Valley gives a hoot about birds

PALMER -- Two members of the Bird Treatment and Learning Center and one of their diminutive feathered friends met with the Palmer Lions Club on Tuesday to raise support for a new bird hospital and educational facility in Anchorage.

Chris Maack of Bird TLC spoke to the importance of helping Alaska's population of injured birds while a full-grown sawhet owl the size of a coffee mug perched on her outstretched wrist.

The Bird Treatment and Learning Center is a nonprofit organization based out of Anchorage. It routinely treats 800 to 900 injured birds per year, and successfully rehabilitates up to 45 percent of the injured birds it receives. The remainder are sent to zoos or other educational venues or long-term care facilities across the United States.

The Tuesday attendees at the Palmer Lions Club are only a small percentage of the 25,000 people that the Bird TLC educates each year. Maack brings live birds into public schoolrooms both within the Anchorage School District and in numerous small towns and remote villages throughout Alaska. The organization held an Owloween event during late October in Anchorage, where their contingent of injured owls (typically 9 to 10 birds) were displayed to the public together.

"We help birds that have been shot, electrocuted, oiled, hit by cars and trucks, caught in game traps -- you name it," Maack said. Maack noted that Bird TLC exclusively helps birds that are so badly injured that they cannot fly.

"We get birds from all over the state; we've had birds sent to us from Barrow, Talkeetna, and the Aleutians," she said.

A local Valley resident, Wendy Schendell, helps care for birds independently, but those requiring more extensive care are generally sent to the center. Maack said the public can help by agreeing to care for injured birds and give them exercise during their rehabilitation period. One Anchorage resident housed a snowy owl for over two years in hopes that its wing feathers would grow back in, Maack said, but when the damage persisted, the owl was given to the Alaska Zoo.

Maack emphasized that wild birds are, at heart, wild, and those who care for them shouldn't try to change that.

"We have to combat the 'pet' image," she said. "If people take a bird home and try to make it a pet, they saddle themselves, and maybe someone else down the line, with that long-term responsibility."

Alex Carter, Coordinator of the Bird TLC Programs and Partnerships, said the center was founded in 1988 by longtime Anchorage bird advocate Jim Scott.

"It was his dream to have a facility in Anchorage for the care of these birds," he said.

Today, Bird TLC has such a facility, albeit one that Scott would probably not have dreamed of. Bird TLC is currently based in an underused warehouse in Anchorage that is used as a space for emergency chemical cleanup.

"If there's a spill, we have 24 hours to move all of our birds and equipment out of that building," Carter said. This is only one of the reasons compelling the organization to seek a more permanent location for its efforts.

Bird TLC dreams of a 8,300-foot center, open to the public all year, that would perform the dual function of caring for injured birds on its ground floor and providing educational exhibits and presentations on the upper story. Its location, a 4.5 acre plot of land overlooking Potter Marsh, has already been acquired by Bird TLC and would also provide an ideal location for viewing Southcentral Alaska's collection of avian visitors. Eventual plans call for the connection of the center to the marsh itself via an interpretive boardwalk.

The prime difficulty in the realization of this dream is its price tag -- just under $2 million from start to finish. Though the organization has already received a grant on the order of $450,000 from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, a considerable amount of funds are still to be raised. For this reason, the center is soliciting public donations and memberships through such events as the Lions Club presentation. Any donation received by the center in the near future will be matched by $50,000 of match fund money from ConocoPhillips Alaska, making the money doubly beneficial.

Carter said the center had been attempting to move to this property since 1992, but has been stymied by funding problems. However, he said he believes that now the time is ripe to pursue the move in earnest.

Carter emphasized that the center would benefit both Anchorage and the Valley.

"We've always intended this to be part of the community," he said. "It won't happen unless we get confirmation that the community is behind us."

Maack and Carter said they hope that, if their capital goals are fulfilled, construction could proceed as early as fall 2005, with the center open to the public by summer 2006. Individuals wishing to donate time or money to the center can contact Alex Carter at (907) 245-0142. Carter said the center would train anyone willing to volunteer.

Contact Daniel Spoth at daniel.spoth@frontiersman.com.