Rehabilitation
The Rehabilitation Program
A crucial aspect of Three Rivers Avian Center’s mission is providing veterinary care to sick and injured wild birds. TRAC is a member of the National Wildlife Rehabilitators Association, the International Wildlife Rehabilitation Council, the National Association for Interpretation, the WV Nonprofit Association, and the Visit Southern West Virginia Convention & Visitor’s Bureau. From 1990 through 2016, our rehabilitation program allowed us to treat 4,214 patients, representing over 100 native wild bird species.
Veterinary & Rehabilitative Care
Emergency care, surgery, hospitalization, and a full range of physical therapy treatments for non-game & endangered wild birds are provided by a coordinated network of volunteer statewide intake veterinarians combined with a statewide support crew of volunteers and on-site staff. From hummingbirds to eagles, wading birds to soaring birds, as an avian wildlife rehabilitator, Three Rivers Avian Center cares for each species’ individual requirements, including diet, perching, water access, caging substrates, and other important needs. Recovered patients are released back into their native environments to help ensure their long-term survival unless there is some overwhelming reason to release the individual to a safer habitat elsewhere.
Environmental Education
Three Rivers Avian Center’s award-winning public outreach programs are carefully designed to help individuals understand the native birds and ecosystems around them and to encourage individuals in ecosystem stewardship. Schools, universities, civic groups, child care groups, state parks, and forests are just a few organizations that regularly request our programs, allowing us to reach an annual average of 15,000–23,000 individuals from the beginning of our outreach efforts in 1993.
Research & Conservation
Understanding the detailed aspects of a species is a vital part of any wildlife-centered program. TRAC helps provide data for research projects focused on native avian populations and avian habitats, including location found, blood samples, feather and tissue samples, cause of injury or illness, observed physical movements, and behavioral details, among other data. Information is also shared online with other wildlife rehabilitation groups and educators around the United States and the world. Lead toxicity in raptors is an extreme issue, as is toxicity from flame retardants in all species.
Species Restoration
Three Rivers Avian Center, the WV Department of Natural Resources, the National Park Service–New River Gorge, and the College of William & Mary’s Center for Conservation Biology joined together in a six-year effort to re-establish peregrine falcon populations in their native southern Appalachian haunts from 2006 to 2011. Working with the United States Fish and Wildlife Service and State Wildlife Biologists from Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey, young peregrines were taken from dangerous nesting sites in each state and brought to the New River Gorge near Fayetteville and Beckley, West Virginia, to be raised and released. During the span of the Project, our joint effort introduced 120 young Peregrines into the Gorge.