Creature Comfort

Good Samaritans are never sure where to take injured wildlife in Orange County--the oil-soaked duck, the shorebird with a broken wing, the pelican with a fishhook in its beak.

Maybe a charitable veterinarian will help, maybe a volunteer rescue group.

The Huntington Beach Wetlands Conservancy got tired of that uncertainty. So five years ago, the group decided to step in and build a hospital just for wildlife.

By the end of December, the conservancy will open the nonprofit Wetlands and Wildlife Care Center of Orange County, the only hospital of its kind in Southern California. It also will be the first new hospital to open in a developing state network of animal-care centers designated to treat wildlife after an oil spill.

“The need has always been there,” said Gary Gorman, the conservancy’s executive director. “In the past, it’s been an unconventional, uncertain approach to care, [mostly] provided by individuals in their homes and backyards.”

The center, which is being funded by donations and grants, is expected to treat up to 10,000 animals a year, Gorman said. Only wildlife will be treated, at no charge to members of the public or animal control officers who bring in the animals. The center will provide general emergency care and specialize in seabird treatment.

About 25 volunteers are finishing construction on the $1.5-million center on Pacific Coast Highway at Newland Street, in the shadow of a Southern California Edison Co. power plant. Edison allowed the conservancy to sublease the 1.75 acres, across from Huntington State Beach, at a “reasonable rate,” said Gorman, who declined to be specific.

Conservancy members started planning the center in 1991, a year after the biggest oil spill in Southern California in more than 20 years.

The American Trader tanker ran over its anchor off Huntington Beach, spilling almost 400,000 gallons of Alaskan crude oil and killing at least 1,000 birds. Hundreds of other marine animals were injured.

Volunteers rushed to set up temporary care stations, and experts from Northern California wildlife centers arrived to offer help.

“After that, we thought, ‘Man, there’s got to be something going on here,’ ” Gorman said.

Conservancy officials started to work with the utility company on getting land for the center and won a $200,000 construction grant from the state Department of Fish and Game’s Office of Oil Spill Prevention and Response.

The oil-spill office was established in 1991 to set up a network of rescue and rehabilitation centers for seabirds, sea otters and other marine mammals. The Oiled Wildlife Care Network’s budget comes from the interest on a $50-million fund financed by oil companies under state mandate.

The network includes 22 centers throughout the state; the conservancy’s center is one of six that got a major grant for new construction. The Huntington Beach center is scheduled to open by Dec. 31, and the others will follow in 1997.

Before the network was set up, state Fish and Game officials set up temporary treatment stations at the site of spills, said Jonna Mazet, the network’s program director. Now “million-dollar facilities won’t be built and ripped down after the fact,” she said.

So far this year, state Fish and Game officials have responded to 115 coastal oil spills.

On a recent morning in Huntington Beach, volunteers worked on finishing touches at the conservancy’s center. In the next couple of months, they will put a security fence around the property and install a special freezer that can hold 1,000 pounds of fish for seabird patients.

The center’s three buildings will include an educational center, a wildlife cleaning station and a comprehensive veterinary hospital with surgical, X-ray and intensive-care rooms.

It will be operated by volunteer veterinarians, volunteer assistants and a paid staff of wildlife technicians.

One volunteer, Lynda Upton, said that she can’t wait to get started.

“I think people are going to be surprised by the type of animals we’re going to get here,” she said, painting slats for the center’s fence a sea blue. “There are all sorts of animals in Orange County that we never see.”

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For The Birds

A new nonprofit hospital dedicated to wildlife care will open later this year. It will provide general emergency care and specialize in seabird treatment. A look at the Wetlands and Wildlife Care Center.

Mission: Care / rehabilitation for sick/ injured/ orphaned wildlife and dispensing of information about wildlife and wetlands.

Site size: 1.75 acres

Treatment capabilities: 400 birds

Facilities: Information center, hospital, cleaning building, rehabilitation area.

Information / how to volunteer: (714) 963-2123.

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How to donate: Send check to HBWC Wildlife Fund, P.O. Box 5903, Huntington Beach, CA 92615

Source: Wetlands and Wildlife Care Center of Orange County