The woman didn’t want the owl to leave. It was good luck, she said.
“It had fallen down through her chimney and I had to tell her, ‘No, it needs to be outside,’” said Louise Shimmel, founder of the Cascades Raptor Center, who had been called in to rescue the bird.
This is a perfect example of the fascination that birds of prey – also called raptors – hold on humanity, Shimmel said.
“It’s this age-old thing,” she said. “In some cultures (owls) represent a death, not necessarily your death, but a death of a part of you. In other cultures, they’re good luck.”
The raptor center is both a bird hospital and a nature center. The people there work with barn owls, bald eagles, peregrine falcons, red-tailed hawks … the list goes on.
Shimmel founded the center in 1987 and has kept it going with the help of volunteers, donors and sheer determination.
“It’s strange because I’m a vegetarian and I didn’t think I wanted to work with things that eat other animals,” Shimmel said.
She originally worked for Willamette Wildlife Rehabilitation in Eugene. While working there, she found that there was no time for really educating people, something she felt was critically important.
With the narrowed focus of the raptor center, she says, there is more time to stress education. She says that many people are unaware of how varied Oregon’s habitat is – it supports a very diverse raptor population.
“People are never indifferent,” she said. “As Oregon’s [human] population grows and expands, we want to get them excited about preserving.”
“If you think about raptors, people have had a relationship with these birds for thousands of years,” said Kit Lacy, the center’s education coordinator and a former University student. “The art of falconing is so old we don’t even know when it began.”
Adjacent to the Ridgeline Trail, the center has three staff members and nearly 60 volunteers. These volunteers include a number of community members as well as University students, faculty and staff.
“We have people from all walks of life volunteering,” Lacy said. “We have more artists than biologists.”
The staff and volunteers care for more than 60 birds that are permanent residents and have a varying number of birds cycling through the center for care and rehabilitation.
One of Shimmel’s goals for the center was to have two representatives of every raptor species of Oregon.
“We’re almost there,” she said.
The center is on call for bird rescue all day, every day. Most of the raptors that arrive at the center injured and in need of medical care die as a result of their injuries or have to be euthanized. A small percentage make it through rehabilitation and are released, but some can no longer survive in the wild.
“These are top predators, and they have to be top athletes to survive,” Lacy said. The center’s permanent residents are birds who cannot survive in the wild either because of past injuries or prior captivity.
Of these birds, some are glove-trained and used to educate the community. Handlers take the birds out to events such as the Eugene Celebration and the Children’s Celebration.
Glove training begins in the enclosure and the handlers are patient.
“It takes something special for an animal to make that transition. These birds make choices about people,” Lacy said. “We don’t force them onto the glove.”
Shimmel said that while certain species are more sociable and adaptable to handling, the birds have individual temperaments. Some birds are for display only.
In an effort to reach out even more to the community, Shimmel has been looking into relocating the education side of the center.
“This property has its limitations,” she said. “I mean, it’s a great habitat and great for rehabilitation. It’s closed in by the trees, and still close to town, but it feels removed and that’s good. But it’s not handicap accessible…and the parking really sucks.”
The property she has in mind is within city limits. The total cost, however, comes out to millions of dollars – money the center just doesn’t have.
The center’s current situation is still good, though, Shimmel said. The Eugene community is highly supportive and the center welcomes a large number of school groups and tourists every year.
“The international and national tourists say, ‘I’ve been to nature and raptor centers in other parts of the country and this one is so much better,’” Shimmel said. “That’s encouraging to hear.”
The Cascades Raptor Center is open from noon to 5 p.m., Tuesday through Sunday. Admission fees are $5 for adults, $4 for teens and seniors, and $3 for children under 12 years old. More information can be found on their Web site: www.eraptors.org.