Well, I was sure this subject would come up someday and that I would feel called
upon to enter my 2 cents worth. What good is rehabbing sick and injured
wildlife?

I think Dennis presented the upsides and downsides very succinctly, so I won't
repeat. For myself, I joined a rehab center because I wanted to get closer to
the birds I had learned to admire as a birder. I think it was a little saw-whet
owl that really did it to me, actually. My cats' vet, Dr. Scott, is the director
of the Bird Treatment & Learning Center here and for the first couple of years
of cat ownership, I would ask for a peek into his back room whenever I brought
the cats in. Pretty soon I was bringing in road kill (to feed raptors); one
thing led to another...

Dr. Scott warns the new rehabbers up front. He says "You do it for yourself."
But I think the educational angle is indeed very worthwhile. 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: keep the cat indoors, fix the windows that
get hit by birds most often, pick up that monofilament line along the fishing
streams. [And the teachers and parents get the word from the kids]. The
educational "rehab" bird presentation puts people in a receptive mood for
learning to live better with wildlife, in a way that few other approaches do.

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.

There was a perfect article by Mel White in Living Bird about a year ago in
which he brought an injured kingfisher to the vets. He found out how fast it
gets personal.

Chris Maack
Bird Treatment & Learning Center
Anchorage, AK
73201.3124 at compuserve.com