Oct. 8, 2007 — A fledgling St. John organization, Wildlife Rehabilitation, is spreading its wings to help abandoned and injured birds.
"If I can get other people to join me on the journey, we'll be successful," founder Phyllis Benton says. The organization's focus is rehabilitation and release of abandoned and injured birds.
Benton and another St. John resident, Kim Nogueira, just returned from a Florida Wildlife Rehabilitators Association symposium and a few days volunteering at Pelican Harbor Seabird Station in Miami, where they honed their wildlife-rehabilitation skills.
When she organized a two-day class in April with instructors from Pelican Harbor Seabird Station and Goose Creek Sanctuary, also in Florida, 25 people showed up, Benton says. So she knows the local interest is there. She plans another class in November for many of those 25. Benton also has a yard sale planned for Oct. 13 along Route 107 in Coral Bay to raise money for the organization.
St. John resident Jan Perkins will serve as Wildlife Rehabilitation's veterinarian.
While developing a facility to care for abandoned and injured birds is a goal, Benton says she doesn't expect it to happen soon. There is a lot of competition from various St. John organizations for donations from the public and for volunteers. And the high cost of St. John acreage makes buying a flat piece of land prohibitively expensive, she says.
She does, however, expect to develop a working relationship with the V.I. National Park and the Fish and Wildlife Division of the V.I. Department of Planning and Natural Resources, because many abandoned and injured birds are brought to those agencies.
"They're at the first line of the effort," Benton says.
While several park staff members attended the April training session, neither the park nor Fish and Wildlife has wildlife-rehabilitation facilities, she says.
Benton, who holds a federal migratory bird rehabilitation permit, got interested in the subject when a nesting scaly-naped pigeon died near her business, Crabby's Watersports.
The bird left behind a baby too small to care for itself. Wil Henderson, a longtime member of the Audubon Society of the Virgin Islands, told her she had to hand feed the bird for it to survive, Benton says.
Although she was always interested in wild animals, she had to search around to find out how to feed and care for the baby. The search led her to wildlife-rehabilitation organizations on the mainland, which further sparked her interest.
Others birds followed the abandoned baby, including pelicans, laughing gulls, royal terns, native pigeons and doves, and young hummingbirds. Some were too injured to live, but others were successfully rehabilitated and released to the wild, Benton says.
"We've had a good success rate," she says.
There are laws governing rehabilitation, including ones that prohibit keeping wildlife as pets, disturbing their nests and intentionally injuring or killing them. Most of the birds that call the Virgin Islands home or migrate through the territory are on the Federal Migratory Protected List, which is an international agreement to protect migratory birds. They are also part of the territory's natural heritage, Benton says.
"It amazes me we can have an island like this with no resources for wildlife rehabilitation," she says.
For more information, contact Wildlife Rehabilitation at 514-8435.
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