2023 Fall Newsletter | Sonoma County Wildlife Rescue | |
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Dear Supporters,
November marks the beginning of new a season full of gratitude, giving, celebration, and reflection. In the world of wildlife rehabilitation it also marks the end of a chapter, with the last hold of baby season finally letting go. Our bears are starting their journey into torpor and, as I write this, our last group of orphaned raccoons is being released back to the wild at one of our private release sites in Healdsburg.
As a quiet calm has settled over Sonoma County Wildlife Rescue, we are taking time to reflect on all we have accomplished in 2023. Our Year End Appeal offers us the opportunity to share all these successes and is in the mail on the way to our supporters this week.
While the staff is enjoying a slower pace compared to the rapid stride of baby season, they are heading into our winter season full of dreams and ambitions for the year ahead. As none of us idle well, we are wasting no time jumping on our winter projects to ensure next baby season is a success.
With the end of another successful baby season and looking towards all we have yet to accomplish, we hope that you will be inspired by our work and hope that you will consider donating so that we may continue our mission to rescue, rehabilitate and release wildlife.
Wishing you and yours a warm holiday season ahead,
Doris Duncan
Executive Director
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Donate Acorns to Wildlife this Fall! | |
Acorns are a natural food source for many of Sonoma County's wildlife species and therefore make a great addition to the diets we provide our patients. Since many of the species we care for thrive in oak woodland habitats and spend their days foraging the forest floor for these special nuts, we want to ensure that we can cache as many away as possible this fall while they are still readily available.
If you have acorns in your yard and are able to collect and donate them, please drop them off at 403 Mecham Rd. in Petaluma. Donations can be dropped off from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM daily.
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2024 Volunteer Orientations | |
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Mark your calendars! Our first Volunteer Orientation of 2024 is quickly approaching and we are looking forward to welcoming as many new volunteers to our team as possible. In 2024, we are going to host four volunteer orientations on January 6th, April 6th, July 13th and October 5th in the hopes of welcoming new volunteers through out the year!
If you are interested in volunteering with Sonoma County Wildlife Rescue, we have many volunteer roles to choose from that may be a good fit for you!
Opportunities Include:
Animal Care
Administrative
Education
Gardening
Facility Maintenance
Transport
Rescue
Foster Care
While some areas will require more experience and training than others, the first step for all areas of interest is to apply! If you are interested in volunteering or would like to fill out a volunteer application, please click the link below to visit our website.
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BOMP Corner
It's Time to Schedule Your Fall Maintenance Visit!
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Our 2023 Maintenance Season well under way! Reach out to Sonoma County Wildlife Rescue to schedule your Fall Maintenance Visit today!
Annual barn owl box maintenance is by far the most important part of box ownership. Owlets that are raised in a nesting box do not leave the box until they are ready to fly, approximately 60 days after they hatch. During that time, they poop and regurgitate pellets inside their box, stomping it down over time until you are left with inches of solid waste build up. This makes the inside of the nesting box not only very dirty, but also much smaller. Since no housekeeping is performed by the owls, it is the box owner's responsibility to make sure next years owlets have a clean and spacious box to grow up in. That's where annual fall maintenance comes into play.
Maintenance is the practice of cleaning a barn owl box to prepare it for the next nesting season. It is also the perfect time of year to perform any repairs to the box itself. Owlets raised in nesting boxes that are not properly cleaned every year have an increased likelihood of injury, death by predation, or being kicked out of the box by a competitive sibling before they are ready. Annual maintenance also prolongs the life of your box. Maintenance should always occur after the nesting season has ended.
If you would like to schedule a fall maintenance visit, please reach out to bomp@scwildliferescue.org or call us at 707-992-0274. If you would like to learn more about maintenance services, click the link below to read our most recent article on these services.
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Pellets and feces inside of a barn owl box after one nesting season. | |
Don't Just Take It From Us!
Check out what our friends at Bird Rescue Center said in their October 2021 Newsletter Article:
What Can Happen When Barn Owl Boxes Aren't Cleaned?
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Over time, the combination of leftover food, pellets, and feces can build up inside the box, raising the height of the floor. As young owls become ambulatory, this build-up gives them easy access to the nest hole – meaning they can walk right out of the box before they are old enough to safely fly down! In the photographs to the right, you may have noticed the sizable difference in the age of the Barn Owls. If the little downy owls were to prematurely exit the box, they could be harmed on the fall, caught by a predator, or suffer from hypothermia if not found immediately.
Various health problems are another consequence of waste build-up and poor living conditions. These issues often present as respiratory issues or, even more commonly, foot and feather issues. One such group of 4 babies came to us in July of 2018 with the skin of their footpads crusted over. Walking on soft, damp substrate led to their skin softening to the point of sloughing and then thick scabs forming with no real skin underneath. (Yuck! And poor babies!) We spent the better part of a year (six to nine months!) doing various foot treatments to protect and promote the newly growing skin. Not only was captivity and medical treatment hard on them, they were not able to grow up with their parents.
In the photos above, you can see the crusted footpad on intake, then healing progression after 2 months, and nearly healed pads at 4 months.
Luckily we were able to get them released as happy, healthy owls ready to live out a natural life and continue to provide very important rodent control!
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Katie Woolery releases a rehabilitated bobcat back into the wild. | |
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My name is Katie Woolery, the Assistant Animal Care Director, and Agency Liaison Coordinator here at SCWR. During my 8+ years working at the wildlife rescue I’ve seen leaps and bounds of growth in every part of this organization. On a skilled and professional level, we provide medical and husbandry care for nearly 1,500 animals every year, hundreds of them orphaned mammals. We spend up to 6 months raising them, depending on the species, all the while doing our best to make sure they have the tools they need to thrive in the wild and then we release them, never to be seen again. In lieu of being able to track every single animal after release, we’ve resolved to make sure that they have the best jumping off point that we can provide.
Enter: The Release Site Program
We have a fantastic, ever-growing group of release sites generously provided to us by members of the public and it has been our mission this year to start a boots-on-the-ground survey project. I’ve been personally visiting each site, taking note of habitat, tree species, signs of animal species currently living there, water sources and much more. In addition, I have had the pleasure of getting to know the people behind the properties, learning fascinating histories and future-plans for these stunning pieces of land, where the passion for wildlife stemmed from and their sometimes decades old connection to the rescue itself.
Conducting these surveys is providing the rescue invaluable information ahead of release season for our multitude of species so that we may provide the most ideal habitat we can, knowing that they’ll have a buffer zone of protected space in which to settle into their new wild lives.
This winter we plan to work with property owners to do trail camera monitoring, develop soft release protocols and more so that we may continue to learn and grow. Hopefully one day, through our network of release sites, we will conduct post-release monitoring studies on a larger scale that will provide powerful insight into the rehabilitation side of our efforts.
If you or someone you know has a piece of land with a water source, or one nearby, and you think it is suitable habitat for wildlife please consider applying to be a release site property, joining us on this exciting phase of ours, and our patients, journey.
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Support Your Local Wildlife! | | |
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Sonoma County Wildlife Rescue is a 501 (c)3 non-profit organization that relies on donations from the public to rehabilitate the 1,000+ animals we receive each year. We do not receive any government funding. Our annual operating budget is $1,220,000, which means it costs almost $3,350 per day to keep our doors open. Any donation helps! | |
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