Waterbird Rehabilitation
International Bird Rescue’s wildlife clinics are open year-round to provide critical care to waterbirds in need, not just during oil spill emergencies. Since 1971 we’ve cared for more than 125,000 birds across our two California centers, treating everything from storm-injured pelicans to birds caught in oil contamination events large and small.
The birds we treat are more than individual animals. Many are indicator species whose health reflects the state of the ocean itself and each one returned to the wild carries the potential to rejoin its population, reproduce, and contribute to its species’ long-term survival.
Why rehabilitate contaminated birds?
When oil contaminates a bird, the damage goes far beyond its feathers. Oiled birds face hypothermia, organ failure, and poisoning, and untreated animals left in the field can spread contamination to others through the food chain. Beyond the individual animal, rehabilitation protects public health, prevents secondary oiling, and gives threatened species like the Western Snowy Plover a fighting chance at recovery.
As a society still reliant on petroleum, we all share responsibility for what spilled oil does to wildlife. International Bird Rescue has been responding to that responsibility since the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spil, and our track record speaks for itself: more than 80% survival at the 1996 Pribilof Islands response, and 20,000 African Penguins successfully cleaned and released after the 2000 Treasure spill in South Africa.
Read the full case for rehabilitation
Our process for helping oiled birds
The instinct when you see an oil-covered bird is to wash it immediately, but that instinct can be fatal. An oiled bird must first be stabilized with nutrition, hydration, and medical care before it’s strong enough to survive the stress of washing. Only once it meets specific health criteria, good body weight, strong blood values, alert behavior, does the cleaning process begin.
From there, birds move through a careful sequence: washing with diluted Dawn dish soap, precision rinsing to restore feather waterproofing, drying under grooming blowers, and progressive warm-to-cold pool conditioning. A bird is only released when it is fully waterproof, at healthy weight, and demonstrating normal feeding, swimming, and diving behavior.