As wildlife rescues rise, Miami’s Pelican Harbor Seabird Station has outgrown its home

On any given day, wild pelican mamas and chicks squawk from their perch high above the Pelican Harbor Sea Bird Station, hoping for handouts from workers feeding recovering critters below.

Someday soon, that flock of would-be moochers may have to pack up and move.

That’s because, after nearly three decades, the landmark bird and wildlife rehab facility has outgrown its small building overlooking Biscayne Bay just off Miami’s 79th Street Causeway. Fortunately for any wild birds that decide to follow, the future new home lies less than a mile away, right over the bridge on the banks of the Little River. It will be built on the 2.6-acre “Little River Preserve” — a pastoral field that once belonged to Julia Tuttle, the founder of Miami.

Though current staff no longer feed healthy birds around the facility, for decades the couple that founded the seabird station did, said Christopher Boykin, the station’s executive director. Once lured, many breeding generations stayed.

“A lot of these birds were used to being fed here so they came back,” he said. “They know it’s a safe place to nest.”

The Pelican Harbor Seabird Station has been on the causeway so long that the nearby marina is named after it. Over the decades, the mission has expanded from just helping brown pelicans to saving an abundance of native species like squirrels, hawks, opossums, turtles and gulls.

The number of animals treated also has soared. In 2019, rehabbers saw 1,973 patients compared to the few hundred birds the center saw in the 1980s. But one thing has stayed the same: the tiny, 950-square-foot space to treat and care for wildlife hasn’t expanded since opening in 1992.

Though the station, with help from big donors, has acquired land for a new home, they’re hoping to raise more to build a much larger and more sophisticated rehab center — one that meets the ever growing demand.

“We’re spatially limited here,” Boykin said.

The station, on a small spoil island between Miami and Miami Beach, shares a parking lot with a marina stocked with rows of fully-equipped sport fishing boats.

Inside the one-story building, the station’s “ambassador animals,” a one-eyed opossum named Basil and a tiny screech owl with a messed-up wing named Mowgli, perch near a floor-to-ceiling window overlooking the blue waters and bobbing boats of Biscayne Bay.

“I often say Basil has a million-dollar view,” said Judith Gatti, the station’s development director.

With the coronavirus pandemic worsening, the center has temporarily suspended its education programs and is also asking people bringing in injured, orphaned, or sick animals to call the station in advance at 305-751-9840. To limit human contact, the center asks that if residents bring animals to the station, they leave them in its drop-off carriers on the side of the building and complete the intake form.

But otherwise, work continues. Animals still get hurt and have to be treated and fed. The staff works in a single lab room, separated from their caged patients only by a bedsheet labeled “quiet area.” They chop up the rats to force-feed the birds just a doorway away from the visitors’ entrance.

Sometimes there isn’t much space to separate predators from prey, Boykin said.

“There is a tremendous need for the services we provide,” he said. “There is a tremendous need for space for wildlife in this county.”

In addition, the space on the bay is already vulnerable to storm surge and hurricane winds, Boykin said. During Irma, the staff had to move animals to the hurricane-proof room in the marina. The next home for the sea bird station needed to be stronger, better suited for the next 40 years.

The county has generously leased the center its current space for $300 per year, but it’s just bursting at the seams.

The search for room to grow was long, Boykin said. While offers of space at county parks were generous, most offers had flaws. Haulover Park was too vulnerable to storm surge and Virginia Beach was too close to rowdy music festivals.

Meanwhile, the animals just kept coming. The station is open 365 days a year from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., but the animals arrive at all hours, People arrive at all times of night and day leaving everything from kinkajous to cats and dogs.

And often, good Samaritans are too busy to drop off the wounded animals during the work day, so they send them along in Uber or Lyft rides to the center.

Sometimes, Boykin said, the drivers are thrilled and run in exclaiming, “This is amazing! how do I volunteer here?”

Other times they’re more hostile. A few times, Boykin said, drivers have rejected the rides or buckled the already injured animals into the car seat, injuring them even more.

Most drivers just safely deliver the creatures to their new home.

More patients than room

There are far more animals brought to the dozen or so empty crates outside the center each night than they can handle.

“Word has gotten out that we take all animals,” he laughs.

Boykin was struggling to find space in the city. Then he discovered the plot on the Little River was for sale.

“At one of my lowest points, I came here and walked the property and my hopes soared,” he said. “You don’t see this in Miami.”

Even earlier in time, the river point spot once hosted Tequesta Indians. Their dugout canoes once sat under the historic vegetation of gumbo limbo tree and pond apple trees, Boykin said.

“It’s rare to find property that inspires you. And this property inspires me.”

During a visit, the staff was enchanted by the a ring of trees they named the “three sisters,” the tree canopy running along the property’s border, and the hawks and other animals that had already made the space their home.

“This is our home,” one of the staffers, Stephanie Moure said. “I think you’re right,” Boykin replied.

Right then, the group held a mock groundbreaking for just them with a shovel they found sticking out of a pile of mulch on the property. It was christened.

Despite the confidence Boykin and the rehabbers felt in the site, they lacked one key ingredient in making it happen: the money.

They had less than half of the $2.4 million asking price. The land was already under contract to another buyer, he said. A visit with Mowgli the owl was enough of a sales pitch to convince the seller to give them a chance to come up with the cash.

And they did, thanks to generous donations from The Batchelor Foundation, Terry and Monica Deeks and their children at the Deeks Family Foundation.

The center officially bought the land in January, but they’re still raising the money to build out the facility of their dreams.

Boykin said he hopes others will sponsor individual rooms or help pay for the soundproof walls to shield the recovering animals from the Brightline’s roar as it whizzes by across the bridge abutting the property.

Higher, safer ground

The spot on the Little River is prime elevation, sitting at near 8 feet above sea level. They won’t have to move the wounded animals from their enclosures during hurricanes. And the staff will be much closer if disaster strikes, Boykin said.

“We’re golden.”

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On a mid-afternoon tour of the new location, Boykin stops when he hears the call of an American Kestral, the smallest and most common falcon in North America.

“Wait a minute, I know that call,” Boykin said as he scrambled to pull up a recording on his phone and pointed the smartphone up toward the trees. The pair traded calls back and forth for a few minutes — conversing.

“Isn’t it magical,” Boykin said, looking up at the trees with joyful eyes and waving his arms around in the blue. “There’s good energy here. There is history. What better place to heal wildlife than this?”

There will be more room to separate predators and prey. And so, Boykin also hopes to take in rabies-prone animals and other native species they don’t have room for now.

Boykin imagines a 7,000-square-foot, two-story facility for the recuperating animals and education, with a rooftop terrace to host owl talks at sunset and teach children about hawks.

The staff will (hopefully) have a full floor dedicated to teaching Miamians about wildlife. The floor to ceiling glass windows will look out on a sculpture garden devoted to now-extinct species.

Though they’ve still got a lot of money to raise, Boykin is confident of public support. “In this divided society, the one thing people can get behind is wildlife.”

If you would like to donate to the Pelican Harbor Seabird Station email Christopher Boykin at christopher@pelicanharbor.org.

Miami Herald staff writer Alex Harris contributed to this report.

This story was originally published April 6, 2020 at 6:00 AM.