18 April 2013November 4, 2021

Keeping Your Data Straight

A guide to record keeping options Record keeping is a fact of life. Every job from police officer to tax accountant requires a certain level of documentation for proper functioning, legal purposes, and record keeping. Wildlife rehabilitation is no exception; our records provide data on what treatments are needed for a specific animal, how that animal has fared over time, and the medical-legal outcome of each case. I remember as a teen being enlisted to enter each year’s worth of intake sheets into an Excel program. Tedious for sure, but quite amazing once all that data was entered and we...

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17 January 2013November 4, 2021

IWRC Welcomes New Board Members

We are pleased to announce the new board members voted in by the membership in December of 2012.  Continuing board members Brenda Harms and Melissa Matassa-Stone were also voted to the board.  But for the moment, lets concentrate on our three new members.     Kristen Heitman Kristen Heitman is a full-time bird and mammal. rehabilitator, specializing in waterfowl. Her passionate connection to this field began in 1999 and in 2002 she founded the non-profit, Providence Wildlife Rehabilitation, Inc., and continues as their director. With Providence’s 13 education birds, Kristen and her staff provide outreach conservation programs across Indiana. Kristen...

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02 November 2012November 4, 2021

Urban Predators

  In the US, it’s fairly common to see whitetailed and blacktailed deer, coyotes, and all sorts of mesopredators in and around the city.  A recent National Geographic article mentioned the increased urban appearance of apex predators like cougars.  The article made me think “what does this mean for rehab”?  My only experience with an apex in the city had a tragic end.  It was a timber wolf that was shot for being too close to a mall.  How can rehabilitators assist in preventing human wildlife conflict with this new influx of predators? Here are some thoughts from IWRC members: Ned...

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02 October 2012November 4, 2021

Ireland!

By guest blogger Randie Segal Randie, Lynn, and Diane are in Europe visiting rehabilitation centers, attending conferences, and in between Lynn has managed to squeeze in time to teach not one, but three IWRC courses.  Join us for the next few weeks as Randie tours us around Ireland, Great Britain, Poland, and Belgium. September 23 We all arrived in London , went through customs, and didn’t get into any trouble We took a taxi and came to our hotel Went out to a little family Italian restaurant and had a great time Lynn told them we were going out looking...

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26 September 2012November 4, 2021

Reuniting Parrots

By Sam Williams – reposted with author permission from Word Parrot Trust A few Mondays ago we got a call that another parrot had bounced off a car. Normally we’d expect a parakeet, a broken wing or both but this call came from Jim and Jane who sponsor Echo so it was definitely going to be a parrot. Sam headed over but was still in for a surprise. It was an unweaned parrot chick who had had a lucky escape, he was knocked about but otherwise ok. Except he had lost his parents. The story has a happy ending so...

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30 July 2012November 4, 2021

Di Conger

We all have that one instance or person who got us involved in wildlife rehabilitation.  Let’s take a moment today to celebrate them; whether it was a person, a situation, or a single warbler.  For Karen, that person was Di Conger.  The rehab community is saddened by Di’s recent death.  Let us remember all of the animals who went back into the wild due to Di’s care, and all of the people she influenced in her life.  Di did not want an obituary, so instead Karen has offered to share her story of jumping into rehab. Update 8/21/12:  A memorial...

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13 July 2012November 4, 2021

Scenes from Hai Bar Yotvata

By Karen Tannenbaum Karen is a California rehabilitator who usually volunteers at the Wetlands & Wildlife Care Center in the US but is spending the summer as a volunteer at an Israeli wildlife rehabilitation and education center, Hai Bar Yotvata.  Since IWRC currently has no Israeli members (hopefully we will soon) I thought the membership would be interested in the current state of rehabilitation in the country.  Regardless of where we are, we always regard our animals and practices as normal, be that kangaroos and possums, raccoons and redtails, or pandas and cincerous vultures.  By sharing each others “normal” we...

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02 July 2012November 4, 2021

Promising treatment of avipoxvirus infections

Here is an interesting paper for those of you dealing with avian patients.  The study was presented at the 2011 Conference of the European Association of Avian Veterinarians. *   *   *   *   * A clinical trial of 162 captive birds of prey with poxvirus took place between 2008 and 2010. The Poxvirus infection was diagnosed by histopathology and PCR procedure. Booster Concentrate® was administered orally in the food daily for 30-65 days. All the birds recovered from the infection uneventfully within 15-65. Clinical followup a year later shows new poxvirus cases continue to respond to Booster Concentrate.   *   *  ...

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29 June 2012November 4, 2021

Desert Habitats

By Karen Tannenbaum 6/6 These last few working days I learned more about the Common Tortoise breeding/rehabilitation program, one of the Hai Bar’s most successful projects. My responsibilities now include maintaining enclosures for the youngest tortoises on the reserve, one of the red foxes, raptors in recovery cages, a few recovering small mammals, the nightjars, and (of course) the fruit bats. I worked on setting up a new, larger enclosure for the nightjars as well as a new enclosure for recovering raptors. I was allowed complete creative license to arrange the cages and fit them with new branches that I...

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