Salton Sea crisis breaks rehabbers

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1997:

IRVINE––The 12-year-old
Pacific Wildlife Project avian rehabilitation
center in Irvine, California, is reportedly
near collapse after spending $80,000
to treat about 1,000 birds who were sickened
by botulism last summer at the
Salton Sea.
About 14,000 birds died near the
inland sea, and another 5,000, of at least
40 species, have died so far this year.
Director Linda Evans billed the U.S. Fish
and Wildlife Service for the funds, coincidental
with the construction by volunteers
of a $90,000 emergency treatment facility
near the Salton Sea National Wildlife
Refuge, but refuge manager Clark Bloom
said the refuge had no money to send her.

The emergency facility is
intended to stabilize birds with a hope of
recovery before they are evacuated to
PWP for longterm care––a strategy that
may have to be amended. Donations of
fish from Sea World San Diego kept the
PWP birds fed into August.