Rowena Wildlife Clinic is located in northern Oregon, in the Columbia River Gorge. We provide free veterinary care to injured wildlife and homeless pets. Most of our patients come from the surrounding five counties in Oregon and southern Washington. We are a non-salaried staff of about a dozen dedicated volunteers and three veterinarians.
Why Rehabilitate?
Nature's vicissitudes and the tenuous lives of wild animals would be an abstraction except for the dozens of daily interactions we have with both in our neighborhoods. The constant thrum of a non-human world passes into our lives without remark. But we are frequently moved by the intensity and depth with which animals are immersed in the present. The robin listening to underground worms, the songbirds fluttering hyperactively at a feeder - they are indigenous representatives of the land and air around us. We are enriched by the moments when we glimpse our homes through their eyes. Wildlife rehabilitation is the recognition that our animal neighbors deserve our care. Each benevolent interaction encourages us to tread lightly in our landscape, to change our habits, making it easier for all species to share the planet.
Spotted owl with a radius/ulna fracture, released 2003. Fewer spotted owls are being admitted to rehabilitation centers, perhaps a reflection of their decline in the wild.
When there is no sky left
big enough
to hold that bird,
let it die.
Then dig my grave close by.
Condor, by Susan Edwards Richmond
from The Dire Elegies