I volunteer at the Wetlands and Wildlife Care Center of Orange County and over the past two months we have received over seventy California Brown Pelicans, mostly what we call young and dumb which are the juveniles, usually on the brink of death due to starvation and/or with injuries. Some of the most prominent and preventable injuries are fishing line and fishhook injuries. One of the reasons we are getting so many juvenile pelicans with fish hooks and line injuries have to do with the same reason many are coming in emaciated. As you may have noticed we have had quite a bit of a heat streak this summer. This heat has affected the ecosystem by forcing the fish to swim deeper down to escape the unusually warm surface water temperatures. Pelicans do dive for their food, but these juveniles are only 1 year and younger, and do not have the experience to dive deep enough to capture their dinner. So here are the pelicans options: 1 starve or 2 steal. With the summer fishermen in sight, there is false hope for the desperate young pelican. This is not saying that these injuries are not common during the rest of the year and/or these are the only species receiving these injuries. I have seen many gulls come in as well with identical injuries. Fishing hooks are obviously dangerous because they become embedded in the bird, and even if they are taking out there is an extremely high risk of infection and very particular precautions need to be taken before sending a peli on his/her way. Line is one of the most underestimated threats to sea birds because not only can it be tangled around the animal, leaving it incapable of flight, if it wraps too tightly around an appendage (example: wing or leg), it can cut off circulation, and what more it can eventually slice off an entire wing, leg, etc. of this beautiful creature. The other injury caused by fishing line is something called line rash. This is caused when the bird is entangled in fishing line and the line rubs against the pelicans body while it struggles to free itself of the unnatural enemy. (It is normally found at the elbow of the pelicans wing.) This is as common of a cause of infection as the fish hooks because many of the time the line rash tends to skin the pelican and will expose the underlying muscle with a huge gash. The reason I wrote this is to promote awareness of the overlooked dangers of our precious wildlife. On August 7th, I went to the wildlife center as usual to volunteer my time and came across three different cases involving fishing hook and line related injuries. The first one was through a phone call. A man called from Corona Del Mar acquiring information about gulls. He told me how this morning he had caught a gull tangled up in fishing line, had cut the lines from it and freed it. As this may be looked at as a good deed, he actual did the bird no favors at all. He said he contacted animal control in his area and these people told him that usually the hooks would rust and fall out in the wild. I explained to him that these are can be very severe injuries, even if the bird does not seem like it is that ill or injured and due to the fact that fish hooks are not considered NATURAL threats, the bird does not naturally rid its body of such things. The bird also much be on a course of antibiotics following the removal of such items. There is an animal control officer in Seal Beach who continually does this. He will grab Pelicans and Gulls, cut off the fishing lines, cut out the hooks and throw them back into the ocean. This may temporarily get rid of the issue of the birds being wrapped in line or having a hook in its wing, but these birds more often than not will suffer from infection which leads to an unnecessarily painful suffering and death. The next case involves a western gull that two teenaged kids brought in because it could not stand. When my supervisor and I were doing the intake, we found line rash on the wing and one of its legs was black. On that leg we found the tendon severed and hanging off. We suspected that a line had been tangled around the foot, and sliced the tendon off the leg therefore cutting off all blood flow. We also suspected someone had cut off the line and just thrown him back. I held the bird as my supervisor injected it. It had become euthanasia. My last and most heartbreaking case has to do with a pelican. This particular pelican had come into the center with four fishhooks. One we were able to cut out, one was in it s throat with fishing line still attached and the other two were farther down. That morning he had been sent to Costa Mesa to our veterinary that is one of the administrators of the WWCC for x-rays. Another Vet was contacted about using an endoscope to remove the hooks. He was willing to do this complimentary procedure to help wildlife by supporting our non-profit organization. So I picked up the Pelican from our vet office in Costa Mesa and drove him to Tustin where the vet, Dr. Shasadre, was willing to do this type of operation. I was also planning to assist in the handling of the bird throughout the procedure. The doctor took me into the x-ray room to discuss the matter, but it soon became conclusive that this bird was not going to be saved. We would have to go in surgically and open him up, but the consequence would be the result of a non-releasable wild bird. A Catch-22 one might say; save him but keep him unhappily in captivity or euthanize him. I drove him back to the Wildlife Center in Huntington Beach and held him while my supervisor injected him twice to euthanize him. I taped up the deceased bird that was once full of spunk and attitude and gently placed him in the freezer with the others. This is not to discourage anyone from fishing; this is merely an informative essay to allow the reader to see it from birds eye view. There is also an article on the department of fish and games web site with more insight and helpful tips on how to lessen these incidents by using safer fishing techniques. Please visit: http://www.dfg.ca.gov/MRD/seabirds.html If you have any questions about our volunteer based organization or would like to volunteer please visit: http://www.wwccoc.org/ Also remember that we are not government funded and are funds are based solely off of the volunteers and their time and donations. There is also a wish list of supplies we always need at the center including sheet, pillowcases, towels, vegetables, and more. ANY donations are greatly appreciated. If you cannot send a donation, but still want to help wildlife, please pass this along to your friends and family to promote awareness. Thank you so much for your time. Sincerely, Ashlee Rowland