Where the wild things rehab

A gopher tortoise the size of a hard hat is almost ready to set out for life in the wild after spending three years lumbering around with a dented shell at a Sanibel Island rehabilitation clinic. Two loggerhead sea turtles, a crested caracara that barely survived the Lehigh Acres fire and more than 300 other animals await the same recovery.

The Clinic for the Rehabilitation of Wildlife treats nearly 4,000 injured and orphaned wild animals from Lee, Collier, Charlotte and Hendry counties each year. But after 20 years in the same building, the hospital’s space is cramped.

“Our patients are on top of each other,” said PJ Deitschel, clinic director and veterinarian. Space is so tight that critters are placed anywhere there’s a spare square-foot, however temporary.

“If you want to do an X-ray, you have to move five patients from the machine,” Deitschel said.

Located on 12 acres of land adjacent to J.N. Ding Darling National Wildlife Refuge, the center is ready to embark on its first building project since the 1980s, when the center treated about 500 animals a year.

Last week, the Tourist Development Council for Lee County voted to assist the center’s $2.8 million expansion by promising the nonprofit organization $500,000.

“Ecotourism is really important to us. That’s basically the TDC putting their money where their mouth is,” said D.T. Minich, director of tourism for Lee County.

Part of the expansion project includes an educational center that will offer interactive displays on the South Florida ecosystem and a mock hospital that will demonstrate what goes on inside the actual clinic.

Public visitation to the center is limited now to an hour each day, starting at 11 a.m. The new education center, complete with a gift shop, will be open to the public six to eight hours a day.

Birgie Vertesch, the center’s director of development, said the education complex will help the center become more self-sufficient.

“That will help take care of the new hospital so we don’t ever have to go back to the TDC,” Vertesch said.

Construction should begin in early 2007; when finished, the hospital will almost double in size to about 7,000 square feet. That space will give the animals and the staff more room and allow the center to treat more patients.

The rehabilitation center got its start in 1968, when two women found a sandwich tern that had been hit by a car on Sanibel Causeway. The women found a veterinarian to help the animal, and from then on they coordinated with volunteer veterinarians to run the center out of their home, Vertesch said.

As the population of Southwest Florida grew, so did the demand for wildlife rehabilitation. By the 1980s, the center had moved to its current location and hired its own veterinary staff.

Today, two veterinarians staff the hospital and veterinary students from all over the world volunteer and reside at the center to gain first-hand experience in wildlife rehabilitation.

Carrying a small bowl of food Wednesday, Lauren Diamant, a recent graduate from College of Charleston in South Carolina, approached a wire cage that contained a baby opossum. As she opened the cage she uttered, “Shoo, shoo, shoo,” to frighten the animal away from the door and keep it from getting comfortable around people.

When she’s finished with her weeks of work at the clinic, Diamant plans to attend veterinary school in Dublin, Ireland. After five years of schooling there, she hopes to return to the clinic as an intern.

With as many as 350 animals a day to feed, water, clean and tend to, volunteers and students such as Diamant are crucial to the rehabilitation center’s operation. The center hosts 42 on-campus student volunteers and one veterinary-school graduate intern a year.

“We’re training future wildlife veterinarians, or at least people who understand wildlife medicine,” Vertesch said.

Deitschel, now renowned nationally for her wildlife rehabilitation expertise, started her career at the center as student volunteer. She came back in 1996 as an intern and has been working as a staff veterinarian since 1998.

“It’s an exciting, challenging field of medicine. I love the challenge of dealing with 180 different species a year,” Deitschel said.

On Wednesday afternoon, Deitschel performed surgery on an osprey that had a fractured wing. Every day brings a different emergency, she said.

Before the surgery, a cage containing a baby cardinal sat on the operating table, testament to the hospital’s limited space. Even with the cardinal relocated, the operating room leaves little space for movement.

The operating room also is located up a flight of stairs, posing a huge challenge when animals such as loggerhead sea turtles need surgery or an X-ray.

“Dragging a 200-pound turtle into the X-ray room is a feat unto itself,” Deitschel said.

Six years ago, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission asked the clinic to build tanks to hold injured sea turtles because the animals were not surviving the trip to Mote Marine in Sarasota.

With three tanks, the center can hold two sea turtles of up to 225 pounds at a time. The third tank is necessary because the animals need to be placed in clean water shortly after they eat.

Recently, a couple of people riding personal watercraft came upon a loggerhead turtle floating in the Gulf. They thought it was strange the turtle didn’t dive and called wildlife officials.

When the 125-pound turtle wound up at the clinic, staff hauled it upstairs for an X-ray.

Deitschel said the turtle might have had some sort of lung trauma, pneumonia or a plastic bag lodged in one of its cavities. The X-ray showed no plastic bag and veterinarians are still unsure why the turtle couldn’t dive. It is, however, starting to recover.

On Wednesday, shortly after finishing a meal of squid, it swam around its 900-gallon saltwater pool much less lopsided than when it first arrived.

In a second pool, another loggerhead swam and occasionally lifted its beak out of the water to take a breath. Over the Memorial Day weekend, a boat hit the turtle, gashing its shell and partially paralyzing its rear legs. Another boater witnessed the accident and called wildlife officials.

It could take a few months for the turtle to recover from the paralysis and swim off into the wild.

Deitschel combines traditional western medicine with eastern medical techniques such as acupuncture and herbs to treat the animals. The combination of techniques depends on the animal’s needs, but, she said, acupuncture works well for paralyzed turtles.

“Our animals are more comfortable and they recover quicker with this integrative approach,” Deitschel said.

With 350 animals on site in a 4,000 square-foot clinic, expansion also will help wildlife recovery and the wildlife rehabilitation training, she said.

“What we’re looking to do is become a more efficient and effective quality-care facility. Also, because we’re a teaching hospital, we have a very vibrant teaching program and we need space for our students,” Deitschel said.