By Caroline Kettlewell
Special to The Washington Post
Friday, March 3, 2006; WE52
The seagull was injured by a fish hook. The turtle has a cracked shell. The confiscated caimans, illegal to possess without a permit in Virginia, lie basking in unblinking, reptilian torpor in a private room heated to their liking, awaiting a flight to Florida (well, who isn't, this time of year?). But actually, it's a quiet day at the Wildlife Center of Virginia, with tanks, cages and carriers empty, clean and ready for the first trickle of new arrivals signaling the start of breeding season and the flood of patients to follow.
Opened in 1982, the Wildlife Center of Virginia, in Waynesboro in Augusta County, about 160 miles from the District, is a donor-supported veterinary hospital for native wild animals whose larger mission is "teaching the world to care about and to care for wildlife and the environment."
This Sunday (and three other Sundays through April 23), you can visit the Wildlife Center and get a behind-the-scenes look at the work its staff does, during the center's free open house events.
"We're one of the leading teaching and research hospitals for wildlife medicine in the world," says Edward Clark, the center's co-founder and president.
From a low-slung building on a wooded hillside at the edge of the Blue Ridge Mountains, the center's reach extends across the state and around the globe. On busy days, the phone might ring frequently with questions and reports, while a steady stream of wildlife -- ill, injured, orphaned or otherwise in need of care -- arrives at the door, usually brought in by the public. At the same time, the center's staff is involved in other endeavors, such as training Venezuelan troops in battling illegal wildlife trade (the world's third-largest black market after weapons and drugs, according to Clark), consulting with the U.S. government on bioweapons (most of which are animal diseases) and developing a nationwide wildlife disease-monitoring network -- a kind of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of the wild animal world.
Caring for ill, injured and orphaned wildlife, and seeking whenever possible to rehabilitate and return those animals to the wild, is at the heart of the center's work. In its first month in 1982, the center, operating out of a horse barn, treated five patients. In the more than two decades since, 46,000 animals representing nearly 200 species have been seen at the Wildlife Center, which for the past 11 years has been housed in a sophisticated, million-dollar hospital and rehabilitation facility with geothermal heating and cooling and a high-efficiency lighting system. The center also maintains a network of trained wildlife rescuers and rehabilitators and volunteer transporters across the state; if you find an orphaned squirrel or an injured duck you can call the center for advice and a referral.
In addition, the center has trained more than 400 veterinarians from about 20 countries, and its education programs have reached 1.4 million mostly elementary- and middle-school students. With three full-time veterinarians and a team of educators, rehabilitators and volunteers, the center averages 2,800 patients each year. In 2005, they included 9 black bears, 1 peregrine falcon, 47 sparrows, 20 bald eagles, 1 green frog, 8 turkey vultures, 424 eastern cottontail rabbits and 38 mice.
The open house series is an opportunity to see how the center's staff meets the challenges of caring for an eclectic and ever-changing patient population. How do you fit an anesthesia mask on a bird? How do you extract a snake from a whiffle ball? How do you make lunch for everything from a groundhog to a great horned owl to a gray fox? (The contents of the hospital kitchen's refrigerator, which seem to have been delivered straight from the set of "Fear Factor," are a reliable favorite attraction on open-house tours.) Open-house guests will watch a video, take a tour and meet some of the center's education animals. These are permanent residents of the Wildlife Center that can't be returned to the wild, so they assist the center's staff in educational presentations.
What you'll also learn at the open house is some perhaps surprising information on the potentially serious impact even seemingly harmless human activities can have on wildlife. Edward Clark cites the example of tossing an apple core out your car window. "Suppose an animal is across the road. Your apple core could lure them into the road and into harm's way." Owls, he notes, can be hit by cars while hunting mice that have been drawn to roadside trash.
Of the thousands of animals the center cares for each year, about 20 percent have been hit by vehicles. Another 20 percent have been injured in attacks by house cats -- and even when the wounds aren't severe, many of these victims die from infection. "Claws and teeth of cats are very dangerous because they have heavy loads of bacteria; any skin break puts the animal at risk," Clark says.
Poisoning by pesticide, waste oil, antifreeze and other environmental contaminants also brings animals to the center; the staff has been studying evidence of a link between organochlorine pesticide exposure and ear infections in box turtles, for example. Owls are caught on barbed wire fences. A snake was brought in with a golf ball in its gut, and another one arrived stuck to a glue trap. A hummingbird was smeared in vegetable shortening. In acting upon its mission to teach people to care about and for wildlife, the center seeks to help people understand what they can do to protect animals.
"Education has to be more than awareness," Clark says. "It has to be motivation and options for action."
WILDLIFE CENTER OF VIRGINIA OPEN HOUSE
Sunday as well as March 19, April 2 and April 23. Wildlife Center of Virginia, Waynesboro, about 25 miles west of Charlottesville. There will be three sessions of about one hour each day at 12:30, 2 and 3:30. Reservations required; call 540-942-9453 or e-mailwildlife@wildlifecenter.org.
To reach the center, take Interstate 66 west to Interstate 81 south toward Staunton. At Staunton, take Interstate 64 east about 10 miles. Take Exit 96 off I-64, south toward Lyndhurst. The Wildlife Center is a half-mile on the left. For more information, including tips on how to identify injured or orphaned birds and animals and safely respond, visithttp://www.wildlifecenter.org.
