For what it's worth, I think that Dennis has written a characteristically
cogent and measured evaluation of bird rehabilitation. I agree with all
that he said and how he said it. And it needs to be said.

The motives of those who rehab are not to be questioned. My experience
has been that they are consistently persons whose goals are earnest and
positive; they really care about these creatures and do all they can to
save them.

But that doesn't obscure the reality that many and probably most of their
work is for naught in terms of influencing population levels or even
contributing to the survival of individual animals. Nature does not
forgive even minor infirmities, no matter the amount of work or love that
went into the rehabilitation.

My particular dislike is for the "oiled bird rehabilitation industry" that
now attends every oil spill. And love may be involved in the volunteers
who are recruited to do the actual work, but someone in the picture is in
it for the money, and they are sometimes dishonest. A few years ago,
following a spill off Grays Harbor, huge numbers of Evergreen students
were recruited as "volunteers" by the company that was in charge of
"cleaning" the birds. I mentioned in class that it might be just as
useful -and a lot cheaper- to pass out hammers and chunks of 2x4's than
to torture these doomed birds by letting allegedly higher primates abuse
them with soaps and other tools. A group of particularly militant
students began picketing my classes, my office, and circulated a petition
calling for my removal (presumably from the college, but they might have
had more in mind).

Having found out that the "rehabbers" were obligated to band their
"cleansed birds", I found out where they were releasing them (Eld Inlet,
Olympia) and sent started patrolling the beaches there in search of the
"rehabilitated" fowl (mostly murres). We found several, obviously not
"rehabbed" at all, but moribund, hiking around on the shore. My reports
of these findings precipitated a change in the "release site" -they began
hauling the grebes and murres out into the middle of the Nisqually Reach
where, *they allowed, or admitted* they would be unable to make landfall
or be swept out to sea if distressed! We found a couple even there, even
though the beaches were largely inaccessible.

So there is some indication that most of the released birds in this
situation end up as angels rather than functional parts of populations.

The upshot of this kind of thing is that the energy of the well-meaning
volunteers is misdirected to the "rehap effort", when it would be more
appropriately aimed at the oil companies (who slither away for a pittance).

If these efforts and this kind of energy were directed to habitat
acquisition and protection, much more conservation of a more meaningful
variety would be accomplished. For example, posts from me and others about
the loss of Sagebrush Flat to the politics of abysmal science and cowboy
worship elicited virtually no response from Tweeters. Is it more
important to wildlife to save 4 square miles of the last good hunk of
deep-soiled Shrubsteppe harboring some very interesting bird species and
populations, AND the only viable population of the *state endangered*
Pygmy Rabbit, or put a few doomed pelagic birds through the Kenmore?
Sagebrush Flat is in the process of being turned over to the Washington
Department of Fish & Wildlife by the Department of Natural Resources with
no significant change in the amount of abusive grazing. In fact, the
grazing (by privately owned cattle) has at least the option to be
increased! And all this is to be done with the transfer of (probably) a
near three quarters of a million dollars. The F&W folks will "do
research" to determine if cattle are harmful to Pygmy Rabbits! What do
you think? Will a bunch of 2000 pound exotic ungulates that compete with
all wildlife on the site for food, and might just collapse burrows of the
only native fossorial rabbit in North America have a negative or a
positive effect on the habitat and its occupants? That research
"question" was answered in the early pleistocene.

Scrub on.

SGH

Steven G. Herman
The Evergreen State College
Olympia WA 98505
(360) 866-6000, ext.6063
943-5751 (home)
hermans at elwha.evergreen.edu