Getting back to my roots

"We only conserve what we love,

    we only love what we understand,

    we only understand what we know,

    we only know what we are taught."

                                                      -Baba Dium

Over the last few years, I've been doing a lot of thinking about the direction of my life, the farm, and my career. I've always known, and held it as a goal, to help better connect people with the natural world; through my artwork, stories, photos, and outreach.

I grew up around animals (with a K-9 officer father, aunt and uncle who were veterinarians, and an intense affinity myself). I was the kid who spent recess hiding in the bushes of the parking lot we had as a playground, still like a statue with an outstretched hand, delighting at wild birds that rewarded my patience by alighting on my fingers to snatch a piece of my lunch. 

As a child I was active with the local companion bird association, I worked  for years as a cage cleaner, learning the ropes of training with parrot breeders.  I learned to breed and raise parrots of my own, and volunteered at educational events like the state fair and pet expos. 

Going into college I served on the board of the state herpetological society, doing wild reptile surveys and fostering boas and pythons. I worked at an exotic fish specialty store and bred dwarf cichlids to sell back to them; every captive bred fish meant one less that needed to be taken from the wild (still a huge problem in the aquarium hobby). 

As soon as I could volunteer with animals, I did. First at humane societies, socializing fearful animals, and then through wildlife rehabilitation. I volunteered for the state Wildlife Rehab Center for six years, and that took me through the hardest years of my life - much of that time, it was my reason to live. I took and passed the licensing exam, but I was never able to become a rehabilitator myself, since part of the process was having your own facilities, and I was living in and out of apartments (and occasionally my car) at the time. When I moved away from the cities, I still continued to commute each week (a three hour trip) for more than a year, but the strain got to be too much, and my life too chaotic. There were no opportunities to volunteer locally, and though I tried, I fell away from being involved in rehab. I had learned a lot of invaluable skills - in animal care, feeding, triage, first aid, behavior, handling, which would go on to serve me well as I started a small farm. 

Now that I'm getting more settled, and looking at all the different irons I have in the fire, I realize I don't want to just sort of do everything a little bit, but that I'd like to specialize more and follow what I feel is my biggest mission in life: Helping people connect with animals, and better appreciate (and therefore conserve) nature. As the population increases and urbanizes at an unprecedented rate, humans are more divorced from nature than ever before - and like the quote I started this with, people don't save what they don't love, and they don't love what they don't know.  This goal, though, is very massive and vague, and I have been searching for what exactly will my place in all of it be. How can I best help, with the skillset I have available, with my strengths and interests, and more importantly - what needs are out there.  That is how I've come back, over and over to one thing - Vultures.

Birds are my favorite creatures; I love them all. Working with birds gives me an intense joy, and I want to help share that. I know they are something many people don't 'get'. They have different behavior and anatomy than mammals, and that makes it harder for many to connect with them - they aren't so easy to relate to as a dog or cat. Some birds are relatively easy to 'love' - beautiful, powerful birds like raptors or colorful, elegant birds like parrots. Probably the most maligned and misunderstood of birds (by the general public) is vultures. They are also the most imperiled - in some places, like India, populations of some vulture species have fallen by **99%** in the last twenty years. Over half of the species worldwide are in rapid decline.  Though people may never particularly love the fact they are 'garbage men', nature's cleanup crew, these scavenging birds are critically important to the health of ecosystems, and of humans. Without vultures, India is experiencing a massive public health hazard - tens of thousands of deaths due to rabies (in absence of vultures, feral dog populations exploded, and with them many diseases).  Vultures are uniquely adapted to handle rotting carcasses - quickly and efficiently recycling them - and removing from the environment things like ebola, botulism, or anthrax. People need vultures, but it's hard to get people all that interested in mobilizing to save something they think is so gross - or don't think about at all.

It's probably a pipe dream, but I would like to start the country's first vulture specific sanctuary and education program. Many raptor centers feature a vulture or two as residents or educational ambassadors, a few zoos are working with captive breeding programs of threatened species - but no one has a vulture center. Minnesota has the world famous University of Minnesota Raptor Center, the National Eagle Center, and the International Owl Center. It seems like we should have the International Vulture Center, too. 

I don't know if I'm capable of making this lofty goal happen, but I do think that I can at least make steps towards helping vultures.  Through my own history, and my experience in animal training, care, falconry, farming, and even business and art, I think I can combine these things and skills to focus more on public education and outreach.  I feel like if people had more exposure to vultures - through social media, photos, videos, live programs, and other educational opportunities, they would come to love them like I do. Vultures are actually really beautiful when you get to see them up close, with huge wingspans and iridescent feathers. They have captivating personalities - they are intelligent, social, and full of humor and sass. 

So, I'm in the process of doing a few things to both go back to my roots and move forward with my goals: 

(Me with a peregrine falcon education bird at the UMN raptor center care & management of captive raptors training course more than a decade ago) 

1. I'm an official new volunteer at the UMN raptor center - I will be helping with capture and transport of injured raptors to their world class facility. They were in need of someone in my area, and I want to help. This will help me gain more experience working with injured raptors and vultures (and help birds and the local community, too!)

2. I'm getting back into wildlife rehabilitation. I've found an incredible mentor and am working on my facilities and going through the steps necessary to get my license, both state and federal.  I have so much to learn, and this is very synergistic with public outreach and education. 

3. I am finishing my Minnesota Master Naturalist training in June and July. This will help me become a better educator, and advocate for local prairie ecosystems and animals. 

4. I plan to imprint a kestrel this year, as both a falconry partner and education bird. I am working on developing a program about kestrels (which are also in decline across most of the country) to give to local schools, nature centers, events, and whoever is interested. I will also use my red-tailed hawk (falconry bird) to do some more informal programs, as she allows. 

5. I will explore the possibility of becoming a 501c3 organization. Wildlife rehab, and conservation education is a profession, but there is no funding available for it from the state or federal levels - it is considered just volunteer work .  All supplies, medications, vet care, transport, and time are on my own dime - which I'm happy to do, but it becomes incredibly limiting as to how much I can be involved if I'm not able to fundraise to support this work. I hope to sort of shift over my 'job' from being a full time artist to being a part time artist and part time educator/rehabber - with the art funds funneling in to support my other work. Funding is really the biggest hurdle to everything I want to do - building enclosures and aviaries is a huge expense, feeding birds is expensive, vet care is very expensive. 

6. I will work on continuing my education through a huge reading list, seminars, and volunteer work with existing organizations so that I can do a better job caring for the animals that come my way, and helping other people learn about them, particularly through animal ambassadors. 

Everyone here has been so wonderfully supportive of all the work I do - artwork and otherwise, and I want to thank you for that. I will still be raising emus, doing prairie restoration, keeping bees and making art, but I want to shift my focus away from just doing things I enjoy to more of acts of service for the animals I care about. 

I hope to share this journey with you - what I'm doing, how I'm getting set up, what things like wildlife rehab look like day to day (I can tell you it's a lot of dealing with fearful, upset animals that hate you and trying to make sure they get as little human interaction and habituation as possible so they can be returned to the wild. It's a lot of avoiding bites, scratches, screaming, being pooped and vomited on, losing sleep because of night time feedings and not being able to travel because you have a commitment to animals that need your licensed specialty care around the clock...And cleaning. So, so much cleaning. Cleaning forever and ever. It's very much not having fun playing with cute baby animals - but as folks who support my work you can enjoy cute baby animal photos and avoid all the dealing with poop). 

Thank you for coming on this adventure with me :)