Fresh into her wildlife rehabilitation internship in June 2021, Helena Echenique found herself on the front lines of one of International Bird Rescue’s largest seabird responses. Arriving just before the Long Beach Harbor Nesting Seabird Crisis, Helena quickly became an essential member of the team, helping examine and hand-feed hundreds of Elegant Tern chicks throughout the emergency response.
Her passion for wildlife conservation began in high school as a student docent at the Los Angeles Zoo and continued through college, where she worked with the Cornell Raptor Program caring for permanent resident birds and participating in education programs. Drawn to every corner of the wildlife field, Helena explored animal care, wildlife rehabilitation, education, field research, and museum studies before discovering where she felt most at home.
I find myself talking about my IBR internship experience pretty often when messaging about human-wildlife conflicts. –Helena Echenique, 2021 Wildlife Rehabiliation Intern
Like many former interns, Helena’s time at Bird Rescue helped shape a lasting career in animal care. Bird Rescue internships have launched paths into fields ranging from veterinary medicine to zoo and aquarium work, wildlife education, and field research. Today, Helena serves as the Ambassador Animal Programs Coordinator at the Oakland Zoo, where she combines her love of animal care and conservation education by working with permanent resident ambassador animals that inspire people to protect wildlife.
Question: What drew you to apply for an internship with International Bird Rescue?
Answer: I really loved working with the birds at the raptor center, and I was curious about what it would be like to work with birds in a different context. I was also doing ichthyology and marine biology research at the time, so working with aquatic birds tied in really well with my other work. At this point in time, my interest in conservation work was growing so I was excited to try wildlife rehab, which was something I’d never done before.
Q: Can you tell us about when you joined Bird Rescue and what was happening at the wildlife center at the time?
A: I started working in June of 2021 and I had a 40 hr/4 day work week that directly shadowed Jeanette Bates’ role at the time. I remember being struck by how small and tightly-knit the team was. It was clear that the center depended heavily on the wonderful team of dedicated volunteers that would show up, often multiple times a week, to clean and feed and treat the patients. I was impressed with how the small team of staff and volunteers worked together seamlessly to ensure daily operations went smoothly.
Q: What do you remember most about your experience during the Long Beach Harbor Seabird Nesting Crisis?
A: It’s easiest to remember the end of the tern crisis, when there were hundreds of terns in our care, and my shifts became a monotony of picking up tern chick after tern chick. I was trained on intake exams because the sheer number of intakes we had to conduct depended on all the support we could get. Not to mention the feedings! All of the babies at the center had to be hand fed every couple hours. We quickly divided ourselves into two groups to ensure daily operations could still run. I was mostly on the tern team since I had been with them since the beginning.
My favorite memory is when the first two tern chicks arrived at the center. The experienced rehab techs were all talking excitedly and taking lots of pictures. They felt like very special patients. They also had a mysterious story: someone had found them wandering along the beach with no other terns in sight. Little did we know we would soon be inundated with baby terns…
Q: What role did you play in caring for the Elegant Tern chicks?
A: When the first batch of terns showed up, I was the main tern caretaker out of the staff on my schedule. My shift started with feedings every two hours, and I would do other tasks in between. As time went on and more and more terns started showing up, the time I had between feedings got shorter and shorter. Soon, I was spending my 10-hour shifts doing non-stop feedings. As soon as I was done with the last group, it would be time to start with the first group again.
It eventually reached the point where tern feedings were no longer a one-person job, and we had to employ the help of several volunteers. That’s when the tern team was born and we had a solid group of people who could feed the chicks. From that point, sometimes I worked doing feedings and sometimes I went out into the field for direct response.
Eventually, I graduated from the tern team and was taught to do intake exams. One of the operations staff had constructed a special floatation device for the chicks that were drowning in the water around the barge, which resulted in way less chicks needing to be brought back to the center. Instead, we set up a station on-site so we could immediately examine and band the birds.
Q: Was there a particular moment from that response that has stayed with you?
A: Definitely the field work aspect and how much of a community project it was. The boats we used to access the barge were from members of the community that volunteered their time and vehicles.
There were so many very dedicated volunteers that had been working at IBR for so long and were incredible at providing care for the patients. I have never been so overworked in my life, but everyone else was right there with me. Everyone worked hard because everyone cared so much about saving this tern population. Many people picked up extra shifts every week or stayed longer than they needed. It’s such a testament to how hard, but also how rewarding, wildlife rehabilitation can be.
Q: After your internship, what path led you to your current role as Ambassador Animal Programs Coordinator at the Oakland Zoo?
A: I really enjoyed my internship, but I still felt very passionately about animal training and education. It makes a
big difference when the animals you work with are supposed to be scared of you vs. when you are training them to become more comfortable around you. However, wildlife rehab is very closely tied in with wildlife education. The vast majority of birds that end up at IBR are there because of human impacts, whether direct or indirect. In wildlife education, we try to motivate people to fix some of the challenges that come from living in close proximity to wildlife. I find myself talking about my IBR internship experience pretty often when messaging about human-wildlife conflicts.
I actually used the Elegant Tern nesting crisis story as my National Association for Interpretation certification talk. When trying to motivate conservation action, it can be hard to think of actionable items that make it feel like one person can make a difference. I like to reframe that concept. The Elegant Tern crisis was caused by one person who flew a drone over one of their very few nesting sites. If human impact can be this catastrophic with one person, think of how much positive change we would bring if we banded together as a community. In 2021, IBR did just that! We saved the Elegant Terns from losing a massive chunk of their population that year.
Q: What advice would you give to someone considering an internship in wildlife rehabilitation?
A: Do it! Wildlife rehab is not for everybody, but that’s the joy of an internship. Try it out for a summer, and you are sure to learn and be inspired more than you ever thought you could be.
Begin Your Own Wildlife Journey
Interested in becoming a wildlife rehabilitation intern? Learn more and discover how you can gain hands-on experience caring for wildlife. Learn more here.