Advertise on podcast: Bird Ally X: New Wild Review

Our latest podcast! In which the ways in which being a modern human who provides care for wild animals is nearly as deranged as a robot being wild.

Join us on New Wild Review for a conversation with Napa Wildlife Rescue’s Director of Animal Care and Operations, Linnaea Furlong. (please check out the awesome work of Napa Wildlife Rescue) A recent social media post by Linnaea struck a chord with New Wild Review. She wrote: “It’s surreal, watching all the systems breaking from above in the world, and wondering how it’s going to turn out, but at the same time, now I need to feed baby squirrels, now I need to bathe the raccoon child with mange, now I need to put worms in the glowing orange gapes of phoebes, now I need to train the new hotline person. Things are falling apart and staying the same at once and I am just taking it squirrel by squirrel.” In our conversation, we talk about what it means to provide care across boundaries during chaotic and dangerous times. Your support for Bird Ally X, and all of our projects, from Humboldt Wildlife Care Center, to our Botulism Response Team to this podcast, is deeply appreciated. It’s your generosity that makes it all happen. We need you now very much. Please donate if you can. DONATE

I have been working as a wildlife rehabilitator for 26 years. I will tell you briefly why. 

One day in the late 90s I looked up from the book I was reading – I had been studying the westward expansion of the US, and reading women’s diaries of the overland crossing, the details surrounding the “ill-fated” Donner Party, and of course the genocide of Native Americans that was part and parcel of so-called Manifest Destiny. 

I looked up from the book, which was filled with nightmarish suffering, and looked outside – it was 4 am. In the eastern sky the last quarter moon was rising over the Cascades, Venus was just below and behind the mountains the sky was beginning to glow with the coming dawn. Suddenly the dome of sky was a vast expanse, and here I was, in it. In the mix with the Earth, the moon, Venus and the Sun. The mountains jagged in a mountainous perfection and all of the known world before me. 

 At breakfast later, I was reading the Seattle Weekly – an ad for the PAWS Wildlife Center asked “Want to Help Return and Animal to the Wild?” and I knew in my heart, in my gut as they say, that this ad was for me. I needed the real world, unmediated by books, just as I had seen at 4 am… real, concrete, actionable. And action, not study, is what I needed.

 Even then, 1999, the world was in grave danger. The greenhouse effect had supplanted nuclear winter as the thing that was going to get us all in the end in the late 80s. By 1999 we were already calling that phenomenon ‘climate change’. 

I had moved to Seattle from New Jersey in 1993. It was the aftermath of the forest wars. As a reader, of course I had caught up with the science and political skirmishes surrounding ancient forests and old-growth logging. Timothy Egan’s book The Good Rain was an excellent introduction to the Pacific Northwest and offered a concise history of the region including the battles to save the forests, and the most famous indicator species of forest health, the Spotted Owl. My reading had walked me right up to that moment at 4 am, and there I stood at the window, dissolved by the real and reassembled in an instant … In an instant the mountains were no longer mountains and the stars no longer stars and then they were, mountains mountains and stars stars again.

 While I still had and still have so much to learn, it was then that I graduated into my real work. I needed to help with the ordinary grueling work of rescue. Rescuing what our world was treating as so much “overburden” – the forest and wild community that sits inconveniently above all that valuable mineral wealth, whether is is coal, or gold, or a good location for a billionaire’s golf course.

 Like most of us currently topside, I was born into a world that had a doomsday clock ticking. It has been a feature of daily recognition that bad times were coming, if we didn’t change our ways and for over twenty we’ve largely known that it was too late. It was probably the nineties when it last seemed possible that we could have a future watching our great great grandchildren grow on a green Earth from our little corner of the afterlife.

 From the vivid protests against the World Trade Organization, November of ’99 to the launch of the destruction of Iraq in March of 2003 the prevailing idea, in America at least, was that the future was going to be a lot worse than it had to be. Avarice had outflanked prudence and care. The world was less profitable saved than burned. Money had spoken.

 In the twenty some years since, we’ve lived through hope and dread in a cycle almost as dependable as the tides. But even our hopes, our accomplishments, such as marriage equality, the occasional killer cop who is charged with homicide, and so on, even these in each election since 2008 have been grounded in the inescapable realities of climate disruption and environmental catastrophe that we’d have to deal with – no matter how much reform and transformation we bring to the still pressing injustices of our daily world, the collapse of our world was coming and we could either do it in cooperation, or we could destroy ourselves along with the world. 

When Joe Biden won in 2020, it was a relief but not a surprise. By 2020, the only people who still supported that wreck of a human soul, Trump, were the fools and the wicked. Most people are neither. Biden’s administration was a surprise to me. At the start of the primary season, I had said that I’d take any democrat over Biden – Kamala Harris then Elizabeth Warren then anybody but Biden but certainly Biden over Trump.- those were my preferences. In my online world and in my daily life, I met many of my kind. Trump’s handling of COVID and the rise of the Proud Boys and neo-Nazis under Trump, as well as every other single thing about the man, whether politician, celebrity, or real estate conman. I’ve been despising Donald Trump since his first casino was built in Atlantic City in the Anti-Christ fashion, a skyscraper with his name at the top in in thirty foot tall red-letters, as if he were Damien Thorne. As my great-grandmother, my grandmother and mother said to me many times, if you walk like a duck and talk like a duck and … well you just might be the devil on earth. When Biden won in 2020, the simple relief of Trump not being president was astonishingly restful. COVID was still a problem, but because of our work, Humboldt Wildlife Care Center staff were able to receive the vaccine just a week after his inauguration, We managed in other words, we did the things, wore the masks, tried to stay current on latest developments as scientists, representatives, healthcare providers, teachers, administrators, neighbors all of us all over the world wrangled with the pandemic. We made it through. Here we are. 

 I used to say during the worst of the pandemic in America, with lockdown protests and sane people turning into lunatics believing things like the pandemic was a planned attack, that the vaccine was a trap, that masks don’t work, – i said that the pandemic was breaking America, and it did. But I didn’t think it was breaking the whole world. I thought the world was learning that cooperation and shared experience saved lives and made the world a better place. For every relationship strained by a zoom meeting maybe there’s one born that would’ve been otherwise impossible. I came out of the pandemic believing that maybe there was still a chance to navigate the coming turmoil with more grace and less despair, while avoiding the unnecessary turmoil of a descent into fascism. 

 That we strengthen bonds during turbulent times is as natural as battening a hatch. We secure hitches. We tighten straps. We call our neighbors or our parent across the sea – we grasp onto what endures – door jambs, granite, deeply rooted things, our friendships, our dreams.

 When tiktokers outsmarted the cacodemon and made him believe he had a big crowd for a campaign rally by reserving all the tickets in a plot hatched in broad daylight, I was uplifted. His dismay walking back from the nearly empty stadium was a joyful occasion and in that light he looked already defeated, and he was. Had he not been, I would’ve been thrown into dismay – but a crushing one, because it would have meant that I was wrong and that my hope that he was but a dumbass immoral debauched and depraved villain yes, but one who could be defeated was wrong too. But he lost. He lost and in losing, lost even more, debasing himself even further with his ridiculous inability to concede losses. 

 I did not believe that he was going to win in 2016 and I was wrong. Simply put I didn’t think that poorly of my neighbors. 

I did not believe there was a snowball’s chance in hell that he would win in 2024. I had some fairly negative opinions about the MAGA crowd, but I thought their numbers too small – and nobody with a brain or a conscience would vote for him – stopping him seemed like it was everybody’s agreed upon assignment. The tent was huge – it included Bernie Sanders and Dick Cheney and Beyoncé. We all know that.

 Now here we are, the same unavoidable environmental crisis, which is an existential threat to humanity and whole lot of other lives too, and instead of working together, instead of tightening bonds, instead of investing in our world and opening our hearts to what is real, loving it and saving what we can and looking to find a new way forward that doesn’t kill the road we walk, instead we’re going to be fighting idiotic morons who know neither the value or price of anything who on whim can put a luxury car in orbit around Mars – impractical, vainglorious, puerile and avaricious – arrogant sadists who claim to want a better world and the only way to attain it is by destroying this one, the only world we have. Now here we are, seven weeks since Donald Trump returned to the White House and the wreckage that surrounds is nearly impossible to catalogue. Tens of thousands of federal employees, from weather scientists, to wildlife biologists, to disease experts and more, just erased, and all of their work too. Purges of departments to rid them of references to accomplishments of people of color and women. We’ve endured cruel and vicious attacks on trans people, gays, lesbians, and more. – Abandonment and betrayal of allies in apparent service to our adversaries. The elimination of critical aid around the world that will result in untold death and suffering. Government programs have been scrubbed of references to to climate science while the head of the EPA recommends reversing the finding from 2009 that fossil fuels are an endangerment. Yesterday it was reported that criminal investigations into organizations because they applied for and were awarded federal grants from the EPA to do climate work were underway. Habitat for Humani

In the first podcast of 2025, we look at the essay by Loren Eiseley, “The Star Thrower”, first published in his book The Unexpected Universe (1969). This essay has been paraphrased in numerous ways over the years, telling a simple story of a man encountering another person throwing Sea Stars into the ocean after they’d been heaved onto a beach by a storm. The man usually says something to the effect of “but there are so many, your efforts won’t matter.” No matter how the essay is paraphrased, it ends with the thrower telling the man that “it mattered to this one!” While many find the little story thus paraphrased useful, the essay is so much more than that – in fact the phrase “it mattered to this one” isn’t even in the orirginal text. Rather the essay is about the natural and proper work of beating back against the odds and loving the world. Eiseley writes of coming to realize that compassion, which in his time was considered anti-science, is as much a part of human nature as the fierce competitive aspect of living in the actual world which has been the presumption since Darwin. It’s a magnificent and deeply reasoned piece of writing. You can listen to it here, in the latest edition of New Wild Review. As always, thank you for your support! Your donations are what make our work possible. Thank you! DONATE

On the day I met Laura Corsiglia, I knew. Who else would I ever be able to talk with about wildlife and reality and necessity the way we could. Here’s a bit of what I mean Want to help us meet the incredible challenges of our mission. Donate today!

Our latest episode of New Wild Review with guest Lucinda Adamson, Humboldt Wildlife Care Center’s Assistant Rehabilitation Manager.

Reading a draft of an essay on ethics for our profession.

This podcast is the recording of a conversation over the internet (please forgive the occasional audio glitch!) with Veronica Bowers the founder and executive director of Native Songbird Care and Conservation in Sebastapol, California. Veronica is a leader in rehabilitative songbird care, a powerful advocate for songbird conservation and protection and a standard setter for excellence in wildlife rehabilitation. It was a great pleasure to sit down and talk with her about achieving excellence, maintaining high standards over time, mentoring those who are new to the field of wildlife rehabilitation and keeping oneself healthy and sane despite the stress, sorrow and trauma that are an inescapable part of this work. Pour yourself a mug of chamomile and settle in for a long chat with Veronica Bowers!

It’s been a long time since we’ve had an new episode of our podcast, for a variety of reasons! Tune in to hear what they are, and join us as we move from this very challenging year to embark on our most challenging year ever!!! The year of our big move! And as always, thank you for your love of the Wild and your support of our wildlife saving work!!!

Board of directors member and HWCC rehabilitator, Nora Chatmon (r) talks about human/wildlife conflict as Assistant Rehabilitation Manager, Lucinda Adamson (l) listens. For the latest episode of New Wild Review, four-fifths of Humboldt Wildlife Care Center’s clinic staff got together in February to talk about our Humane Solutions program – a backstage unfiltered eavesdrop as we talk about our work, our frustrations and some of the misconceptions about our wild neighbors that work against peaceful co-existence… Rehabilitator and Humane Solutions consultant Brooke Brown. Nora Chatmon, Lucinda Adamson, Monte Merrick and Brooke Brown discuss our Humane Solutions program, in a backstage way… The discussion took off, lasting much longer than expected. In this epsiode, part one of our staff roundtable discussion, featuring Lucinda Adamson, Nora Chatmon, and Brooke Brown, we cover many of the frustrations – next episode the meaning, the awe and the victories – coming soon, the second half, in S2E3… We hope you enjoy this discussion and remember! – our successful work keeping wild families together comes from your support! Thank you!

2021 and hopefully new hope are here! For the first podcast of the new season, here’s New Wild Review, vol 2 ep 1; – in which first we look at post release studies, and the limitations our obligations as caregivers place on invasive practices. Then we turn our attention to protecting wild families by protecting wild mothers – in this case skunks looking for mates and dens during the winter. Hope you find it informative and useful! Thank you for helping us get through a difficult year!!! DONATE today to help us rescue injured and orphaned wild neighbors.

Times are hard. Here are some poems about the Wild. Stay safe. Stay healthy. Dismantle whiteness.

In our latest episode of New Wild Review we look at the sudden changes the global pandemic caused by the outbreak of coronavirus disease – 19. As states, counties and municipalities move to slow the spread of the virus, through shelter in place orders and social distancing, essential services, including wildlife rescue and rehabilitation, continue. How does the pandemic effect our work? How will the pandemic effect wildlife? We don’t know. But we can ponder it while we work. If you’re at a facility that is open and admitting patients, check out this World Health Organization document on preparing your workplace to keep yourself and co-workers safe.

In our fourth episode, I read an essay, Letting Nature Take Its Course, which was first published on this website in 2016 and again in the beautiful magazine, Wild Hope in 2019. Also included in this episode is a reading of the poem, Deer Skull. As always, thank you for supporting our work. I hope you enjoy this episode. A significant amount of the music in this episode was cmpossed and performed by Erica McCool. more of her incredible music can be found here: https://pezhed1.bandcamp.com/

For our third episode, I sat down with BAX co-founder and co-director Dr. Shannon Riggs, to talk about her career providing medical care for injured and orphaned wild animals, the past, present and future of wildlife rehabilitation, and the never ending need for financial support. We also discover a shared opinion on the topic of Rage Against the Machine. Hope you enjoy the episode!