Squawkers need love too

Dave Brooks

A little piece of advice: Romeo hates men.

There are dozens of wild birds and mammals to see at the Wetlands

and Wildlife Care Center of Orange County, but one particularly

grumpy goose at the clinic doesn’t take kindly to male visitors.

“I think he’s just trying to protect me,” volunteer Debbie McGuire

said while rubbing the squawking white goose that male volunteers are

urged to avoid because of his penchant for pecking and biting.

It is just one more tidbit to remember when visiting the

7-year-old center, set to undergo a major improvement this summer

after securing a $600,000 grant from the California Wildlife

Conservation Board.

Staffed by volunteers on a budget of donations, the hospital is

run through learning as much as loving. Volunteers are constantly

changing animal habitats and healing techniques based on their

observations of the 2,000 injured and orphaned animals -- 75% of them

birds -- that come to the clinic each year.

Born out of a 1990 spill that dumped more than 400,000 gallons of

Alaskan crude oil on the coast of Huntington Beach, the center was

created to provide a permanent facility to respond to injured

wildlife or future toxic spills.

“We realized at that time that we really needed something,” said

veterinarian Joel Pasco.

Today the center can care for more than 400 animals at once,

housing birds and mammals in an outdoor holding area, with specially

designed flooring to protect the animals’ feet and multiple water

channels to provide both fresh and sea water. The center is filled

with small circulating pools for the birds to swim and rest in, and

volunteers constantly work to filter and refill the pools to keep

them clean.

A large focus of the center is rehabilitation, but volunteer

veterinarians also do some treatments at the clinic.

On Tuesday, several volunteers worked busily to hold an unhappy

cormorant diving bird while a technician attended to its wing that

had been injured by fishing line.

“We put a towel over them while we’re treating him, so he doesn’t

know what’s going on,” she said “We found that cormorants are

particularly strong and they’re easier to control this way.”

Most of the animals are brought to the clinic by members of the

public, often after unexpected encounters.

“We once had a guy drive in with a great blue heron on his lap,”

she said. “The bird had been hit by a car and was still in shock when

he brought it in. Thank God it had a mild concussion or it might have

poked one of his eyes out.”

Volunteers at the hospital usually ask for a donation from anyone

dropping off an animal -- birds usually cost about $75 a piece to

treat. In total, the hospital spends about $6,000 a month on

operations, including $2,000 a month just on the water bill.

Those costs are only going to rise when the clinic undergoes a

$1-million expansion later this month. It will include new surgery

rooms, a laboratory, more recovery units and a special 100-seat

classroom and deck to observe the nearby wetlands. The city of

Huntington Beach has offered to pay for some improvements along

Pacific Coast Highway and the nearby AES power plant has offered to

pull its fencing back 30 feet to make room for the expansion. Besides

caring for sick and injured animals, McGuire said the hospital plans

to use the facility to train future veterinarians and implement a

closed-circuit television system so students can watch surgeries.

Volunteers also regularly speak at schools and give private tours to

teach people the importance of protecting wild animals.

“Our goal is to promote an a better understanding of wildlife and

work with the public to provide them with the tools they need,” Pasco

said. “The more they know, the more they can do protect these

animals.”

* DAVE BROOKS covers City Hall. He can be reached at (714)

966-4609 or by e-mail at dave.brooks@latimes.com.