Wildlife Volunteers Faced With Crisis : Animals: Bulk of injured or homeless birds must now be cared for within the county.

Wildlife volunteers in Ventura County are scrambling to find their way out of a crisis caused when Santa Barbara’s network for injured or homeless birds announced it could no longer accept most Ventura County animals.

In an emergency meeting with the well-organized Santa Barbara Wildlife Care Network, Ventura County’s small cadre of volunteers recently learned that the bulk of the 800 or so Ventura County animals taken across the county line each year must now be cared for in Ventura County.

Santa Barbara County will still accept sea birds, but it will no longer take hummingbirds, finches, sparrows, starlings, crows, doves or other so-called perching birds. And even when Santa Barbara does take the sea birds, Ventura County must cover the cost of caring for those birds, estimated at $25 to $100 per bird.

That is in addition to the costs of caring for an estimated 800 injured or orphaned birds each year that never leave the county. The Santa Barbara group will, however, continue to accept small mammals, such as squirrels or bobcats.

The Santa Barbara County group’s move leaves Ventura County strapped for funds and searching for volunteers, said Judi Kelly, an Ojai “rehabber” who specializes in rehabilitating songbirds.

“We are desperately in need of rehabbers, and we need money. A lot of money,” she said.

Kelly, who has about 30 birds in her back-yard aviaries and 10 chicks in an incubator, takes the little ones that need constant care with her to work every day as a Ventura special education teacher.

“The kids do quite well with them,” she said. “They feed them and help clean the cages.” But, like the other six rehabbers in the county, Kelly has reached her limit. She can’t take in any more birds.

Connie Ferrer,) one of the 16 to 18 volunteers who rehabilitate or transport birds, has about 150 wild birds on her family’s 18-acre ranch at the Ventura County/Santa Barbara County line. Of those, 75 are crows.

“I take the crows because a lot of people don’t have room for them,” Ferrer said. “A whole bunch of hummingbirds can be fed in an incubator, but the big birds take more room and they have to be fed individually.”

Her 18 back-yard aviaries and five to 25 cages also include lodgings for another 150 domestic animals, parakeets or ducks that have strayed from their homes. She takes in about 1,100 birds a year, with about 800 of them coming from Ventura County.

Some of those she keeps until they are ready for release, and others, like sea birds, she sends along to volunteers in Santa Barbara County who have expertise in that area.

“Some of the rehabbers do it because they are concerned about preserving a species, and that’s good,” Ferrer said. “But to me, each little creature that comes to me that has eyes and a little face is a little thing that needs to be saved.”

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The Santa Barbara Wildlife Care Network took its action reluctantly, said organization president Diane Cannon. Santa Barbara lost a few of its volunteers this year and the burden of accepting Ventura County birds simply became too much.

In addition, Santa Barbara’s commitment to help Ventura County was only temporary when the organization was formed in 1988, she said.

“It’s not that we care less about the animals because of a county boundary,” she said. “But if your resources are stretched to the point where you’re going to break, you’ve got to make some pragmatic choices or your own organization will fall apart.”

Ferrer and many of the other volunteers in Ventura County know they will have to get through this season and possibly the next one with much less help from Santa Barbara County than they have come to depend on.

But they have hoped that Jerry Thompson, a master falconer in Simi Valley who runs a program for raptor rehabilitation, will be successful in his attempt to open a wildlife center at the Point Mugu Navy base.

Thompson is in negotiations with the base to create a wildlife center on two acres, using an existing building and trailer for an office. He is in the process of raising the estimated $100,000 he thinks it will take to open the center.

He expects to open the center within the next six months, at first caring mostly for raptors.

“But we’re working on the perching birds and shore birds as well,” he said. “We eventually hope to be able to accept all kinds of wildlife there.”

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That would take a big load off the volunteers in Ventura County. With the exception of Ferrer and Kelly who live on ranches, the other volunteers live in cities.

Kathy Lancaster, a Ventura High School soccer coach who also volunteers as a girls’ softball coach, started out being a transporter for the group. Every day, she picks up birds from Ventura County Animal Control shelter at the Camarillo airport, from rehabbers, or from individuals who have found stranded birds.

But lately, she has also been pressed into service rehabilitating birds, and now has 10 birds in aviaries in the yard of her west Ventura home. She has begun making baby bird formula, which includes egg yolks, monkey chow, vitamins and other ingredients.

“I do it because I love the work,” she said, crediting her family for support and help. “My family doesn’t get cookies any more. All they see is bird food.”

The group is looking for volunteers to take six or 10 birds at a time. With enough help, she said, they can keep their volunteers limited to those numbers instead of overwhelming them with more birds than they can handle, as has been the case in the past.

Irene Quebbemann) joined the group last year saying she could help out with two birds. “I had 22 in two weeks,” she said. Last week, she had 20 chicks.

“I had to hold their little heads up and shove the food down their throats,” she said.

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Quebbemann, who is curtailing her activities because of a severe illness in her family, said one of the best parts of the work is seeing the birds survive until they are well enough to be released.

“There is nothing more rewarding than taking this little bitty baby that can’t hold its head up and then moving it to an aviary where it can fly, and then one day, letting it go,” she said. “They come back and beg at you for a few days afterward and you kind of have to wean them from you.”

Capt. Roger Reese, who oversees wildlife protection in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties for the California Department of Fish and Game, said the volunteers have done an excellent job filling the need in the area.

He has been working with Ferrer and Thompson to help the Ventura County group work together until the wildlife center opens at Point Mugu.

“We’re hoping we can put something together here,” he said. “We’ll try to get more volunteers and more funds and more support. The main thing is that we keep it going.”

FYI

For more information on where to take injured or orphaned animals, or to to volunteer to work with birds or donate funds, call Irene Quebbemann at 644-8755 days, or Kathy Lancaster at 652-1923 evenings.