By Michele Byers
Emile DeVito will never forget an unusual encounter on a winter day in 1977.
When he was a college freshman, he and his father and brothers were looking for hawks in the Great Swamp when a man ambled down the road holding two metal coffee cans fastened together to form a hollow cylinder.
”He told us he had a red-shouldered hawk right there in the can,” Emile recalled. “He had just found it injured, and he put it in the can for protection.”
The man was Leonard J. Soucy Jr., and he was taking the hawk back to the Raptor Trust, the avian rehabilitation center in Millington he had founded.
Over the years, the chance encounter grew into a solid friendship. Emile, staff biologist at the New Jersey Conservation Foundation, brought in dozens of injured raptors he found during his travels around the state. And Len sometimes asked Emile to help release birds back into the wild.
Len, who passed away June 11 at the age of 82, never set out to become a rescuer of injured and orphaned birds. He wasn’t a trained veterinarian or ornithologist, just an ordinary guy — an engraver by trade — who fell in love with birds of prey on a 1964 trip to Hawk Mountain Sanctuary in Pennsylvania.
”Len Soucy was the most gentle and caring person you could ever meet,” said Tom Gilmore, the former president of New Jersey Audubon. “No personal sacrifice was too great for Len when it came to caring for orphaned and injured wildlife. He was there for them 24/7.”
And because of Len, thousands of New Jerseyans got their start in bird watching and nature appreciation.Chris Soucy, Len’s son, who has taken over leadership of the Raptor Trust, believes his father’s most important legacy is the people in whom he instilled a reverence for nature — the kids who showed up with baby birds in a shoebox, the people who carried in injured hawks and owls wrapped in blankets.
”He touched those people, one at a time,” Chris said.
Most people who brought in birds called back later to see how “their” bird was doing.
Len’s interest in the natural world was vast, spanning wooly mammoths to wood turtles. His enthusiasm opened the door for people and families to get interested and involved in wildlife conservation.
”He would talk to anyone who listened,” Chris said. “His vehicle just happened to be birds because that’s what he knew best.”
In 1968, Len and his wife, Diane, bought a home on 14 acres in Millington, Morris County, on the border of the Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge. That gave the Soucys the needed space for bird facilities.
Their first “resident” was an injured barn owl that had been living in their bathroom.
In 1970, Len received a state license to capture, band and release raptors. As his reputation spread, more and more birds were brought to him — and not just raptors. Additional aviaries and cages were built, and volunteers were recruited to care for the birds.
By the early 1980s, the Soucys’ operation had grown so big and expensive Len and Diane couldn’t finance it by themselves. The Raptor Trust was formally incorporated as a nonprofit. Over the years, it continued to grow.
Today, the Raptor Trust includes a medical infirmary, an education building and some 70 outdoor cages and aviaries. In an average year, it cares for 3,000 to 4,000 birds in distress.
“Tens of thousands of birds have been treated here and released back into the wild,” Chris said.To learn more about the Raptor Trust and the Leonard J. Soucy Jr. Memorial Fund that has been established to carry on his work, go to www.theraptortrust.org.
Michele Byers is executive director of the New Jersey Conservation Foundation. For more information, contact her at [email protected] or visit NJCF’s website at www.njconservation.org.
