Despite their shrinking numbers, animal rehabilitators all over New Jersey remain passionate about their work.
“I’ve been doing this for 21 years,” said Neptune City resident Melissa Jacobs, a volunteer for the Monmouth County SPCA (MCSPCA) who runs an animal rehabilitation clinic out of her home.
“When I first started, there were about 150 [animal rehabilitators], and I got about 80 calls a year to help animals. Since 2012, I have received about 4,000 calls.”
“We have answered in excess of 50,000 calls to rehabilitate animals by now,” Toms River-based Avian Care owner Don Bonica said. “I’ve been doing this for at least 30 years, and I love it.”
Bonica described the process of rehabilitating birds, including treating for injuries, malnutrition and chemical poisoning from incidents like oil spills.
“It depends what’s wrong with the bird how we proceed with rehabilitation,” he said. “I would say between 30 and 40 percent of the birds that come to me have some kind of orthopedic issue. The bones in their wings are hollow, so a good way [to] fix that is to splint them for two weeks.”
While the rehabilitation process of nursing a bird back to health is underway, he said one of the biggest factors is keeping the bird under as little stress as possible.
“We treat them like you would treat a human. We keep them in a comfortable temperature, and we use cages that are half enclosed so they’re not seeing people and other things around them all the time. It helps them relax,” he said. “If a bird is under a lot of stress or is constantly panicked, that can kill it.”
Both Bonica and Jacobs spoke about the dedication of rehabilitators across the state, saying that the widely reported case of a volunteer neglecting to transport injured or sick birds to rehabilitators is not indicative of how the process should be carried out.
“We were contacted by the Little Silver police, and we responded within 30 minutes of the call,” MCSPCA Chief Humane Law Enforcement Officer Buddy Amato said. “From that point on, we spent three days accumulating evidence, which is all being presented to the Prosecutors Office. In fact, we’re still presenting.”
According to the prosecutor’s office, the volunteer was hoarding more than 300 dead birds at a house in Little Silver, which should have been transported to rehabilitators.
In an email statement, Liz Wise, development director for the MCSPCA, said the incident is under investigation.
“We are thoroughly reviewing our processes with regard to volunteers and licensed rehabilitators, and making appropriate changes to ensure this does not occur in the future,” she said.
“Anyone who finds an animal can call 877-472-8945 if they can’t get a hold of a rehabilitator or somewhere that would be able to help. It provides general informa- tion, but it gives prompts about what to do for certain species.” Jacobs said the method of releasing birds back into the wild after rehabilitation depends on the species.
“Some birds are migratory, so we’ll try to release them a little closer to where they should be,” he said. “Some birds, like owls and hawks, we’ll release in the Pine Barrens, while birds like sparrows live in my backyard so I can just release them there.”
Bonica said that with the dwindling number of rehabilitators, getting a bad name is unfair.
“I have spent over $1 million [for Toms River Avian Care]. It’s rewarding, but it takes a toll when you get 40 phone calls per day,” said Bonica. “What I’m trying to say is that it’s a regulated thing, but this was an abnormal situation that should have never happened.”
Jacobs agreed, saying the notoriety that resulted from the case does not accurately represent should happen during the rehabilitation process.
“This is bad publicity for us, because now we’re lumped into what [the volunteer] did,” said Jacobs. “Of course, this was going to trickle down to us, and the bottom line is that we don’t want things like [this] to ever happen.”

