MISSISSIPPI’S WILDLIFE RESCUE ICON

WORKS TO REBUILD

By Jayne Buttross

Contact information: 601-573-3200; 329 East Mayes Street, Jackson, Mississippi 39206-5718
www.WRANPS.org

It started like every other modern hurricane season, June 1^st, with a hopeful eye toward its official end, November 30^th. This year, though, was marked by record weather: 16 tropical storms and 14 hurricanes. In the middle of the season, August 29, 2005, the people of Mississippi watched and listened as their world was, quite literally, scrambled and tossed, and changed forever.

History

WRANPS was founded in 1983 as a state and federally licensed rescue organization devoted to providing the most up-to-date care and treatment for rescued wildlife, and to providing wildlife and conservation education. WRANPS operates under a board of directors, with the help of an advisory board. It is a 501(c)(3), non-profit corporation.

In 1983, WRANPS took in about 400 animals. In 2005, the organization received nearly 2000 victims of what rehabilitators know are most often the result of conflicts with humans and development and, to a lesser extent, the result of accidents and disease. Rescues include the spectrum of native birds and animals. Hawks, owls, pelicans, songbirds, squirrels, opossums, skunks, bobcats, deer, and turtles have been frequent beneficiaries of WRANPS.

Thousands of Coast school children and adults have also been the beneficiaries of educational programs taught by WRANPS volunteers. At the time of the storm, WRANPS had already provided 17 educational presentations in 2005 and had 4 more scheduled.

In addition to a full-time clinic director, WRANPS had as many as eight interns each year, coming from colleges all over the country. Interns receive housing, a stipend, and priceless experience, while helping to fill WRANPS’ need for manpower. The intern program has been funded by a partnership between WRANPS and Chevron’s Pascagoula Refinery.

While WRANPS is a volunteer organization, its rehabilitators are not simply good people with kind hearts. Volunteers come from a wide variety of experiences and disciplines. Rehabilitators are federally licensed and many have decades of rehabilitation experience. Before Katrina, WRANPS had four licensed rehabilitators, ten home-care volunteers, and five transporters. Today, WRANPS still has the help of veterinarians and volunteers who are trying to handle the wildlife even more desperately in need.

The Community

For almost 25 years, WRANPS has earned local support from individuals, businesses, industry, other non-profits, and government agencies. Operating on a base budget of about $90,000 a year, WRANPS depends on the good-will of the community to keep its doors open. Support has come from the Mississippi Department of Marine Resources, the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality, Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi, the Naval Construction Battalion Center (“Seabees”) in Long Beach, Chevron’s Pascagoula Refinery, Mississippi Power Company, First Chemical, Dupont, Roy Anderson Construction Company, WLOX-Channel 13/ABC, local grocery stores, foundations, and many others. Local veterinarians donate their professional services to WRANPS and assist with difficult treatments and rescues.

WRANPS has been recognized nationally and statewide for its contributions to habitat preservation and protection of native wildlife. The organization has received coveted recognition from the Mississippi Wildlife Federation, twice as “Conservation Organization of the Year” and once as “Affiliate of the Year.” WRANPS was also one of a handful of organizations ever to receive the National Wildlife Federation’s “Chairman’s Award.”

Preparation

There was really no way to prepare for Katrina. No one dreamed there would be a 42-foot surge from the Gulf, just west of WRANPS’ facility. No one dreamed there would be an unprecedented and disastrous tidal surge sweeping into the bayous and back bays across the Mississippi Coast, causing another surge from the north, swamping WRANPS and thousands of other Mississippi Coast properties.

Taking routine precautions before Katrina, staff and volunteers placed as many of the teaching animals and rescued animals as possible with able volunteers. The remaining teaching animals, rescues, and other valuables were moved to what was believed to be higher, safe ground, but nothing could save WRANPS from what was to come.

During the storm, the animals WRANPS thought it had saved were overcome by an unexpected surge. Three of its beloved teaching animals, Cheyenne (Red-tailed Hawk), Moonshe (Great Horned Owl), and Pépe (skunk), mainstays for many years, were drowned. A big box turtle, another teaching animal, did manage to survive!

WRANPS board chair and one of its founders lost her home and everything in it. Every board member had damage, from moderate to total. On top of everything else, WRANPS’ clinic director was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma days after the storm and remains with family in New York.

Katrina has reminded us that there are still secrets in nature. As Mississippi Congressman Gene Taylor eloquently explained to the Congressional Committee on Hurricane Relief, “If a little voice from God had told me that my house was going to be washed away, I wouldn’t have spent the week before the storm boarding up; I would have spent it packing up and moving out.”

Preparing for a hurricane is not an academic exercise. It is costly, emotional, and frenetic. Time is almost always short, as storms meander in and out of changing paths. In a very short time, people all over any projected landfall area rush to stock up on supplies, while grocery and hardware store inventories all but vanish. People struggle to move what they can to high ground and, when they can, pack mementoes and important papers to take with them. The trips north are harrowing:  traffic crawls, cars run out of gas or overheat, hotels and shelters, sometimes as far away as 200 miles north, fill to capacity. The economy and service providers, like WRANPS, shut down.

Many people stay behind to protect or salvage their worldly possessions. Some stay because they have no money for gasoline or lodging. Some stay to try to protect pets or livestock. Some stay because they are old, ill, or disabled. No one stays to die or to mock the forces of nature.

The Plan

Hurricane preparation at WRANPS has always been left to the clinic director, consulting with board members and volunteers. If evacuation was warranted, a call went out to volunteers to see who could take animals with them. The grounds were secured and valuables put on high shelves. WRANPS did what made sense at the time. Today, there is a whole new reality that people on the Coast are trying to figure out.

Right now, the board and WRANPS volunteers are trying to recover and get back in business. Once there is a return of some normalcy, the board will have to look at ways to prepare for future hurricanes, based on a new, worst case. More will have to be done to identify volunteers before each hurricane season: volunteers who are on high ground and volunteers who can evacuate with animals. Periodic evaluation of the clinic population will also help with lining up volunteers.

Storing backed-up computer information off-site on high ground should be evaluated, at least when a storm is in the Gulf.

Carriers and food should be on hand or kept available by volunteers. Veterinarians and other wildlife rescue organizations in the northern part of the state, and outside the projected path of the storm, should be consulted for possible shelter. It is important, though, to remember that while Katrina demolished much of Mississippi’s three coastal counties, all 82 counties were impacted and were subject to a federal disaster declaration for evacuation, while 46 counties are under a major disaster declaration.

While WRANPS did not have insurance, once it rebuilds, insurance may be considered. Still, insurance would have been based on what we knew at the time, and would have no doubt been sorely insufficient, if even applicable. “All perils” insurance on the Coast is not the same as it is upland.

The Future

In spite of their own losses, the community has rallied for WRANPS. Several thousand dollars in individual donations have come in and a most welcome grant from a national non-profit organization is forthcoming. Two donors have promised $1000 gifts and each has issued a challenge for ten donors to give a thousand each. Other non-profit conservation organizations are offering help.

Volunteers from the 890^th Engineer Battalion National Guard, located on the Coast, spent two days working with WRANPS volunteers to salvage anything they could, using people, trackhoes, trailers, chains, and chainsaws. The Mississippi Wildlife Federation has offered a day of rebuilding.

At their lost facility, WRANPS had all the basics for a rehabilitation clinic and an education facility, even though quarters were tight and the facility needed repair.

With an eye on the future, WRANPS has been working for the past two years to relocate to state property with the blessing of the Mississippi Commission on Wildlife, Fisheries, and Parks. Prior to Katrina, WRANPS was working with two benefactors, a local architect and a local engineer, as WRANPS looked for donors to help relocate portable facilities, build new ones, help build a road and a bridge, drill a water well, donate and install a septic system, and do everything else necessary for a full-service rehabilitation clinic and education center. Now, WRANPS has to move quickly to establish itself at its new site because there is no longer an existing facility to transition from.

What does WRANPS need? Everything: a clinic, specialized cages and enclosures for each phase of rehabilitation, intern and clinic director housing, storage buildings, clinic equipment, clinic supplies, furnishings, office equipment, and office supplies.

Money and manpower are of course the most direct and portable commodities. Construction costs have increased as much as 40%, across the board, since Katrina, so a $100,000 project will now cost $140,000.

If WRANPS can get an office and clinic, and trailers for intern housing, freezers and refrigerators for food and drugs, clinic equipment, and storage buildings, just for starters, the organization can begin to function as a facility again. In the meantime, WRANPS refers many of the 30 to 40 calls it gets every day to other groups or, sadly, to find the most humane solution possible for sick and injured wildlife. With several veterinarians and care-givers still working, much is still being done in spite of desperate circumstances.

WRANPS may be down but it is not out. The WRANPS tradition of the highest quality rescue, rehabilitation, and education will continue because of the remarkable work it has done and the friends it has made since 1983.

With the help of the national and world community of wildlife supporters, WRANPS is committed to rising out of the rubble and again serving the Mississippi Gulf Coast region, a region rich with a diverse and cherished natural heritage.

For more information, and specific requests, please go to: http://www.iwrc-online.org/news/Katrina/place.cfm.

A Story in Pictures

Figure 1 – WRANPS Board Chair, Dianne Hunt, and a former staff member, treat a rescued skunk in 2003.

Figure 2 -  Volunteers construct enclosures in 2003, using funds provided by the Mississippi DEQ.

 

Figures 3 – Volunteers assembling cages in 2003, as in Figure 2

 

Figure 4 – Killdeer Flight Cage, pre-Katrina, among those destroyed in the storm

Figures 5, 5A – All enclosures, many built new in 2003, were destroyed. These pictures reflect the condition of the site after volunteers had done extensive clean-up, tree removal, and salvaging.

.Figure 6 – The clinic and office and all their contents were soaked and shuffled by a 28-foot tidal surge and lingering high wate

Figure 7 – What is left of Board Chair Dianne Hunt’s home on Bayou Portage, a short distance from WRANPS former site in Pass Christian

Figure 8 – A Cooper’s Hawk, rescued before the storm, perished in the floodwaters, despite the best efforts of volunteers to save it and other rescue animals.

There is hope -
WRANPS was there for them before, and with help, WRANPS will be there in the future

Figure 9 – WRANPS volunteers work with a track hoe provided by the 890^th Engineer Battalion National Guard to get access to anything salvageable - cages or materials.

Figure 11 – Injured Grebe

Figure 12 - Baby Raccoons

Figure 1 3 – Nestling owl, snuggled in blue gloves

Figure 14 – Northern Gannet being released on the Mississippi Sound

Figure 15 – Young Beaver in rehabilitation. Beaver are critical to a diverse coastal-plain ecology.

Figure 16 – Juvenile opossums saying “Thank you” to WRANPS for giving them a second chan