Mission
To Preserve Local Native Wildlife through Rehabilitation, Education, and Research.
Rehabilitation: Orphaned, injured, and sick wildlife are provided the necessary treatment and care to enable their return to their natural habitats.
Education: Viewing our raptor ambassadors, and hands-on S.T.E.M. activities & games enhance people’s understanding of the impact their actions have on wildlife and the natural environment.
Research: We lend information about our raptors to various research groups in order to increase the understanding of these birds.
Background
Our story starts in the mid-1980s, with Lynn Tompkins. Then a veterinary technician at Pendleton Veterinary Clinic, Lynn began to gain experience with wildlife rehab through a young veterinarian, Dr. Jeff Cooney. After Dr. Cooney left to pursue a residency at the Minnesota Raptor Center, Lynn took it upon herself to continue rehabbing local wildlife with nowhere else to go. Getting more and more animals, Lynn and her husband, Bob, founded Blue Mountain Wildlife in 1990.
Today, Blue Mountain Wildlife serves most of Eastern Oregon and South-Eastern Washington from two facilities, caring for over 900 animals each year for a total of over 15,000 since 1990. BMW has released 48% of wildlife since its founding, one of the highest release rates in the industry. Though we care for wildlife of all sorts, BMW specializes in raptor care.
Consistent with its mission, Blue Mountain Wildlife focuses not only on rehab, but also on education and research. Through our educational programs & Tours, we reach over 10,000 community members each year, promoting coexistence between wildlife and people. We also lend information about our raptors for various studies, including with The Global Owl Project. At Blue Mountain Wildlife, we believe that a healthy world will support healthy, thriving wildlife and healthy, thriving humans. We do our best to help make this world a reality.
What is Wildlife Rehab?
Wildlife rehabilitation is the practice of caring for orphaned, injured, and/or ill wildlife with the ultimate goal of returning them to the wild.
At BMW, upon receiving an animal, a trained rehabilitator evaluates the condition of the animal and provides medical treatment. Animals requiring specialized care are taken to Pendleton Veterinary Clinic. Feeding, administering medication, physical therapy, and reconditioning are among the many daily care tasks that are necessary for restoring an animal to a releasable condition.
Most of the animals brought to BMW have had negative encounters with humans, such as collisions with vehicles or manmade structures, gunshot wounds, poisoning or destruction of nests. Wildlife has not evolved to coexist with these situations, and we believe that humans have a responsibility to both understand and ameliorate their impacts.
A Vision for the Future
Today, Blue Mountain Wildlife serves the region with facilities in Oregon and Washington. The headquarters and primary center is at the foothills of the Blue Mountains, in Pendleton, OR. With a 1-room medical clinic in a private residence, and very functional, but aging, conditioning and display pens, the facility represents the love and labor of countless volunteers and contributors. The Washington center, established in 2005, includes a small intake building, a flight pen, and a large hack site (a facility where baby raptors are raised and released in a manner that simulates the care they would have received from their parents).
However, as the demand for Blue Mountain Wildlife’s services has almost doubled over the past several years, and our service area has expanded, it has become more and more apparent that our current facilities are inadequate to meet the growing need.
BMW is responding with the planned evolution of the current Pendleton facility into a state-of-the-art wildlife hospital, rehabilitation and educational center. Please continue to check in with our website as we begin to get this center off the ground!
