Puffin swims by tour boat

Puffins are one of the oddest, most charming and hardest to see birds to see in the United States, but it’s getting easier. The birds spend almost all their time on the ocean, but for a few months they nest on three islands off Maine during the summer. Most of the action is about five hours’ drive Down East from Maine’s southern border. Eastern Egg Rock, by far the easiest island to see if you’re a human just an hour from Portland, now has enough puffins that it’s worth the trip.

Puffins once lived on six islands off Maine, but were nearly wiped out by people eating them and wearing their feathers. By 1901 there was only one pair on Matinicus Rock. Protection brought them back hundreds to the upper islands.  Since puffins return to the island where they hatched to breed, it seemed unlikely they would ever reclaim their old territory. But biologist Stephen Kress had the idea to transplant chicks from Newfoundland, where they were still all over the place, to Eastern Egg Rock. No one was sure what mechanism they used to find their way home or when it kicked in–was it when they hatched or when they swam out to sea?

Kress and the National Audubon Society started moving chicks in 1973 in what became Project Puffin.  The first adult came back started in 1977 and their numbers have climbed steadily to 148 nesting pairs as of 2014. That’s an all-time high, but it comes after an alarming dip for a couple years when higher water temperatures cut their food supply and nesting success dramatically.

Courtesy of Project Puffin newsletter

I’ve wanted to see a puffin in the United States, but didn’t really think I had much of a chance. When I went to book a cottage near Boothbay Harbor, even the guy who owned it and stood to make money off my visit tried to talk me into going further up north. “It is about a 5 hour trip from Boothbay Harbor, but it is so worth it.  You land on the island and get to go in blinds to [photographically] shoot the puffins,” he told me.  “The tours out of Boothbay will get you near to some puffins in flight but that’s about it.”

If I were travelling alone on a puffin safari, fine, I’d make the trek to Machias Seal Island, which Audubon calls the “grandaddy of the puffin islands,” and get to see puffins from a blind. That’s if could swing a reservation. And if a dinghy from the boat would be allowed to land, which it often can’t in the rough seas. But I was travelling with a reluctant birding husband, a toddler and two beagles. The best choice for us all was Cap’n Fish’s puffin cruise, despite a name that is embarrassing to say. They even let you buy a $10 ticket for your dog–which is a huge deal because it means we don’t have to leave one adult behind or chance leaving the beagles alone in a strange hotel (lest Huckleberry should cry.)

In preparation for the trip I read my three-year-old daughter Ginger the kid’s book Project Puffin over and over. She was so excited to see them. On the way out she started fussing and we figured she was a little seasick. Then she mercifully fell asleep.

We got to the island there were plenty of birds to see. Puffins, terns, guillemots swarmed the island. They swam in the water near the boat. They hopped up and down on the rocks, where each pair took care of one chick, hidden away in a burrow. I tried to wake Ginger up, but she wouldn’t have it. A puffin fly just a few feet over out boat, where Pete Salmansohn, the education coordinator for Project Puffin, told us about the colony’s history. When seabirds were first protected, gulls took over these islands. Part of the project was to remove the gulls to make way for puffins. And terns. Ginger would have been delighted; he’s the co-author of her puffin book. At any rate, we saw plenty of puffins doing all kinds of puffin things: flying, flying with fish, swimming, hopping, hanging out together. We circled the island twice and got a good long look.

Ginger woke up as we neared the harbor. She thought we were just getting to the puffin island, then started crying when she realized she missed them. Salmansohn consoled her with puffin keychain. I asked him why Project Puffin doesn’t start reclaiming more of the old puffin islands (Western Egg Rock, Large Green Island) He must get asked that a lot. Puffins were never really in danger of extinction because there are so many of them in Canada and Europe, he said. Terns, now there’s a bird in trouble.

Yeah, I don’t think Project Tern will ever really catch on. Does that mean that the whole Project Puffin was just something to give Americans our cute and charming puffins back and make us feel good about fixing a past wrong? A symbolic win for the green team? And I’m just a typical American, excited about the cartoonish puffin while the serious tern is boring people to death? Well, maybe.

The biggest threat to puffins now may be climate change. As Mother Jones reported last year, the water temperature has been rising so much in the Gulf of Maine, the puffling’s favorite fishes (hake and herring) aren’t around. There isn’t enough plankton to feed the fish that feed the pufflings. In 2013 one-third of nest burrows went unoccupied and only about 10% of chicks survived long enough to fledge, or leave the nest, on Machias Seal Island. But in 2014 puffin numbers turned around: 85% occupancy and 75% success in fledging.

The water temperature rise may have been a fluke. Maybe. We hope so. Because, if not, there’s no easy fix. Transplanting an entire colony of elusive seabirds will seem easy compared with lowering the temperature of the ocean by a few degrees. So get out there and see those cute puffins while you can.

Puffins hop near their nest holes, where their pufflings are hiding, waiting for delivery of fish and to grow up.

Puffins and terns fly over their nests on Eastern Egg Rock.

Allan D. Cruickshank Wildlife Sanctuary on Eastern Egg Rock

Cap’n Fish’s boat cruise out of Boothbay Harbor lets you buy a $10 ticket for your dog.

Courtesy of Island Marine

Blackfin and spinner sharks are passing by Palm Beach, FL, this time of year–so many and so flamboyantly you may be able to see them from the shore.

The sharks are migrating through and will spend the summer along the east coast. (They have similar patterns off Africa and Europe.) The sharks, which average about 6 feet, mate in early summer then carry the young 12-15 months and give birth to 3-15 pups that are already a couple feet long. Because the US shark population is in decline, the inland shark nurseries are important. Oddly, the sharks don’t entertain residents on the way down south. Tellman says the current may make them travel far from shore.

Tellman has another Florida shark watching tip: off Jupiter scuba divers can see lemon sharks. Normally sharks flee from the bubbles of scuba tanks, but these don’t seem to mind.

	Where to SEE SEALS (and sea lion and walrus)
	Where to SEE SHARKS

Where to see animals down south

Dolphin stranded in the Gowanus Canal

The unanimous judgment of the crowd of Brooklynites crowded on the Union Street Bridge over the Gowanus Canal last night: somebody needs to be getting in the water to save that dolphin. Despite the cold and snow. Despite the unknown oils and toxins in the soon-to-be dredged superfund site. Just somebody, please, help the dolphin.

The crowd of kids and adults wanted to see the dolphin make it. Somebody brought along dolphin recordings and played them on mini-speakers over the water, where the 7-foot  dolphin thrashed on concrete bridge pilings.

But it didn’t happen. The dolphin died after spending the day in the canal, first spotted in the morning at the entrance, then ending its life around 6 p.m. on the concrete pilings under a bridge about 1.8 miles up the dead-end canal. The Times says it was a common dolphin. That means it was most likely a short-beaked common dolphin, Delphinus delphis, making it one of about 120,000 on this side of the Atlantic.

Would-be rescuers from the  Riverhead Foundation told the Times they needed special permission to rescue the marine mammal and were waiting for the 7 p.m. high tide to carry it out on its own. But Robert DiGiovanni, senior biologist at the Riverhead Foundation, told the Daily News that it was the toxic waters holding them back. “It’s not safe for us to get people in the water.” But, towards the end, the dolphin was on the footing of the bridge and people could’ve stood next to it in hip waders.

The dolphin was likely in big trouble to wander off on its own up the canal to begin with. But, once it got there, the canal itself surely didn’t help. It has been shown to have too low of oxygen levels to support life. And its pipes, pilings and concrete make it hard for anybody to get out unscathed.

Read more:

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http://www.iucnredlist.org/details/6336/0 

Nevermind the horrific death of a trainer in 2010 by killer whale Tilikum. Or the various other attacks and deaths. Forget about concerns about how many animals SeaWorld takes from the wild and the growing consensus

Orca at SeaWorld, courtesy of Roger Wollstadt

that marine mammals shouldn’t be captive entertainers. Don’t think about how SeaWorld uses Tilikum as the star of its breeding program. Pay no attention to the massive amount of debt the company is in, thanks to the Blackstone Group, the huge private equity firm that bought the chain of 11 amusement parks for $2.7 billion from Anheuser-Busch in 2009, in a classic leveraged buyout that has left the company drowning in debt.

Blackstone now wants the investing public to take over some of the responsibility of SeaWorld, even as it maintains control.

Blackstone just filed the documentation necessary to sell shares in SeaWorld Entertainment during the holiday week between Christmas and New Year’s, so the amount it hopes to raise is unclear so far, though Bloomberg reports it plans to raise at least $500 million. It’ll be a few months before we know exactly, but the financial details contained in its registration form with the Securities and Exchange Commission reveal a number of fascinating details about Sea World and how it operates that any animal lover should know.

SeaWorld is deep in debt, but its current owners are paying themselves amazingly well

The SeaWorld – Blackstone story is a classic leveraged buy-out tale of sophisticated investors buying a company, loading it up with debt and using it as a cash machine. Blackstone put up about $1 million of its own money to buy SeaWorld, then put the company $1.3 billion in debt, the Orlando-Sentinel reported at the time of the deal. Now the company is $1.8 billion in debt, thanks to the lavish $610.1 million dividends paid in the last two years.

Blackstone did make the company profitable, but nowhere near that much. In 2011, SeaWorld earned $19.1 million but paid Blackstone a $110.1 million dividend. For the first nine months of 2012, SeaWorld paid Blackstone a $500 million dividend–pretty amazing considering the net income was only $86 million. (Coincidentally the same amount it paid in interest on its loans.) “Blackstone extracts another dividend from SeaWorld” is how  The Deal explained it. Writer David Holley noted that S&P downgraded the company’s debt and Moody’s raised its probability that it would default on its loans.

The question this raises for animal lovers is how it will impact the treatment of SeaWorld’s 67,000 animals. That’s always an issue when you put animals to work for a for-profit enterprise. It’s hard to imagine how being over-leveraged will improve the lives of the animals there.

What you’re buying if you buy Sea World shares

Blackstone lists Sea World Entertainment’s total capitalization at $2.3 billion. That’s not what is being sold to the public; Blackstone wants to keep control of the company, but use the public sale of shares to get cash from the public, in part, to pay off a loan that carries 11% interest. So if you’re buying Sea World shares, you won’t really have much say in how the company is run, but you will help its principal owner, Blackstone, pay down high-interest debt.

Other fun facts from the filing:

Nearly 1 in 5 of their marine mammals was taken from the wild

The S-1 filing, as it’s known, reports that “More than 80% of our marine mammals were born in human care.” That means that almost 20% were pulled from the wild, in places like Taiji, Japan, where the movie The Cove documented dolphin slaughter. The film argues that the fishermen don’t make that much money off dolphin meat, but persist because they can occasionally sell a dolphin to an aquarium for about $28,000. A trained dolphin can be sold for $300,000.

Sea World has 67,000 animals

The company boasts that it has 60,000 fish and 7,000 “marine and terrestrial animals.” Remember, Sea World Entertainment includes the animal parks Busch Gardens, which have about 2,700 animals, ranging from lemurs to flamingoes and elephants. Sea World reports that it possesses 29 killer whales, 151 dolphins, and 115 sea lions.

Sea World considers its breeding program an asset

The financial document calls it “successful and innovative,” and notes their genetic diversity. This is odd because Sea World has been criticized for overusing their most dangerous killer whale, Tilikum, to father too many offspring. Drummer and PETA rep Tommy Lee complained publicly that even though they claim Tilikum won’t have any contact with trainers, somebody is still going to have to touch him intimately to extract more sperm.

Sea World is not too worried about fines from regulators

SeaWorld has to list potential risks to investors. It names animal welfare regulations, but doesn’t seem overly nervous. SeaWorld says say it follows the rules of animal care and even in “unusual instances when we are cited for an alleged deficiency, we are most often given the opportunity to correct any purported deficiencies without penalty.” And even if Sea World does have to pay a fine, it’s usually no big deal. “In the past, when we have been subjected to governmental claims for fines, the amounts involved were not material [emphasis mine] to our business, financial condition or results of operations.”

Case in point: In June 2012, a judge ruled that SeaWorld has to make the workplace safer for trainers, but as lawyer Edward Tan explained, the judge also reduced the fine from $75,000 to $12,000.

Sea World has insurance for when whales attack people 

While Sea World reassures investors that it runs a totally safe place, it has to acknowledge in the risks that could harm its business that “injuries or death, while rare, have occurred in the past and may occur in the future.”

To protect the bottom line, Sea World has a policy for “animal enterprise related businesses in the theme park industry.” That said, Sea World admits that it is worried about premiums going up. “We cannot predict the level of the premiums that we may be required to pay for subsequent insurance coverage, the level of any self-insurance retention applicable thereto, the level of aggregate coverage available, or the availability of coverage for specific risks.” In other words, whale attacks are part of the cost of doing business.

They help rescue more than 500 wild animals a year 

SeaWorld and the other parks do generously help some wildlife. They take in orphaned, injured, sick or abandoned wild animals. They don’t get anything in return; if the animals survive, SeaWorld returns them to the wild. In 40-plus years, they’ve treated more than 22,000 wild patients.

Of your $79 ticket, less than a dime goes to the conservation fund

The parks boast that they fund their own SeaWorld and Busch Gardens Conservation Fund.  Though, truth be told, not all that generously. The fund’s website says, “The parks have contributed more than $50 million to wildlife conservation since 1970.” If it were equally divided annually, that would amount to about $1.2 million a year. The company had sales of $1.2 billion for the first nine months of this year. So if you shell out the $79 for an adult ticket, you can feel good knowing roughly 6 – 8 cents of that is going to conservation.

Where to See Whales in the Wild

Every week is shark week in Chatham

In Jaws, the mayor tries to play down the shark attacks because he’s afraid it will scare away the tourists. In the Cape Cod town of Chatham, MA, however, it’s the shark paraphenilia that tourists want.

In July a great white shark bit a body surfer on a sandbar off Truro’s Ballston Beach. The 50-year-old fought back by kicking the shark and ended up with 47 stitches. Obviously,   the t-shirts wouldn’t be as fun if the shark had attacked a little kid instead of a guy who seems like a really competent athlete.

But as long as nobody gets killed, it’s totally fine to sell silly shirts.  Greg Skomal, a state marine biologist with the state Division of Marine Fisheries told CBS this was the first shark attack in MA since 1936.

The sharks are coming to eat seals, which have shown up in bigger numbers since seal hunting became much less popular, even in Canada, and fishermen aren’t allowed to just shoot them as potential competitors. You could potentially see seals (and the sharks who want to eat them) anywhere along Cape Cod, but if you really want to watch them, you head to Chatham, an adorable little town on the elbow of the cape, where seals come in increasing to lounge on Monomoy Island.

 Option 1-See seals (and maybe sharks) from a boat

During the summer and some of the fall, you can try a boat tours. They’re generally kind of expensive and not dog friendly.

Blue Claw has several fall and summer options from Orleans, generally $50 for adults and $45 for kids.

Monomoy Island Ferry has cruises ($35, $30) from Chatham and even a day trip that lets you  walk on Monomoy Island. (It’s run as a charter, so you’ll be paying $360 for up to 6 people).

Monomoy Island Outfitters does charters. Beachcomber ($29,$25) has you take a trolley from North Chatham to a 90 minute seal cruise.

Chatham Water Tours leaves from Chatham’s Fish Pier and charges only $20, $15 for kids. Or just take a ferry to Nantucket ($77, $51) You may be able to see seals along the way and in the harbor on the other side.

Option 2–See them from the shore–faster, cheaper, less annoying to the seals–but less reliable or satisfying.

Look for seals anywhere boats come in. One fisherman told me to check around low tide or (for seals hoping to mooch off boats) late afternoon. The most popular land-based spot to see them is Chatham town beach. I saw several seals on the offshore sandbars. But the most successful spot may be the Chatham Fishing Pier, off Shore Road by Tern Island Sanctuary. You can check the webcam to see what’s going on, but most of the action is in late afternoon when the boats come in.

For that matter, nearly any harbor will get seals around four in the afternoon, too. People see them by the Cape Cod Canal in Sandwich, for example. And then, just pretty much any beach, especially around the elbow of the Cape. I saw seals in the water at the Truro Lighthouse, even though it’s on the other side of the Cape from Chatham. People see them up on the  beach, there, too, or on the sandbars. (This is where the shark attack was, remember.) Nauset Beach in Orleans gets seal visitors, too.

	Where to SEE SEALS (and sea lion and walrus)
	Where to SEE SHARKS

	Cameron	Branson
Destination	Marianas Trench	Puerto Rico Trench
Depth	35,800 ft	28,373 ft
Craft	Deep Sea Challenger	DeepFlight Challenger
Material	foam	carbon fiber and titanium
Goal	visit the Mariana trench many times	reach depths of each ocean
Confidence in critters at great depths	“We’d all like to think there are giant squid and sea monsters down there,” he told the Times.	“We know there are gigantic things down there,” he told the Telegraph.
How vehicle moves	vertical, like a seahorse	with wings or flippers, like a dolphin

Luckily the world has more than one eco-minded, genius gazillionaire. Branson and his team hope to visit the Mariana, too, later this year in a different kind of craft. Branson himself will go down to the Puerto Rico trench. That’s the deepest spot in the Atlantic and is about 7,000 feet shallower.

Nobody is sure if anything could really survive that deep. It’s dark and that means not much plant life. It’s cold–and most creatures prefer the warm, shallow water like the mountainous waters that usually abut the sea trenches. Both land formations are formed by tectonic plates squishing and stretching the earth. And then there’s the incredible water pressure, which has made these explorations so difficult and dangerous.

Of course, we’re all hoping someone will find a whole herd of Loch Ness monsters down there. Or at minimum a giant squid. Certainly something better than the shrimp-like creatures Cameron got to see.

Branson is suitably enthusiastic, hoping his craft, which is bigger, can cruise and call in another sub to take pictures, will find something. He’s got a soft spot for fun creatures and has created a lemur haven, despite taking some slack from doubters.

The only other manned mission to the deepest part of the Mariana Trench was in 1960 when the U.S. Navy sent oceanographers Don Walsh and Jacques Piccard down to the bottom. Near the bottom they saw a flatfish, but Walsh told ScienceFriday last week, biologists insist they really didn’t see it.

“Well, just before we landed, we spotted what we thought was a flatfish, a white flat – like a halibut or a sole, a foot long. And that was quite a sighting, if true, of a higher-order marine vertebrate in such – at such a great depth. And it was a bottom-dwelling type of fish, so it meant that it was where it belonged and that there was food down there and sufficient oxygen to support it. Now Jacques Piccard…and I were not ichthyologists. We were engineers. We were, if you would, test pilots of this vehicle trying to prove out its capability. So in the subsequent years, we’ve been advised by all kinds of scientists that we didn’t see that.”

But what if conventional wisdom is wrong?

The first crew never got a good look because they stirred up so much silt. Cameron had to head up early because of a technical problem. He hopes to return. His mission, backed by National Geographic, was always to get down there a few times.

Although the story of two rich geniuses racing in their private subs to the bottom of the ocean is delightful, really Branson didn’t plan to dive to the Mariana Trench himself.  His partner, Chris Welsh, is heading there (and, yes, the trip was delayed). Branson is going on the second of the five legs of the adventure, one for the bottom of each ocean. The Puerto Rico Trench is near a breeding ground for humpback whales (they like shallow, warm water) and plenty of other marine mammals and flying fish near the surface, NOAA has found.

The vessels are slightly different, but both plan on using little helper “lander” craft that go down first and drop bait. Welsh says on their blog: “The Virgin sub is excellent for large scale exploration and identifying areas worthy of more detailed examination, and Jim’s sub is perfect for detailed examination of those sites once found.”

For now let’s remember that not seeing something doesn’t prove it isn’t there. Animal tourists know to well that you can go to the exact location of a previous sighting and come up with nothing after a whole day of patient waiting. It’s as if human beings had only spent a few hours in Alaska and came back thinking it was just snow: it is mainly just snow, but there are also polar bears and walruses in certain parts. I’m just happy there are two gazillionaires willing to go looking for new creatures down there in the least explored place on earth.

Where to SEE WHALES

Read about Branson’s mission to save lemurs

SEE ANIMALS IN AUSTRALIA

Bill Deerr lassos a seal

Brigatine, NJ’s Marine Mammal Stranding Center is gearing up for busy season. The seal and turtle hospital 10 minutes from the Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City gets most of its human visitors in summer. But seals tend to land sick or injured on beaches from January to April or May. You don’t get to pet them or anything, but you can still come on Sundays in winter and see the process.

“Folks will only get to see the animals via TV camera because the little darlings are inside two air-conditioned buildings that are not accessible to the public,” says co-director Sheila Dean, who started the quiet little center with her husband Robert Schoelkopf in 1978.

Right now the center has one cold-stunned turtle in critical condition and one gray seal, who has been recovering for nine months and is set to be released Wednesday in Tuckerton Bay.  A big colony of harbor seals lives off shore and she can either join them or just head out to sea.

They had both worked at Atlantic City’s old timey amusement park the Steel Pier in 1976. She was a seal and dolphin trainer; he was a manager. She likes helping the animals back to the wild much better than teaching them tricks. “Sure, some live longer in captivity, but at what cost?” Together they would go out on calls for stranded marine mammals, even though they didn’t have a real place to care for them.

Over the last 35 years they’ve been perfecting the operation, which now includes a marine mammal ambulances (one for whales and dolphins, another for smaller creatures), boats, rehab pools and museum.

Check out the Marine Mammal Stranding Center

The center is feeling the recession and needs more donations. They even have a wish list of physical items.

Where to go to see seals

Manta ray off Hawaii by Steve Dunleavy

The giant manta ray (Manta birostris) just got an upgrade. It’s now listed as vulnerable on the IUCN Red List, so maybe it’s patchwork of local protections will gel into some international cooperation.

The Convention on Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS) gaves rays the boost Nov. 25 because their population fell 30% in the last decade and 80% since the 1940s.

Its big problem isn’t being delicious; people generally don’t want to eat them. The manta ray has gill rakers–combs to get food out of the water–that are dried and served as tea in Chinese medicine for a range of iffy ailments from rashes to circulation and immunity. The Ray of Hope compares their problems to those of sharks targeted for mystical shark fin soup. Fishermen turn to rays after they’ve wiped out sharks. Their meat is used as a filler in shark fin soup.

The ray’s dried gills are the big prize and the new rule means the world will start tracking the trade. Scubazoo reports finding ray’s gill rakers readily in markets in Sri Lanka, with dried tea selling in several spots in $80-$140 per kilo, again depending on size and quality. That’s a lot of money, but still not as much as manta rays bring in if we let them live and just let animal tourists come look at them. As Scubazoo points out, researcher Chas Anderson estimated last year that manta rays are worth about $4,000 each in tourism to the Maldives.

Here's what people are killing giant manta rays for

The IUCN says fishermen target manta rays in the Philippines, Mexico, Mozambique, Madagascar, India, Sri Lanka, Brazil, Tanzania and Indonesia.

The ray got help from Ecuador and NGO Equilibrio Azul, which in turn was assisted by the Manta Ray of Hope project, run by WildAid and Shark Savers. They’ll release a report in December on the decimation of manta and mobula rays.

Where can you go see manta rays? Many of the same places you see sharks.  Check out the Manta Ray & Whale Shark Research Centre

SEE ANIMALS IN AFRICA

This area is a Ramsar Site, one of the world’s key wetlands. It’s within 100 miles of the nuclear plant. Other sites closer to the plant and radiation are lost–at least to humans.  “In fact some bird-watching hot-spots, for example, Gamo-Higata, are completely lost by this disaster,” says Jun Tojima, who helps manage the Kabukuri project. That coastal area was part of the Sendai-wan and Sendai-kaihin, which is considered one of 500 important birding areas in Japan.

In Kabukiri, the attraction is the amazing number of migrating birds, but the human project is impressive, too. Local farmers have a unique cooperative agreement to flood their fields in winter to give the passing birds, mainly ducks and swans, a nice rest stop. About 40,000-100,000 white-fronted geese also rest here in winter, but they like the dry fields.

“About 20-30 farmers [flood their fields for the birds]. But this number is only Ramsar Site area,” says Jun Tojima, who helps manage the project. “Many many farmers do winter flooding by their own will, I can’t count them.”

November is the best time to visit these Izu-Numa marshes, he says. For about  ¥10,000 or $128 you can tour the area, including meals and a visit to the hot spring–though regulations require you also hire a taxi.  “I hope many foreigners come to Japan for bird-watching in some days,”  Tojima says.

Where to See Wildlife in Asia

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The current Wildlife Center of Texas represents what many urban rehabilitators are hoping to become: a professional outfit the public can turn to when they find orphaned or injured wildlife.  Executive director Sharon Schmalz started saving native animals in her backyard after a 1984 oil spill.

She and a team of other rehabbers, who, like rehabbers overall, are mostly women, built up the operations. They partnered with the Houston SPCA (which sends them wild patients) and Texas A&M University School of Veterinary Medicine. They got some funding from oil companies like Shell and Citgo (still no public funding available, even though wildlife is a public asset). And in 2007 they moved into their new building.

They’re on track to take in 8,500 patients this year, up from 7,000 in a typical year, because the drought is putting extra stress on animals.

“We’re really in the middle of Houston, so people ask, how do you get so much wildlife?” Schmaltz says. “But we’re also in the middle of the migration path.”

Their typical customer is a bird–dove, mockingbird or blue jay–but they also see pelicans and herons, who visit the coast.

“We get things people find in their backyard,” says operations manager Margaret Pickell. That means the usual suspect mammals–possums, rabbits, racoons and squirrels. But they’ve also treated trickier patients, like otters, beavers and bobcats. And they even treated a hooked, endangered Kemp’s Ridley sea turtle found on a street (probably dumped there).

Check out the Wildlife Center of Texas

SEE ANIMALS IN TEXAS