Say you’re out playing golf or hiking and you come across an injured animal — not a cat or a dog, but something less run of-the-mill, like a large possum, or a red fox, black vulture or even, God forbid, an American bald eagle. What do you do? Who do you call?
Dedicated volunteers and staff at the Mercer County Wildlife Center can help, whether it’s answering some questions about caring for the animal until it can be transported to their hospital or to another facility.
Jane Rakos-Yates, director at the center, explained on a warm sunny Sunday afternoon in late March that no one ever answers the phone directly here. The center receives about 10,000 calls from concerned animal lovers each year.
A few days after last Thanksgiving, by my organic vegetable garden less than 30 yards from Camden-Amboy line — the oldest railroad in the U.S. — I came across an injured black vulture. It was clear to me he or she could not fly as “he” was hopping along on one leg.
I thought he might have had an encounter with one of the out-of-control foxes in the woods on the other side of the railroad tracks in nearby woods, but Yates points out a more likely scenario is he was hit by a passing car.
I called the Jamesburg animal shelter, the East Brunswick shelter, the Woodbridge animal shelter and another in Middlesex County and the answer was always the same: “We accept dogs and cats only.”
Finally, a nice woman in Woodbridge referred me to the Mercer County Wildlife Center. They would be able to take in and rehabilitate this otherwise harmless black vulture.
Working with one of my local police officers, I got a blanket and put the vulture into one of those spiffy new blue Middlesex County recycling bins, the ones with wheels and an enormous lid that covers the whole thing.
I gave it some food — meat and Brussels sprout stems — and water in the ensuing days. Finally, a neighbor and I were able to bring said black vulture over to Mercer Wildlife Center on Route 29 in Lambertville in his pickup truck, on a cold day a week before Christmas.
Because there are so many volunteers involved, drop-offs of animals like coyotes, foxes, vultures, and other raptor birds and certain other animals are by appointment only. This makes a lot of sense when you consider how many animals are found injured and rescued each year in all 21 counties around what’s left of “the Garden State.”
Director Jane Rakos-Yates is a salaried full timer, and she oversees a bare-bones staff of four full-timers and six part-timers. There are 85 volunteers involved at the center, and in warmer months when there’s more activity, another dozen college kid-interns.
The facility was launched in 1983 by naturalist Joe Schmeltz, Rakos-Yates explains, and he housed it inside the county jail at the top of the cliff. Prisoners were utilized to rehabilitate the animals, and presumably, reform themselves in the process.
That program ended in 2005. The facility was relocated to its current site on Route 29 in 2008, with funding from Mercer County to build it, staff it and set up an outdoor educational center. Rakos-Yates and her staffers often take some of the raptors and other permanent residents into schools for educational programs, and the center is open to the public for self-guided tours Wednesday through Sunday.
Rakos-Yates was born and raised in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. She lives in Doylestown, about 25 minutes away.
“I knew the previous director, Diane Nickerson, and she asked me to come over as a volunteer. So I started as a volunteer in 1996 and then took on a part-time job here,” she says.
The range of animals the wildlife center will accept that conventional shelters will not handle include birds and mammals conventional dog and cat vets won’t take in because of the risk of contamination from viruses or other ailments, and, she points out in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, the general public is not allowed to keep or treat wild animals.
“That is for the safety of the people, and the animals, because if you don’t know how to care for the animal it can die very quickly. Vet offices won’t take wild animals because they often carry diseases and they don’t want to give any of those diseases to any of their regular paying customers. The law exists in New Jersey that if a vet does take an animal in it has to hand it over to a wildlife center within 48 hours,” she says.
When my neighbor and I dropped off my injured black vulture a week before Christmas, we were assigned a case number and the animal went into a quarantined trailer for a full medical evaluation by one of four volunteer veterinarians who know raptors, coyotes, foxes, possums, and other wild animals. The volunteer in the office encouraged us to check back in a few weeks and use the case number to get a report on how the animal is doing, a nice thing to do.
“What you found out is we don’t have pickup service. We don’t have enough staff for that, so we depend on the public to pick up the animals and bring them to us if they’re sick,” Rakos-Yates says.
The center takes in all native birds, mammals, reptiles and amphibians, all with the goal of rehab and release back into their native environs.
“With birds it’s anything from songbirds to vultures to eagles to herons, gulls, crows, hawks, owls — all of these we take. With mammal’s people bring us little mice sometimes, and it goes from squirrels to chipmunks to rabbits, raccoons, possums, foxes and coyotes,” she says.
What about bobcats or black bears?
Rakos-Yates said they haven’t seen a lot of bobcats in central New Jersey — yet — and the center refers black bear cubs to a similarly expansive center on some acreage in Pittstown.
The center accepts wild turkeys as well. For years, the wild turkey population was decimated in the Garden State, and since they can do a lot of damage in farm fields, it’s now coming back, thanks to groups of trappers and hunters in all 21 counties.
How did Rakos-Yates gain expertise in handling raptors? “A lot of it was on-the-job training, but we also attend a lot of seminars through the year, we go to a lot of conferences and have mentors we learn from,” she explains.
Later that afternoon, after a tour of a fenced in rehab area with a series of large hanging nets, closed to the public, she tested out the black vulture I brought in to see how well he can fly after his injury. I took a photograph through the crack in the fence and he appeared to back on the road to health, resting comfortably on a perch with plenty of food and water and room to move around in a large contained area. Rakos-Yates pointed out, we don’t want these foxes, coyotes, raptors, whatever, getting too familiar with humans.
The Mercer Wildlife Center is one of only six such centers in the U.S. that has both a 501c-3 status and at same time is funded by county government.
“The county pays for the building, our salaries and they give us an operating budget, and then we have the non-profit arm that raises money to pay for cage upgrades and extra food if we need it,” she explained. She estimated there are about 18 of these facilities, most much smaller, around the Garden State.^
Asked what people could do if they wanted to encourage American bald eagles to nest in their towns — not just along the Delaware River, but in interior towns like Jamesburg, Monroe and Hightstown, she pointed out that eagles need large expanses of varied wooded areas.
“It can’t be just patches of woods, it has to have some deep forested areas so the eagles can feel safe raising their young in nests,” she said. Generally, these nests are quite elevated, as much as 60 or 80 feet and partially hidden to avoid detection by predators like raccoons, crows and vultures for young bald eagle chicks or eggs.
The number of animals saved by the Mercer County Wildlife Center in the last decade is indeed impressive:
“We save about 3,000 animals a year. It’s been about the same amount for the last five years, and a bit more during Covid. That’s 30,000 animals that have come through these doors in the last decade, and our release rate is right around 70 percent. They get released and go back into the wild, in most cases near where they were first found,” she notes.
All done on a very low budget, which is why fundraising is so important.
“I always like to think of us as a hidden gem in Mercer County. Not a lot of people know about us and there are not a lot of resources that you can find out there that can tell you, if you found that raccoon in your attic, now what? Or you found that rabbit’s nest in your yard; now what?”
The center receives about 10,000 phone calls a year. About 8,000 of these calls are in warmer months. Phones here are constantly ringing off the hook, that’s why there’s an automated system to take messages from concerned environmental / wildlife activist citizens.
“This is why no one answers the phone directly,” she said, “but we’re working on that, too!”
Mercer County Wildlife Center. 1748 River Road, Lambertville. (609) 303-0552. Online: www.wildlifecenterfriends.org.
Open for self-guided tours in fenced in educational area Wednesday through Sunday. School groups by appointment.
