WingBeat! Help Us Finish Our Flight Enclosure!

Tony Heath is organizing this fundraiser to benefit Madrean Archipelago Wildlife Center.

Tax deductible

Birdland Ranch (top right)

Monarch Butterfly and Mount Lemmon Marigold, Birdland, November 2021

INTRODUCTION TO THE FUNDRAISER

Please contribute to the Madrean Archipelago Wildlife Center (MAWC) in completing the construction of an avian flight and re-conditioning enclosure. The enclosure requires doors and interior wooden slats installed over the shade cloth to prevent the birds from “walking” up and getting caught on the cloth, as well as preventing wing injuries. Shade cloth needs to be installed over the wooden ceiling joists to prevent the birds from perching in the rafters. Please watch the film, "Owl Always Love You", to view the interior of the enclosure and the owlets we successfully released in June 2021.

The interior walls require 1" x 3" x 10' wood slats vertically installed over the shade cloth. This will provide protection, safeguard the birds from wing injuries, and not damage the shade cloth. To see this enclosure completed would be of immense benefit to birds that need a safe, quiet, secluded setting to heal and/or gain the strength and skills necessary to survive in this ever-changing and challenging environment.

ABOUT BIRDLAND RANCH

MAWC is helping wildlife by restoring and preserving Birdland Ranch, a remote wildlife area and biodiversity hotspot, home locally to 150 bird species (and counting), endangered top predators, neotropical birds and more, in a rich ecosystem. Wildlife support infrastructure includes an extensive cavity nest box trail helping threatened species, rehabilitation and release sites, habitat restoration, citizen science and water collection.

The Huachuca Mountains are one range in a rare inland archipelago of ranges. Located in the southwest United States and northern Mexico the mountains are referred to as "sky islands,” concentrations of biodiversity "rising up" and surrounded by lower deserts.

Birdland's part of the Huachucas has been designated by the U. S. Government as “critical habitat” for the jaguar, referring to designated habitat critically necessary for the return of America’s top predator to its historic northern range in the Southwest United States. In recent years a jaguar was photographed within 7 miles of the property. Their presence would be very beneficial to the food chain and to the local ecology of our region. It would also be an outstanding achievement for North America and the United States.

Successfully nominated for inclusion by MAWC's co-founders, the Huachuca Mountains were designated an "Important Bird Area" (IBA) by the National Audubon Society in 2003. The ranch is home to rare Trogons, Yellow-billed Cuckoos, Gray Hawks, Lesser Long-nosed Bats, Hummingbirds, and more.

Birdland Ranch is not developed because the owners, instead, insisted on protecting a rare spot crucial to wildlife and not necessarily to people. They plan to continue their legacy in a conservation easement, or ideally… the establishment of a wildlife refuge within the surrounding Coronado National Forest from which Birdland would be a protected part and destination.

Setting aside open land and land stewardship is the ideal thing private landowners of open space can do to combat climate change and slow down extinction. The owners of Birdland planted 50 trees when they moved to the ranch 25 years ago.

Water troughs for wildlife (since 1997)

Free copy on request.

ABOUT MADREAN ARCHIPELAGO WILDLIFE CENTER

MAWC is a registered 501(c)(3), 100% volunteer-run nonprofit, operated by Kate Scott and Tony Heath, owners of Birdland Ranch. They live modestly in a small historic structure on the property which includes their offices.

“Our mission is to build pathways of compassionate coexistence between people and wildlife in the Madrean Archipelago ecoregion through wildlife advocacy, education, conservation, and wildlife rehabilitation.” –Kate Scott (co-founder)

MAWC is continually evolving as an organization. It started with remote wildlife rehabilitation. Today Birdland has a small outside enclosure for temporary husbandry and housing and an unfinished flight enclosure for reconditioning and release. Overseeing the ranch, MAWC underwrites bird breeding and research on the property with over thirty surrogate nest boxes.

GRATITUDE TO THE PEOPLE

Thanks in advance for your contribution to this cause. It means the world to MAWC, as well as to countless numbers of Americans who hallow the natural environment as we do and want to protect it. Wild creatures need unspoiled lands and water which Birdland Ranch has been committed to providing since 1997.

Every day MAWC is a Voice for Wildlife to educate the public through community outreach events and campaigns utilizing art, music, photography, filmmaking, publishing, public appearances, social media, letters to the editor, etc.

Kate Scott and Tony Heath work solely as volunteers and receive no financial remuneration from MAWC. For more information on Kate Scott & Tony Heath, Madrean Archipelago Wildlife Center, or Birdland Ranch, please contact us at [email redacted].

For more films from MAWC Media, including a six-part series on the Border Wall, www.YouTube.com/@MadreanArchipelagoFilms

www.Facebook.com/MadreanWildlifeCenter

www.Twitter.com/madreanwildlife

www.Instagram.com/madreanmotherwild

STAYED TUNED FOR MORE PICTURES.

All Photographs on Birdland Ranch © T Heath 1997-2021

The Madrean Archipelago Wildlife Center is open to the public, by invitation only.