SAN DIEGO WILDLIFE RESCUE BIRDS HOW TO

If birds considered susceptible to the virus show neurological or respiratory symptoms, they likely will be euthanized, said Jon Enyart, senior director of Project Wildlife.Įnyart said his organization is trying to protect the birds being cared for at wildlife centers it operates in San Diego and Ramona. Birds brought in will go to a specific room and treated by staff who are wearing protective gear. Officials with Project Wildlife said they will continue to treat injured and sick birds, but will be looking closely at bird symptoms. “I really hoped it was going to move north and just bypass us completely.” “My fingers and toes were all crossed,” she said. She had hoped the virus would not reach Southern California. And with the construction of the Penguin Beach habitat at the San Diego Zoo, our researchers are also gaining valuable knowledge about the African penguins that we can share with our partners in Africa.Ten rescued birds being treated at SeaWorld will remain in the facility as they recuperate, said Kim Peterson, head of SeaWorld San Diego’s rescue team. Another project monitors penguins’ travel or activity patterns at sea, using GPS technology. San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance supports an innovative project that uses passive integrated transponder tags to monitor residents. Nestlings can perish when parents have to travel long distances to find enough food for themselves and their chicks. Where fishery operations overlap with penguin feeding grounds, penguins are increasingly finding themselves competing with humans for food. Habitat loss due to extreme weather events linked to climate change reduce the available space for penguins to breed. Until chicks are big enough to fend for themselves, penguin parents rely on nest burrows to keep them safe from predators and the heat of the African sun. Their numbers have declined by 70 percent in the last 20 years in South Africa, and habitat loss and lack of fish are taking a major toll. Oil spills are not the only thing causing African penguin populations to plummet.

We knew the impact our work would have on the wild population.” “We understood the threats and challenges to the wild population. “We all understood the importance of the work we were doing,” wrote Debbie Denton, wildlife care specialist at San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, about one of her recent trips to South Africa to help the penguin population there. We’ve seen many hand-reared and rehabilitated penguins successfully breeding in the wild, thus bolstering the wild population. Each year, some of our wildlife care specialists travel to South Africa to assist SANCCOB with chick rehabilitation.Īnd it’s working. Rehabilitation efforts can take days, weeks, months, or years, depending on the individual penguin’s condition. We're helping rescue, rehabilitate, and release penguins who have been oiled, abandoned, or injured. In partnership with SANCCOB, we’re helping save these birds. The only hope for an oiled penguin is to be rescued and rehabilitated until it can be returned to the wild. Getting oiled means starvation, too: unable to swim without its warm, protective feathers, the birds can’t catch the fish they need to survive. Oiled birds can’t clean themselves, and they can’t get warm or dry. The oil is like thick sticky tar, and glues their feathers together. Penguins need clean, dry feathers that keep them waterproof, so oil spills are catastrophic events. San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance partners with the Southern African Foundation for the Conservation of Coastal Birds (SANCCOB) to help strengthen penguin populations disrupted by oil spills and low fish availability. Until chicks are big enough to fend for themselves, penguin parents rely on nest burrows to keep their families safe from predators, storms, and the heat of the African sun. Bonded penguin pairs take turns incubating their eggs and feeding their chicks, and they need a safe place to raise their families. Penguins are struggling to find safe places to breed and enough food to survive, and their colonies are dwindling. Penguins are colony birds⁠-there is safety in numbers. As a result, African penguin populations have plummeted. Penguin habitat have been bulldozed in favor of new development, oil spills threaten their safety, and environmental changes and food shortage due to high fishing pressure have left them starving.

SAN DIEGO WILDLIFE RESCUE BIRDS HOW TO

Locals have had to learn how to share space with these warm-weather penguins-some people even find the birds burrowing in their own backyards.īut humans imperil penguins too. They split their time between the cool waters of the southern Atlantic Ocean and in the warm climate of the rocky beaches of southern Africa. These tuxedoed birds are immediately recognizable, with one exception: there’s no snow and ice for African penguins.

San diego wildlife rescue birds