire of the late, great Deb Sheaffer in 2003, we have also been able to maintain a staff veterinary position.
The walls contain a million memories. The endangered Bald Eagle we released on New Year’s Day 1994 that made the front page of the New York Times, the endangered Peregrine Falcons we raised from eggs for release to the wild in the 2000s, the injured 20-year-old Black-footed Albatross from Midway Island that rode to Oregon on a fishing boat…the stories seep from the walls. The people too—we have volunteers who span nearly the entire 35 years since the building was built.
Looking Forward
I’ll miss the old building. I have been around nearly as long as she has. But it is time to move into a new era. The new building will allow us to do so much more for the animals, and it will allow us to engage so many more people in the life-changing experience of helping a wild animal. Some things won’t change. William Finley understood something when he founded Bird Alliance of Oregon in 1902 that remains an essential part of how Bird Alliance of Oregon approaches conservation today: the stories these individual wild animals tell are powerful, and having empathy and appreciation for the wild animals that surround us is often the first step toward developing a conservation ethic. In the end, there is simply nothing like watching a wild animal go free—that incredible moment when the eagle emerges from her carrier, looks around tentatively, adjusts to the sunlight…and then leaps into the sky. Please help us make more of these transcendent moments possible.
If you’d like to help us rebuild the Wildlife Care Center, renew our campus and educational spaces, visit ForPortlandBird Alliance of Oregon.org to learn more and donate to support the capital campaign.
