Dane County Humane Society is a non-profit organization with a mission to help both animals and people to learn how to assist animals in need. Seven thousand animals of many species, shapes and sizes enter the doors of Dane Country Humane Society every year. They provide wildlife rehabilitation, stray animal holding, adoption service and spay and neutering services to animals from the southern Wisconsin area.
While most of what happens at the Dane County Humane Society is commonly known, there are also some unique subunits of the Dane County Humane society that are less familiar. A key example of one of these groups is the Four Lakes Wildlife Center (FLWC). FLWC is a wildlife rehabilitation program that treats hurt, sick or abandoned animals brought in from southern Wisconsin.
FLWC takes in over 3,000 animals a year, and half of them are successfully released. This is about the standard for a rehabilitation center, depending on the number of severely critical animals admitted. The animals being cared for at FLWC on any given day can range from the more exotic, like the two bobcats that were recently taken in, to more common animals such as songbirds or cottontail rabbits.
A University of Wisconsin-Madison master’s degree student of the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies Jackie Edmunds is the wildlife rehabilitation coordinator at FLWC.
“I love getting to observe the wildlife up close and work with so many different species. It feels great to see them released and know you did something good,” Edmunds said.
The facilities of the FLWC program are located right next to the main Dane County Humane Society in order to keep wildlife and domestic animals separate. Besides the main FLWC barn, there are quite a few different buildings and enclosures specifically designed to fit the needs of the animals and help them in their various stages of recovery.
One of most prominent buildings on the premises houses birds of prey such as eagles, hawks, falcons and owls. These birds are more generally referred to as raptors. Along with all Edmunds’ other animal rehabilitation work, she has taken a specific interest in these birds.
Raptors are complex and interesting animals which play very important roles in ecological systems. Gathering information about the lives and behavior patterns of these raptors could provide insight in environmental studies of ecosystems like that of southern Wisconsin.
Video feeds from the raptor’s structure allow the rehabilitators to observe the healing process, eating habits, flight patterns and other information of the raptor’s lives while at the center. However, it can be difficult to know what happens to these birds once they are released back into the wild.
It’s a fairly normal practice for an animal rehabilitation center to assume that a successfully rehabilitated and released animal will live out a perfectly happy life. While not impossible, little has been done to research if these claims are valid or not.
“What actually happens to the raptors after release is an interesting question and one that I hope to spend the rest of my life working on,” said Edmunds.
Edmunds’ studies focus on new methods for tracking these raptors after they leave the FLWC.
A method called bird banding is currently the most common way to track birds after release. Bird banding is when a metal band with an identification number is placed around the bird’s leg.
The hope of bird banding is that if a bird fitted with one of these bands was sighted or found dead the sighting could be reported to centers like FLWC. The data collected from these sightings is the most common method used to measure of how the bird is fairing post rehabilitation.
“The issue with using these bands is that only about one percent of returns are achieved and there could be a lot of error in the returns,” Edmunds said.
In addition to their very small return rate, when a banded bird is reported there is little to tell about how long it has been dead and how it died.
An alternative and more effective way to track how the raptors are doing is to fasten a GPS harness to the raptors before release, which tracks their exact coordinates while they are still alive. The units send a GPS coordinate data point as often as programmed so researchers have a consistent collection of information.
Edmunds’ plan for her raptor study is to use these GPS units on Red Tailed Hawks to fill in the gaps of what people know about the life of raptors post rehabilitation.
The data she collects from using GPS banding can help Edmunds determine if veterinary procedures impact how well the raptors survive. It can also be used to determine behavior patterns dealing with migration and breeding, and to determine rates of survival.
Currently, Edmunds is focusing on raising money to fund her research plans. Her goal is to raise 50,000 dollars in order to purchase enough GPS units to provide sufficient data.
The work being done at the Dane County Humane Society and Four Lakes Wildlife Center has saved and bettered the lives of many animals in the Madison and southern Wisconsin area. On top of their treatment of animals, this research being done by Edmunds can give the rehabilitators a deeper understanding of the animals they work every day to save.
Dane County Humane Society is a non-profit organization with a mission to help both animals and people to learn how to assist animals in need. Seven thousand animals of many species, shapes and sizes enter the doors of Dane Country Humane Society every year. They provide wildlife rehabilitation, stray animal holding, adoption service and spay and neutering services to animals from the southern Wisconsin area.
While most of what happens at the Dane County Humane Society is commonly known, there are also some unique subunits of the Dane County Humane society that are less familiar. A key example of one of these groups is the Four Lakes Wildlife Center (FLWC). FLWC is a wildlife rehabilitation program that treats hurt, sick or abandoned animals brought in from southern Wisconsin.
FLWC takes in over 3,000 animals a year, and half of them are successfully released. This is about the standard for a rehabilitation center, depending on the number of severely critical animals admitted. The animals being cared for at FLWC on any given day can range from the more exotic, like the two bobcats that were recently taken in, to more common animals such as songbirds or cottontail rabbits.
A University of Wisconsin-Madison master’s degree student of the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies Jackie Edmunds is the wildlife rehabilitation coordinator at FLWC.
“I love getting to observe the wildlife up close and work with so many different species. It feels great to see them released and know you did something good,” Edmunds said.
The facilities of the FLWC program are located right next to the main Dane County Humane Society in order to keep wildlife and domestic animals separate. Besides the main FLWC barn, there are quite a few different buildings and enclosures specifically designed to fit the needs of the animals and help them in their various stages of recovery.
One of most prominent buildings on the premises houses birds of prey such as eagles, hawks, falcons and owls. These birds are more generally referred to as raptors. Along with all Edmunds’ other animal rehabilitation work, she has taken a specific interest in these birds.
Raptors are complex and interesting animals which play very important roles in ecological systems. Gathering information about the lives and behavior patterns of these raptors could provide insight in environmental studies of ecosystems like that of southern Wisconsin.
Video feeds into the raptor’s structure can inform the rehabilitators of the healing process, eating habits, flight patterns and other information of the raptor’s lives while at the center. However, it can be difficult to know what happens to these birds once they are released back into the wild.
It’s a fairly normal practice for an animal rehabilitation center to assume that a successfully rehabilitated and released animal will live out a perfectly happy life. While not impossible, little has been done to research if these claims are valid or not.
“What actually happens to the raptors after release is an interesting question and one that I hope to spend the rest of my life working on,” said Edmunds.
Edmunds’ studies focus on new methods for tracking these raptors after they leave the FLWC.
A method called bird banding is currently the most common way to track birds after release. Bird banding is when a metal band with an identification number is placed around the bird’s leg.
The hope of bird banding is that if a bird fitted with one of these bands was sighted or found dead the sighting could be reported to centers like FLWC. The data collected from these sightings is the most common method used to measure of how the bird is fairing post rehabilitation.
“The issue with using these bands is that only about one percent of returns are achieved and there could be a lot of error in the returns,” Edmunds said.
In addition to their very small return rate, when a banded bird is reported there is little to tell about how long it has been dead and how it died.
An alternative and more effective way to track how the raptors are doing is to fasten a GPS harness to the raptors before release, which tracks their exact coordinates while they are still alive. The units send a GPS coordinate data point as often as programmed so researchers have a consistent collection of information.
Edmunds’ plan for her raptor study is to use these GPS units on Red Tailed Hawks to fill in the gaps of what people know about the life of raptors post rehabilitation.
The data she collects from using GPS banding can help Edmunds determine if veterinary procedures impact how well the raptors survive. It can also be used to determine behavior patterns dealing with migration and breeding, and to determine rates of survival.
Currently, Edmunds is focusing on raising money to fund her research plans. Her goal is to raise 50,000 dollars in order to purchase enough GPS units to provide sufficient data.
The work being done at the Dane County Humane Society and Four Lakes Wildlife Center has saved and bettered the lives of many animals in the Madison and southern Wisconsin area. On top of their treatment of animals, this research being done by Edmunds can give the rehabilitators a deeper understanding of the animals they work every day to save.
