WILDLIFE RESCUE CENTER REBUILDING FROM FIRE, COVID
Non-profit rescues 1,000 animals a year, educates public
If you’re nurturing an injured hummingbird back to health, you will have to feed it every 15 minutes from dawn to dusk.
That’s what Monique Ligouri, executive director and education director of the Suisun Wildlife Rescue Center has had to do as part of her duties since she took that position in 1986.
The center, which was incorporated as a non-profit volunteer organization in 1977, takes on about 1,000 animals for rescue, rehabilitation and release each year and has presented its educational programs to some 300,000 people since that time.
It operates on a shoestring budget of $ 50,000 a year with Ligouri and its other paid staff member, Director Kris Reiger, working part-time at minimum wage. The center depends on donations, particularly this past year when it had to close its museum and educational outreach due to COVID. On top of that, the center was hit by an arson fire in June.
“The fire was right on our doorstep and we lost several enclosures,” said Ligouri. “We lost a squirrel enclosure that had three pre-release gray squirrels in it. Our display aviary had our two great horned owls in it. One of our volunteers heroically got our red-tailed hawk out. Our screech owl died from smoke asphyxiation. We had a golden eagle that we were trying to keep as a non- releasable, and subsequent to the fire he died as well from stress and smoke asphyxiation. One of our great horned owls had been with us for 17 years. It’s just so hard to lose those birds and animals. We’ve been rebuilding.”
COVID has also had a negative impact.
“From March to June, which is one of our busiest times of the year educationally, we lost thousands and thousands in revenue,” said Ligouri. “We also had to shut the wildlife center to the public, which means we don’t have those people who come in and decide to make a donation. We did not shut down animal care at any point.”
The majority of the center’s non-releasable animals are birds of prey who have an injury that makes them unable to f ly. The great horned owl the center had kept for 17 years had run into a barbed wire fence while hunting and had a wing amputated. A coyote that had become separated from his parents was hit by a car on the freeway.
Some animals, like the coyote, become so habituated to people that they cannot be released back into the wild.
Among the non-releasable animals at the center in addition to the coyote are a barn owl, a redtailed hawk, a screech owl, a short- eared owl, and a great horned owl that is currently being evaluated and appears to be blind.
Owls can live to be about 30 years, golden eagles up to 50 years.
Spring is the center’s busiest season when people bring in hundreds of baby birds.
“We get birds of prey, squirrels, jackrabbits, coyotes, foxes,” said Ligouri. “A lot of them are orphaned and have to be raised. I actually have three squirrels at my house because we have no caging to put them in at the center. And they came in too late to be released.”
If animals are not released by the first part of October, they will have to spend the winter at the center or, in some cases, at the home of staff and volunteers.
That’s how Ligouri came to care for hummingbirds in her home. Fortunately, they do sleep at night.
“But you have to do it a certain way,” she explained. “You can’t just go in and say nightie- night and turn off the light. You have to slowly bring down the light level like they would outside and then you have to raise it up the same way in the morning because hummingbirds go into torpor at night. It’s like suspended animation. Their heart rate and their body temperature drop way down. That’s how they can live up in the Andes where it is so cold… They are fascinating little things but they are a lot of work.”
When she takes care of squirrels in her home, she sometimes has to get up in the middle of the night to feed them.
But it is a labor of love for Ligouri, who said the movement of what was then called wildlife rehabilitation and is now more commonly known as wildlife rescue started around the time of the first Earth Day in 1970.
“Like a lot of people I’ve always liked birds and animals,” she said. “I had a bird feeder in my backyard and as will happen, a bird got injured and I took it to the center and started to volunteer.”
That was in 1980. Six years later she was the executive director.
Not all baby birds found alone need to be brought into the center. Often the mother will find them and bring them back to the nest. But how does one tell the difference?
“We tell people if you don’t know what to do, call us,” said Ligouri. “Tell us what the situation is. If something is broken and bleeding, that’s a pretty simple call. But if you’re not sure, call us because we might be able to make your life a whole lot simpler and tell you what to do on the spot.”
Under the terms of the center’s agreement with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, the center tries to release animals within a three-mile radius of where they came from. But that’s not always possible.
“This year we’ve had so much habitat go ( be destroyed) here in Solano County with all these fires, we’re having to be a little more f lexible,” she said. “There is no point in taking a great horned owl out to a burned- out area where it can’t catch any prey.”
The center continues to regroup.
“It’s been kind of a double whammy for us, first the COVID then the fire,” said Ligouri. “But we’re trying to think of ways to reach out to our members who are devoted to us. Once we can social distance again, we have a wonderful program on hummingbirds that we initiated a couple of years ago and just had a terrific response to last year. We have an education wing in the center, so we’re thinking maybe when we can socially distance again. We can get a limited number of people in there for a presentation. We’ll be able to socially distance people around our outside things, our aviaries.”
She is very grateful for the assistance the center has received during this difficult time.
“We did have to get some help because of the enclosures we didn’t have,” she said. “Napa Wildlife and the California Raptor Center helped us when we didn’t have the housing for various things… After the fire people were very generous. We found out how many friends and supporters we have.”
Ligouri is also on the Board of the Suisun Marsh Natural History Association, which is dedicated to the rescue of native California wildlife and to the preservation of the Suisun Marsh.
The marsh is part of the San Francisco Bay estuarine system, located where freshwater from the San Joaquin and Sacramento rivers meet tidal flow from the Pacific Ocean. It is the largest contiguous area of coastal wetland in California and is located entirely w ithin Solano Count y. The name “Suisun” means “land of the west wind” and was the name of the local Native Americans, the southernmost group of the Patwin.
The marsh is home to tule elk, at least 220 species of water fowl and other birds, and 21 species of mammals, including the river otter, beaver, mink, muskrat, jackrabbit, striped skunk, raccoon, Suisun shrew, and salt marsh harvest mouse.
To learn more about the association or to make a donation, visit suisunwildlife. org, or call 707- 429HAWK (4295).