>For myself, I joined a rehab center because I wanted to get closer to
>the birds I had learned to admire as a birder.

Get involved in a serious banding project!

>Dr. Scott warns the new rehabbers up front. He says "You do it for yourself."

A refreshingly honest statement.

>A class full of second graders who've just met a live owl or merlin is
>going to be interested in what they can do to help wild birds

True, but you don't really need to have a fulltime, ongoing rehab effort
in order to get an inventory of a few education raptors or other birds.
And, actually, by definition fixing up an unreleasable bird and holding
on to it isn't rehab...

>Sometimes people will imply that wildlife rehab is a poor allocation of
>resources - "why not give that money to Catholic Charities?" But believe me,
>the people that pay for that hummingbird's trip south by jet are not
>interested in giving the money to Catholic Charities (or if they are,
>they've already done that too). They are interested in the welfare of
>that individual hummingbird. So it is not a diversion of charitable funds.

In other words, they're not going to give to conservation causes because
they're not interested in conservation, anyway?


- Don Baccus, Portland OR <donb at rational.com>
Nature photos, on-line guides, at http://www.xxxpdx.com/~dhogaza