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Working
to Make Pelicans Well Again
'Adoption' program
at a San Pedro rescue center allows
sponsors to get involved in birds'
rehabilitation.
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Back to the wild: Mark
Russell of IBRRC releases
Phoenix in San Pedro on February
18, 2006. Phoenix arrived
at the center with a severed
pouch. (Photo: Russ Curtis/IBRRC) |
By Nancy Wride
Times Staff Writer
Kevin
Lucey spent $500 to save a seabird
he had never laid eyes on, and named
him Phoenix for his ability to revive.
The endangered California brown
pelican had been found in November,
dying on a beach. He had a cut that
ran the length of his pouch, and
he weighed 4 pounds — less
than half his normal weight. At
the International Bird Rescue Research
Center in San Pedro, Phoenix has
now had two of the three surgeries
he will need to survive in the wild.
But Lucey has seen the bird only
once, when Phoenix was unconscious
during his second operation.
The center's pelican "adoptions"
aim to restore birds to health and
freedom — as untouched by
humans as possible.
Sponsors pay between $200 and $500
to make this possible, even though
their adoptive role is largely ceremonial.
The money goes toward the birds'
care, especially the large quantities
of fish they eat daily.
The center arranged
17 pelican adoptions last year and
174 in 2004. Organizers began the
Adopt-a-Pelican program after a
crisis in July 2004, when the need
to help 200 starving young pelicans
forced them to look for new sources
of funding. Some of the pelicans
they helped that year had ventured
as far as Yuma, Arizona, in search
of food they couldn't find off the
California coast.
Until recently, all donors paid
$200 for their adoptions.
But last December, a month after
Phoenix arrived, the center introduced
a higher level of involvement for
those willing to pay $500. Called
Pelican Partners, they get to visit
the center when their pelicans are
released. They can watch as veterinarians
examine the birds for the last time
and mark them with leg bands for
future tracking. They are even allowed
to open their birds' cages and set
them free.
It was an easy sell for Lucey.
"If you take one look at those
little guys, they actually get along;
they mean absolutely no harm to
anybody. They're beautiful birds,"
said Lucey, a resident of Orange
and a chemist for a company that
helps clean up chemical spills.
"It seemed like an opportunity,
and maybe others down the road will
stand up and do the same thing to
help."
The rescue center is banking on
it.
Lucey's pelican, a
brown-feathered juvenile less than
4 years old, has a green band marked
"G3" above one of his
webbed feet. He's one of two pelicans
and 20 other birds recovering at
the nonprofit's Southern California
facility, situated on an outcropping
at Ft. MacArthur in San Pedro.
The pelican adoption
program is one of a variety offered
at the center's San Pedro facility
and its Northern California headquarters,
spokeswoman Karen Benzel said. The
center was founded in Berkeley in
1971 after nearly a million gallons
of crude oil spilled from tankers
that had collided under the Golden
Gate Bridge. The coexistence between
oil, nature and a growing urban
population has kept the nonprofit
center busy over the years, Benzel
said.
It opened its San Pedro Center when
a devastating 1990 spill off Huntington
Beach soaked birds in crude oil
and they needed to be washed with
dish soap and nursed back to health.
The California brown pelican is
a subspecies that nearly became
extinct due to DDT and DDE (a metabolized
form of DDT), which caused the birds'
eggshells to thin. When they were
placed on the endangered species
list in 1970, fewer than 300 breeding
pairs remained, according to the
organization. Today that number
has grown to about 6,000, and one
of the main breeding spots is on
the Channel Islands.
The adoption program aims to personally
involve people in the pelican's
comeback.
Phoenix was found on a Santa Barbara
beach and driven to San Pedro, said
Erin Kellogg, assistant manager
of the Southern California center.
The cause of his injury is unknown,
Kellogg said. Unlike other pelicans
that have been found intentionally
mutilated, Phoenix's severed pouch
did not show signs of intentional
harm.
In December, when a friend of Lucey's
saw a TV news clip about the pelican's
initial surgery, Lucey paid the
$500 fee to adopt the bird.
He began receiving updates —
including that the bird could not
quite eat normally but was still
managing to gobble down about 200
fish a day.
As Phoenix grew stronger after the
first surgery, the San Pedro staff
invited Lucey to witness the second
surgery on New Year's Day.
Lucey and a friend, to whom he gave
the pelican adoption as a gift,
donned surgical wear to observe
the operation. Because Phoenix could
be anesthetized for only a limited
time during the first surgery, the
second operation was needed to further
repair the wound, which might have
come from a fishing line or wire.
"Everyone was working hard
to keep the little guy warm,"
Lucey said. "They had him under
the covers with the heat going.
Three people were working on [him]
including the vet, and she was just
as nice as could be. Obviously everyone
in that room … cared."
So as not to disturb the bird, Lucey
stayed at the surgery only briefly.
Phoenix still needs a final operation
before he can be released. It probably
will happen later this month, Lucey
said.
The pelican already is testing his
wings in the center's large aviary,
where birds can try out flying and
other movements as the experts watch
their progress, Kellogg said.
Lucey, meanwhile, is excited about
attending Phoenix's release into
the wild.
"I think that will be the big
day for me," he said, adding
that he hopes more people will adopt
birds in need.
"It's comforting to know that
people spend this kind of time to
do this kind of work."
© Copyright 2006
– Los Angeles Times
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