Please accept my apologies for the extreme delay of this blog...Note that this was written around January 2013 and the next “update” shall follow sooner. Actually one is already “in the pipeline”. But first things first.
How to even
begin summarizing so many events in one year? I will have to thank many individuals or organizations again. Please do not get offended if you are not
mentioned!
As
said several times throughout the year: The single most amazing part of the
experience (of “following a dream and establishing a wildlife teaching clinic”) has been the
incredible amount of help and outpouring of support received from countless
individuals.
So Thank
You for your interest and support! We could not do it without your help!
So here my
personal account of this amazing year, when the world did not end... :)
2012 started with a bang and a January trip to the most impressive North American Veterinary
Conference, NAVC in Orlando,
FL to receive the Inspiration in
Action Award and get a very brief glance at the largest veterinary conference
world wide. I dreamed about amazing educational opportunities to hopefully
attend in the future. Thanks to Heska, I was able to attend one day and walk
around in the exhibitions and “window shop” for the equipments to purchase for
the start-up of the Belize Wildlife & Referral Clinic - BWRC.
After
returning to Belize, reality sunk in a bit more, and the responsibility of
spending 25,000 US dollars in the most efficient and sustainable way to build a
wildlife clinic for Belize made the rosy clouds of the „first award won“ fade a
bit, and the pressures of writing further grants increased. But to start at the
beginning: The continued support of individuals, organization and equipment
manufacturers was amazing. Of course prior to receiving the grant I had spent
between 2-4 months on researching possible and needed equipments. So then, it took
little more then 2 weeks after receiving the actual moneys, to have completed
all orders (and spent the $25,000 Award)!
Equipment
landed in Belize in March, and elections
and GST created a little hold up... that would also end us with an additional
cost of $US 3,000 for GST. In March I was also invited to visit New Mexico State University
for one week. Thanks to my friend Kristi I was accepted for a small award that
paid to bring me to NMSU for a few guest lectures. After an amazing week of
meeting department heads and deans and students and thanks in big parts to Gary
Low of Aggies go Global, I had met 3 driven young women who would turn out to
become BWRC’s first undergraduate interns for 3 months in the summer, and be
the most amazing help one could ask for.
Our first rotation
interns came from Tufts for their last clinical rotation in early April, and in brief, we had a blast.
The clinic to become was nothing but an empty building, with raw concrete floor.
So we spent almost all of our time in the field. Later Drs. Sarah Wills and
Stacy Green both jumped on the opportunity to return for the summer, immediately
after their graduation, to help with students and animals. And then Dr. Sarah
was able to fill the first professional intern position at BWRC until early December!
In April the Belize Wildlife Conservation Network - BWCN teamed up with the
Mesoamerican Society for Biology and Conservation - MSBC for a symposium and
held a first annual BWCN membership meeting. The first elected Board of
Directors was established with one of the main goals being the development of
the Wildlife Advice Hotline, which would eventually be completed by the
Emergency Response Team under the guidance of the medical professionals of
BWRC. Little did we think, that we would receive emergency calls at the clinic
before our opening, and on our opening day, and a total of 60 wildlife patients
before the end of the year.
With the
clinic building prepared, donations received from countless individuals and
organizations, Heska equipment finally received, unpacked and assembled and the
arrival of our NMSU group in early May
2012, the clinic started seeing its first patients, while developing our
records and protocols. Chelsea Canon, Iris de la O and Katey Wahlen jumped
straight in, when we were called to a road side emergency of a horse hit by a Hummer.
(Needless to say it was Sunday and we were on the way to the river for a
swim...). Followed by a snake bitten dog and numerous wildlife patients, from
monkeys to crocs, their adventures alone could fill a small book (and a short video
was made). Shortly after the NMSU interns arrival, BWCN held the first ever
fundraiser for the clinic, a „Wild Night Out“ in Belmopan, and raised Bz 10,000 for BWRC! This
helped repay the debt for our required GST payment and carried us into 2013
with some $ in the bank! Thanks to Nikki Buxton for doing it all! And of course
those, who came and joined us, or donated silent auction items! After close to
2 decades of self-financed work, not wanting to ask for help from others, it
was truly mindboggling to me how much help BWRC received! Special thanks also
to Gillian Kirkwood and Belize City Humane Society who passed on many no longer
needed pieces of stainless steel and other furniture from their closing shelter,
to turn an empty building into a beginning clinic.
The summer
came and so did the ISIS students, in four
groups from June to August. Thanks
to my clinic crew, I survived an intensive summer. Thanks to ISIS for providing
significant income for BWRC through renting the class room (the main clinic
room) as well as making a donation per student to the clinic, which enabled us to
acquire further office equipment, furniture and our by then much needed washing
machine...
Fall finally
brought our official inauguration ceremony with Minister Alamilla cutting the
ribbon on the 19th of October, followed
by one of our most popular patients of the year arriving shortly after the
ceremony...
This brings
me to some of the most important highlights: Our Patients!
Before our
inauguration BWRC had already seen about 60 domestic and 60 wildlife patients
and all were special. But some were extra special, like Box, now known as Lucky
Boy the black jaguar at the Zoo, or the Jabiru who decided to stick around at
the municipal airport and use the runway as his walkway! Felix the wild kitten was
probably my personal favorite (I hope to acquire grants and funding to
establish small feline rehab one day) even though he caused me to loose some
sleep before he took to his diet properly.
Loosing
sleep is a good summary for living the dream in fact :).
BWRC saw a
large number of primates this year, mainly thanks to the efforts of the Belize
Forest Departments Rasheda Garcia, Jazmin Ramos
and Daniel, and of course Wildtracks rehabilitation program. We have seen some
amazing recoveries in wild and domestic animals. But, as typical in wildlife
rescue and in medicine, we have seen a fair share of tragedy. Like the unnamed sub
adult spider monkey, who died in respiratory failure partially due to
intoxication caused by a lay person’s flea treatment of this already sick and
debilitated animal. Or the black hawk with irreparable fracture and extreme
stress levels, and the Barn owl with open fracture that seemed to recover well,
but its bone did not. We were very sad to loose a beautiful Stygian owl to head
and spinal injury. And the snake bitten dog dying after 18 h intensive care, or
the cat that had impaled itself on a metal rod through the chest could be
listed within our most tragic heart breaking cases for all involved.
Our most
interesting cases might have been the spinal fractured iguanas or the boas.
Much to my surprise we have seen 7 rescued reptiles in the first months. But our
most talked about patient was baby spider monkey “Izzie”, coming in on
inauguration day! She was diagnosed with five gun shot pellets and multiple
shattered bones, about 1 h after the ribbon cutting ceremony, in an encouraging
3 h turn around, from phone report to me to arrival at clinic, and subsequent
departure to the Wildtracks primate facility. Her story continues.
November held one more trip for me, to the Caribbean
Veterinary Medical Conference in Trinidad and
Tobago, filling my role as the Commonwealth Veterinary
Association country councilor for Belize,
networking and hoping to complete a CVA grant proposal jointly with the TT
rescue center Wildlife
Orphanage Rescue
Center.
Thanks to
the concerted efforts of countless people, foremost Molly Reeve, Izzie’s
primary carer for the first 8 weeks, international attention was drawn to her
case. One of her broken bones not mending, a specialized surgeon, Dr Adolf Maas,
was found and kindly volunteered his services and sourced donated materials for
Izzie’s arm repair, which happened in early
December. Surgery was a full success (of course time will tell in the long
run). We continue to monitor her case and so far 2 videos were made to
document. December also was dedicated to further grant applications, one of
which we missed, yet were still given support by the grantor (absolutely
amazing thanks!) in the form of a $5000 donation! Grant applications have
certainly one of the biggest challenges, but we understand that it takes
writing many proposals. And every written application helps us refining
details.
We continue
to work on our first financial report but it appears that, despite 4 fruitless
grant applications for further medical equipments and more, we have still
doubled the Heska prize income in 2012 with donations, BWCN fundraiser and
other activities of the non-profit organization (mainly domestic patients and
class room rental). But soon more on that!
The year ended with another wildlife course of ISIS students and the refining of the vision for the next
year, immediate goals and the bigger picture for the future of BWRC, to
hopefully become a fully self-sustaining conservation-supporting medical
teaching facility.
VIDEOS After the 2011 success
in the Inspiration in Action contest, somewhat attributed to the video about
Spartacus, the howler monkey baby who started it all (and is now our logo
thanks to Colette Kase and Maya Papovic), and the amazing Solitary Eagle
juvenile, in 2012 we have created another number of “home made wildlife videos”
thanks to our wonderful friend documentarian, artist and jack of many trades, Daniel Velasquez.
Videos 2012:
Interns – Clinical rotation interns
Interns – Undergraduate NMSU interns
Inauguration and Izzies arrival
Izzies surgery
If you
would like to learn more, find our website under www.belizewildlifeclinic.org
