Courtesy of OrangeBeach.ws

ORANGE BEACH, Ala. – Janet Ripp has been involved in wildlife rescue and rehabilitation for many years, most in her home.

She and veteran rescuer Jody Young would take them into their homes, find care from sympathetic veterinarians and nurse them back to health.

“In our homes people walk up and give you an animal and they say ‘what a nice person, you’re doing such a wonderful thing,” she said. “What a great hobby you have.”

Ripp said having the new Coastal Wildlife Rescue Center up and running at Graham Creek Nature Preserve helps the facility and the wildlife effort get more public support.

“They come to the center and they say ‘how can I help? What can I bring you? How can I support you?’” she said.

Saturday the CWRC will have a booths set up to help raise funds for the center at the Foley Earth Day celebration at the preserve.

“On April 13 with the folks at the Graham Creek Nature Preserve have their own event going on,” Ripp said. “They’re going to have food and booths and music from Sassafras. We’re going to have lemonade for wildlife where you donate to wildlife and get a glass of lemonade.

“We’re going to be selling whatever T-shirts we have left over from our last benefit. And also some plants for sale grown by Jody Young and one called the ‘Pay it Forward’ plant. If they give a dime or a dollar we’re happy. Plus we want to get people out here so they know where we are.”

The CWRC got its own space at Graham Creek about four months following the Old River Folk and Blues Festival at Happy Harbor on the line in September. Jo Billups of the musical/environmental duo Sassafras organized the event and personally donated $5,000 to the center, Ripp said.

“She’s the greatest benefactor,” Ripp said. “She’s the one that gave us our first $5,000 startup money and then had the benefit for us. That raised us enough money to get this center built and a few other things. That was incredible. I’m sure it costs her a lot of out-of-pocket money to get that thing started, too.”

The benefit and the donation gave the group a toehold at the nature preserve.

“Our doors have been open, but we had to get a fence around the place, we had to get insurance, we had to get a permit,” Ripp said. “We’ve been open four months taking in animals. And so far we’ve taken in, as far as today, 34 animals in under a month. Some of these birds have been transferred to Mobile and some have been referred to home-care facilities.”

Recently Joe Gilchrist, one of the co-owners of the Flora-Bama, gave a donation to help the center.

“He just donated $500 to us to keep us going for the next couple of months,” she said. “We got a few people that have really been amazingly supportive of us. We know the support’s out there. People here in Alabama want to see the wildlife flourish. They don’t want our wildlife to not have a place to go.”

But the needs of the center are still many, Ripp says, and she hopes this weekend will help raise money for the rescue effort. There are talks of putting a booth at the Flora-Bama during the highly popular Mullet Toss weekend on April 25-28 and hopes of another Old River Folk and Blues Festival.

“We have minimal funds, we have a minimal staff,” Ripp said. “We have a variety of needs. There’s a lot of medical supplies that we need that we can’t afford to buy right now. We should be well-stocked with food because it’s spring bird season. We are right now going from animal to animal to give them stuff they need.

“But do we have bait fish? No. Do we have insects on hand right now? No. And these are things we have to get in the next couple of weeks because we are going to need them. We are starting off at a crawl.”

Because of the variety of birds living in Baldwin County and the amount of birds that migrate, a lot of the center’s focus is on feathered friends.

“We primarily do birds, however, we can assist in all animal crisis as far as over the phone counseling, how to handle nuisance wildlife, we can refer them to people that handle orphan wildlife in various stages whether they be no furred all the way up to caught in a trap,” Ripp said. “We have resources for all those sorts of things.”

During the migrating season, which is happening now as many birds are returning north for the summer, Ripp expects traffic to increase greatly.

“We are in the middle of the most traveled part of the North American migratory bird path,” she said. “Birds are tagged coming through here, we have a birding trail through here. We have a lot of birds here.

“When progress comes there are injuries, habitat encroachment and things like to cause us to have injured animals. Not having a wildlife center here was almost crazy.”

Ripp and Young used to rely on sympathetic veterinarians to help with the injured animals, but having the center on the preserve allows the staff to take on more responsibility for animals they take in.

“We triage them here,” she said. “We assess them, we stabilize them. And that’s kind of important because we haven’t had anything like that here other than veterinarian offices. And offices like that, we work closely with David Dykes and several other veterinarians in the area, they do great job.”

But the wild animals weren’t a good mix with the domesticated ones at the offices.

“One of the problems is the dogs are barking and they have other paying customers they have to deal with,” Ripp said. “These animals kind of get dealt with last unless some of them are in crucial condition and then they get dealt with first.”

The center can offer a different environment for the rescued animals.

“We don’t have to worry about the sounds or the noises bothering them or stressing them out while they are here,” Ripp said. “We are geared specifically for wildlife that’s injured and recovery.”