A group of people fled the California wildfires last week.
There were crippled and orphaned children. One had weak bones and was mostly blind; another was missing his spleen. They came down from the San Bernardino Mountains to the sunny Palm Desert, where they found temporary homes in pens shaded by desert willows and fan palms.
50 or so birds and small mammals were displaced from the Big Bear Alpine Zoo, which houses rehabilitated animals that cannot be released into the wild. The zoo was threatened by the 39,000-acre Line Fire – which resulted in Most hazardous air quality recorded in Southern California in nearly 35 years – Crews were forced to launch a delicate rescue operation, with a caravan of vans and trailers driving down Highway 18 carrying boxes of eagles, owls, skunks and cranes.
Piper, a red fox who was rescued as an orphaned baby, was one of about 50 animals removed from Big Bear Alpine Zoo.
“I had two foxes in the back of my personal car,” said zoo curator Jessica Whitton. “It will never smell the same.”
The Line Fire broke out Sept. 5 in the lower hill town of Highland, with officials saying the flames were as much as 100 feet high. Arson incident. A 34-year-old Narco man has been charged by the police and now facing charges in connection with the fire. He has pleaded not guilty.
The fire was moving towards the mountains and was getting more fuel from the bushes. Two consecutive wet wintersand then became thirsty again The hottest summer ever on Earthhell was so terrible Create your own weather,
Whitton realized last Tuesday it was time to take action, as a section of Big Bear Lake just west of the zoo was ordered to evacuate. The rest of the city was warned to be on standby.
The fires filled the air with toxic smoke and ash. Fine particle pollution was off the charts — literally. Whitton took a screenshot of the maximum air quality index on her phone. “It was over the top,” she said. “The numbers were going up but there was no limit on the scale.”
Jessica Whitton monitors two sandhill cranes, Neil and Daphne Crane, who were rescued from Big Bear Zoo.
Animals can suffer from these conditions, just like humans. Birds are particularly susceptible because they have a very high respiratory rate, and keeping them confined indoors causes stress. “When the air is bad, they tell us not to go outside and do strenuous exercise because that makes us breathe faster,” Whitton said. “Birds are always breathing faster, so the smoke can actually damage their lungs.”
A team of San Bernardino County officials decided to implement a contingency plan that would see many of the animals moved to the Living Desert, a nonprofit zoo and botanical garden located in the Coachella Valley.
Animal keeper Heather Downs said Desert Zoo officials had been monitoring weather conditions and reports of the fire, so they weren’t surprised when they got the call for help.
A barn owl named Dobie is one of the animals removed from Big Bear Zoo.
“We built a strong team and sat down in an office with a big whiteboard,” he said. There, they pored over the list of animals that needed to be placed and mapped out open habitats. “We were able to start placing animals in locations: Who could live with whom? Who needed to be independent?” Then the staff got to work preparing the locations.
The effort quickly took shape: By Wednesday afternoon, staff had arranged transportation to get the animals off the mountain — a few vehicles from San Bernardino County Animal Care, plus a trailer operated by a professional animal transport company. The next morning, less than 48 hours after officials decided to evacuate, the first group set off on the 2½-hour journey.
About 26 animals remained at Big Bear, including bears, bobcats, mountain lions, snow leopards and wolves. Zoo keepers were able to move them inside, where they were protected by air scrubbers and a “robust” HVAC system, Whitten said. Still, plans were made to move them to various rescue and rehabilitation facilities if conditions worsened.
In a back section of the Living Desert, out of sight of the public, the animals were settling into their temporary accommodations Friday afternoon. Workers drove down dirt roads in golf carts and pickup trucks to reach the enclosures.
One habitat housed Niles and Daphne Crane, a pair of arthritic sandhill cranes named after characters from the sitcom “Frasier.” When Daphne chased a photographer away, Whitton offered them a snack. “Behave,” Whitton warned the dinosaur-like bird. “She likes to peck at shoes.”
In another enclosure, Mozart, a three-legged gray fox with no spleen, peered cautiously through a tunnel of corrugated tubing. Bootstrap Bill, a kestrel with a wing partially clipped off, perched on a nearby branch.
Valentine, a bald eagle who suffered from DDT poisoning, spreads his wings at the Living Desert Zoo and Gardens in Palm Desert.
There was an extremely friendly young red fox named Piper, who was taken in as an orphan, and a 26-year-old bald eagle named Valentine, who was rescued from Alaska, where DDT poisoning had left him blind and with brittle bones.
“They’re doing great, honestly,” Whitton said. After giving the animals a few hours to adjust to their new home, unfamiliar sights and smells, keepers checked on them and found most of them started eating right away. “I think they’re just happy to get some fresh air and stretch their little legs a little bit.”
The Line Fire’s progress slowed in the days that followed. The evacuation order for a portion of Big Bear Lake was reduced to a warning.
Still, zoo officials planned to keep the animals in the Living Desert for at least a few more days to give them a chance to acclimatize before rehoming them.
This wasn’t the first time Big Bear animals were moved to the Palm Desert Zoo. They were moved there in 2002 when wildfires threatened the city. It likely won’t be the last time, either, as climate disasters become more frequent.
“It seems like events like this will happen more often,” Whitton said. The fires were a first for Whitton, a newcomer to California. She came to Big Bear a few years ago from an island off the coast of Iceland, where she witnessed two volcanic eruptions and watched the whale population boom, then decline dramatically.
“I have seen huge changes in different places around the world. The Earth is changing and moving,” he said.
Jessica Whitton opens the door to a cage that houses three great horned owls and a red fox after being removed from Big Bear Zoo.
