A motley crew of evacuees fled the California wildfires last week.
Some were missing limbs, orphans, with brittle bones, nearly blind, some without spleens. They traveled down the San Bernardino Mountains into sunny Palm Desert and found temporary homes in enclosures shaded by desert willows and fan palms.
About 50 birds and small mammals were forced out of Big Bear Alpine Zoo, which houses rehabilitated animals that cannot be released back into the wild, as the zoo came under threat from the 39,000-acre Rhine Fire, forcing officials to launch a careful rescue operation that saw a convoy of vans and trailers loaded with crates containing eagles, owls, skunks and cranes snake up Highway 18.
“I had two foxes in the back of my car,” zoo curator Jessica Whitton said, “and the smell will never be the same again.”
The Rhine Fire broke out on Sept. 5 in the foothills city of Highland, and authorities said the fire was in. A 34-year-old Norco man has been charged by police and is currently in jail. He has pleaded not guilty.
The fires ran up the mountains, fed by the and fuelled by the shrubs dried by the. The fires of hell burned with great heat and.
Wheaton knew it was time to act after evacuation orders were issued last Tuesday for parts of Big Bear Lake just west of the zoo, and warnings were issued for the rest of town to stay put.
The fires filled the air with toxic smoke and ash. Particulate pollution was literally unfathomable. Whitton took a screenshot on her phone of the air quality index hitting its highest point. “It was hitting its highest point,” she said. “It just kept going up, but there was no more room on the scale.”
Just like humans, animals can suffer from these conditions. Birds are especially susceptible because they have a high respiratory rate, which can be stressful when kept indoors. “When the air quality is poor, people tell you not to go outside and do any strenuous exercise because it makes you breathe faster,” Whitton says. “Birds are constantly breathing rapidly, so the smoke damages their lungs.”
A team of San Bernardino County officials adopted an emergency response plan and decided to evacuate many of the animals to the Living Desert, a non-profit zoo and botanical garden in the Coachella Valley.
Desert Zoo staff had been monitoring weather conditions and news reports about the fires, so they weren’t surprised when they got the call for help, said Animal Care Officer Heather Down.
“We formed a tight-knit team and holed ourselves up in an office with a big whiteboard,” she said. There, they pored over a list of animals that needed to be housed and created a map of open habitats. “We were able to place the animals in places—which animals could live together, which animals needed to live independently.” Then the staff got to work preparing the space.
The effort took shape quickly, and by Wednesday afternoon officials had organized transportation to get the animals off the mountain: several vehicles from San Bernardino County Animal Protection and a trailer operated by a professional animal transport company. The first group set off on the 2.5-hour trip the next morning, less than 48 hours after officials had decided to evacuate.
About 26 animals remained at Big Bear Zoo, including bears, bobcats, mountain lions, snow leopards and wolves. Zookeepers were able to move the animals indoors, where they are being protected by air purifiers and a “powerful” climate control system, Whitton said. Plans are also being made to transport the animals to various rescue and rehabilitation facilities in case the situation worsens.
In a secluded area at the back of the Living Desert, the animals were beginning to settle into their temporary homes Friday afternoon, as staff members traveled in golf carts and pickup trucks down dirt roads to their enclosures.
In one habitat, there were Niles and Daphne Crane, a pair of arthritic sandhill cranes named after characters on the sitcom “Frasier.” Wheaton offered them food while Daphne shadowed a cameraman. “Be gentle,” he warned the dinosaur-like waterfowl. “They like to peck at shoes.”
In another enclosure, Mozart, a three-legged, spleenless gray fox, peered warily out of a tunnel of corrugated tubes, while Bootstrap Bill, a kestrel with a severed wing, perched on a nearby branch.
There was Piper, a friendly young red fox who was rescued as an orphan, and Valentine, a 26-year-old bald eagle who was rescued from Alaska after DDT poisoning left him nearly blind and with brittle bones.
“They’re doing great, to be honest with you,” Whitton said. After giving the animals a few hours to get used to their new surroundings and unfamiliar sights and smells, keepers checked on them and Whitton said most of them had started eating right away. “I think they’re just happy to get some fresh air and stretch their little legs a little bit.”
Over the next few days, the Rhine Fire’s progress slowed and evacuation orders for parts of Big Bear Lake were downgraded to warnings.
Still, zoo officials plan to keep the animals in the Living Desert for at least a few more days to acclimate them before relocating them again.
This isn’t the first time Big Bear’s animals have been evacuated to the Palm Desert Zoo — they were moved when wildfires threatened the town in 2002 — and it likely won’t be the last, as climate disasters continue to occur with increasing frequency.
“I definitely think we’re going to see these things happen more often,” said Whitton, whose experience of the fires was new to California. She moved to Big Bear a few years ago from an island off the coast of Iceland, where she’s witnessed two volcanic eruptions and watched whale populations boom and then decline dramatically.
“I’ve seen big changes in the different places I’ve lived around the world,” she says. “The Earth is changing and moving.”
