- [Steve] The Teton Raptor Center in Wilson earned its initial reputation as the place for ill and injured birds of prey to be treated and get well.

Today however, there's a lot more to the TRC than the top-notch bird hospital.

In part two of our visit, we'll meet the groundbreaking researcher who predicts golden eagles will become a landmark species in wildlife science and conservation.

And we'll go inside the breathtaking scene at the Center's rehabilitation, Flight Barn.

I'm Steve Peck of Wyoming PBS.

This is "Wyoming Chronicle."

(lively music) - [Narrator] Funding for "Wyoming Chronicle" is made possible in part by Wyoming Humanities, enhancing the Wyoming narrative to promote engaged communities and improve our quality of life, and by the members of Wyoming PBS.

Thank you for your support.

- [Steve] The Teton Raptor Center in Wilson made its name as a clinic for birds of prey that were ill or injured.

But the Center does more than just nurse the birds back to health.

It rehabilitates and retrains them, often spending months at a time in order not just to mend a bird, but to return it fully healthy to the wild.

When "Wyoming Chronicle" visited Teton Raptor Center, the bird closest to being released to the wild again, was a great horned owl brought to the Center a couple of months earlier, suffering from a broken bone.

Nearing its release date, the owl was being put through its airborne paces at the Center's Flight Barn.

Sheena Patel, director of avian care for the center, tells and shows how it's done.

- That bone was fractured, broken in half, and unfortunately that bird couldn't fly with that injury.

Luckily, the cricoid is a type of fracture that doesn't require surgical intervention, so it can heal naturally on its own.

However, that patient will need cage rest for a minimum of five weeks.

And then eventually we moved her out into this large flight space known as the Flight Barn.

And this is where she lives for the moment.

Essentially, we come out here once a day and encourage this bird to fly back and forth 'cause we want this bird flight conditioning to prepare for life in the wild.

I can encourage her to kind of fly towards this other perch that's up here.

And typically the best way that we do that is we just walk towards the patient and that alone encourages them to fly.

She'll probably go from that perch, and then we'll do the same thing.

And this process is repeated multiple times, and that just allows them to have multiple sets of flight conditioning throughout the day.

I want this bird to have a very strong fear response towards humans 'cause it will be going out to the wild.

So the fact that when I approach my presence alone encourages this bird to fly is a really good sign for a wild owl, especially a young one like this.

If this were an education ambassador and I walk towards them, the last thing I would want them to do is for them to fly away the second that they see me and become afraid.

And so with this bird, the goal essentially is my presence alone will encourage this bird to fly.

And of course some birds need a little bit more to get them to go, so we can kind of clap.

And the coolest thing, they are silent flyers, there's no sound.

So your cameras, even if this bird had a microphone on it right now, would have very minimal sound coming off of those wing beats because of their silent flight.

Unlike a hawk, unlike a falcon, when you go watch those film clips and footage of Pava, you'll hear every single wing beat when you re-watch those.

So pretty cool that they have silent flight, and that just helps to aid them in their sit and pounce mentality when they're out hunting - [Steve] The bird Sheena Patel just mentioned, a hawk named Pava, lives indoors at the TRC, in a facility the staff calls, "The Dorm."

Those birds aren't being rehabilitated for release into the wild.

They are the stars of the TRC, the permanent Raptor ambassadors used for education and public programming.

While Patel prepares Pava to meet Wyoming Chronicle, Raptor Center senior trainer and education coordinator, Anna Tobin, tells the bird's story.

- Pava is a Swainson's hawk.

She's around three years old.

She came to us after being hit by a car.

Car collisions is the number one reason we get birds in our rehab besides window collisions.

And so she came in with torticollis.

Her head was twisted and stuck to the side.

She was partially temporarily paralyzed on the side of her body.

And with every single raptor that comes into our care, our goal is to get them back into the wild where they're meant to be.

Now, our rehab team is phenomenal.

They were able to get her to what's called cosmetically perfect, meaning physically, you cannot tell there's anything wrong with her.

But unfortunately, Pava was left blind in one eye.

And that is a very common injury that could potentially qualify for education.

So every bird that comes into education, as Sheena was talking about, we have to determine that they are pain-free and as stress-free as possible.

Just because they come into education does not mean that they're no longer wild animals.

And so when they're working with us in education, we are working every single day to ensure that they have the highest welfare possible.

Sheena was talking about choice, choice is a huge part of welfare.

It is what can increase a relationship.

And so what you saw in this moment was Sheena was actually putting on Pava's gear.

This gear is for safety purposes.

Pava's defense and her weapons are her feet.

And so to allow Sheena to touch around her feet, to put this gear on, it takes an incredible amount of trust.

And so Sheena has worked with Pava for thousands of hours to develop this relationship.

And so Sheena will put on gear for her, she'll clip her in, and then Sheena becomes the most beautiful perch that Pava would ever sit on.

Pava is one of our go-to offsite birds.

Offsite's pretty tough.

A raptor may establish a territory and spend their entire life in that territory.

And so when we're taking a raptor out of its territory, it's enclosure, taking them somewhere else where there's a variety of factors that aren't necessarily able to be controlled at any given point, that can be potentially scary and stressful.

And so we work with them to build up that resilience and to build up that relationship.

- [Steve] Like the other captive raptors in the education program, Pava's injuries weren't severe enough to kill her, thanks in large part to the care she received at the Raptor Center.

But they were severe enough to erode her chances of long-term survival in the wild.

- Her chances in the wild would be severely impacted and that is why she did not return into the wild.

Forward-facing eyes allow us to experience depth perception, to tell how far something is from us.

Swainson's hawks actually migrate down to Argentina in the fall and winter.

And so that means that they're undertaking upwards of a 6,000 mile journey.

And in this process, their diet switches totally over to grasshoppers in Argentina.

And so if you're a few inches off when you're hunting a grasshopper, it's not gonna wait for you.

So you can see the feathers under her beak are slightly relaxed.

The feathers around her body are slightly relaxed, she's kind of tucked her wings in.

We're entering what I affectionately call, and this is not a technical term, her potato neck mode, which means she has no neck, she's turning into a big potato.

And so that is all indicating that despite all this camera equipment up close to all these strangers that we have done a really good job training her, and she's feeling very comfortable with all of these novel situations.

And she knows that her boundaries will be respected.

- [Steve] Well done.

- [Anna] She does it, she does it all.

- She's a star.

- She is great.

She's what we strive to have for all of our ambassadors.

But not every bird can do everything.

Pava is just a superstar.

- A superstar, yeah.

- Yeah!

- [Steve] Other big birds available for Wyoming Chronicles afternoon at the TRC included Aura, a two-year-old Turkey vulture who is imprinted by humans and now has no fear of us.

That makes her good for educational programming, but unsuitable for life on her own.

- [Anna] So she can walk around on the ground, she can do flights, and we use her for a lot of different behind-the-scenes programs.

Turkey vultures are so incredibly smart.

- [Steve] The longest tenured resident of the Dorm is Gus, a 19-year-old golden eagle who has lived virtually his entire life at TRC.

Unable to fly because of a wing injury, Gus hops around the hallway energetically, always interested in checking out who's there and what's going on.

- [Anna] Gus actually came to us about 19 years ago.

He's 19 years old.

He's also heavily molting.

So you can see kind of some of the feathers above his right eye are in that molting process too.

And he actually has a wing injury that prevents him from being fully flighted.

Though he can't fly, he makes a great educational ambassador 'cause he also runs around this hallway space.

He'll run back and forth up and down the hallway, exploring and doing things that a natural bird would do.

So this is kind of his hallway exploration time.

- [Steve] Gus is a headliner in the TRCs educational programming, and golden eagles also are a primary focus of the Center's renowned research on birds of prey.

Bryan Bedrosian is TRCs conservation director, and his work has led to valuable advancements in eagle protections.

- I've been close to 10 years now at Teton Raptor Center.

And it has really facilitated this huge growth in the research and conservation work that I've been involved with.

And you know, providing that space and that entity, and the freedom to really understand what's going on and chase down the things that we need to for conservation has been phenomenal.

And now, we're emerging as one of the world leaders in Raptor research and conservation.

- I noted that in the previous 10 years of my career as a newspaper man, one of the top wildlife topics in all of Wyoming, really across the West was the sage-grouse.

And lots of research done, lots of political things done, industry things done, government things done, legal things done, and certainly not completely resolved.

But some things have been resolved and progress was made.

You told me that you thought another bird could become the new sage-grouse in the years to come.

What are you talking about?

- Yeah, and you know, let's be honest, not a lot of people are gonna like that statement, but you know, I think we are seeing some significant issues in conservation with golden eagles.

And just like sage-grouse, we have a disproportionately high responsibility for golden eagles in the West because we have arguably what is the best golden eagle habitat in the Western U.S. where golden eagles have their stronghold.

And you know, we're starting to see population declines.

At best, they're stable.

When people think about eagles, they often think about bald eagles, which is one of our best success stories in conservation in the U.S., and frankly, the world.

But unfortunately golden eagles aren't on that upward trajectory like balds are.

And we're seeing an increased number of threats to their population, which is, that's the concerning part.

- What particular to modern times are the threats to the golden eagle is you're finding?

- It's not just one thing.

- Yeah.

- There's a whole host of issues that golden eagles have.

But the newest piece that's on on the table now is all the wind development that we have and that we're seeing the increase in wind generation across Wyoming.

And where you have good wind for wind power generation, you also have eagles 'cause the eagles love those updrafts, they love the wind, they love the topography we have, and we've got great prey and jackrabbits and cottontails.

- Sure.

- And you know, when you have the apex predator of the world, they've never once in their whole evolutionary history had to look over their shoulder 'cause no one's coming for 'em when they're in the sky.

And so, you know, those blades are turning at 180 miles an hour at the tips and you know, they're flying through at those updrafts just like where the turbines are, and oftentimes they get hit, and you know, generally speaking, you know, it's a cause of mortality.

- And so your position, I don't mean you as an individual specifically, but the position of those eagle researchers and conservations.

So it's not that you're anti wind energy?

- Absolutely not.

We need, you know, to diversify our energy, we need to diversify our income in the state.

It's not anti wind, it's just right place, right time.

And there's a huge difference between putting a wind farm here or putting a wind farm 50 miles away.

And it's all about understanding where those key areas are for golden eagles so we can avoid them in the first place.

And in the areas where we can't or wind farms already are, and there's some conflicts, find the opportunities where we can offset those mortalities with great mitigation options, and then also putting the resources for that mitigation.

So power pole retrofits, removing roadkill, in areas where you're gonna have the greatest bang for your buck.

And so we do a ton here on mapping those critical habitats, mapping those key migration corridors so that industry and other folks can say, "Okay, this is a really good area for eagles.

Maybe let's, you know, avoid this, and move over a little bit."

- That's an important point, I think, because my feeling is that industry is on board with this as well.

They know what industry wants to be known as killer of eagles, nobody does.

And working with you and you working with them, finding ways to improve the situation.

- 100%, and I think that's one of the gems about being in Wyoming.

You know, I've had the great fortune of working here as a avian researcher for over 20 years now.

And it's the smallness of our community and the vastness of our state, it creates an opportunity for great partnerships.

And I think that's one of the amazing things that Teton Raptor Center has really excelled at, is creating those partnerships, whether it's with agencies or the state or industry or landowners, and working together to find solutions, because we all love wildlife here, we're all here for the wildlife, and no one, as you say, no one wants to see an eagle die or suffer.

And finding those creative solutions that work for everybody.

that's the most important thing.

- True, a point that I've enjoyed talking about with other guests on Wyoming Chronicle is that in a time when it seems there's a lot of divisiveness and there are a lot of things keeping people apart, wildlife is something that can bring people of lots of different ideologies, political persuasions, education levels, income levels.

It's a unifier isn't it, or it can be?

- Yes, it can be, absolutely.

I think it can be something that brings us together.

And I'm glad you bring that up because if I may, I've got a great example of one of the projects we're working on here at the Raptor Center that does just that.

It brings the diverse communities together, it brings a conversation that used to be divided back together.

And that is with ammunition and using lead-free ammunition.

And so what we've found with our studies over the past 15 years is that when hunters go out and use a traditional lead-based bullet, you know, something you'd pull off the shelf at any normal sporting goods store, as it passes through that animal, the bullet as it expands, releases hundreds and hundreds of tiny microscopic little fragments of lead.

Not something that you or I would feel when we're eating it or butchering it, but when the gut piles left in the field for the birds, the eagles come down and feed on that, and inadvertently pick up a couple of those little pieces.

- Why is this one circled then?

- So that's it.

So if an eagle metabolizes just that much lead, that's enough to kill it.

- Oh boy.

- And so we found here, you know, just in Western Wyoming, 2/3 of our eagles during the hunting season have high lead, 1/3 will have poison levels.

And the beauty of it is, is by handing out hunters using lead-free bullets, they're making a real difference.

And so even in one year when I handed out non-lead ammo for free- - You handed it out where?

- At Grand Teton National Park and the National Elk Refuge.

So for the hunters there.

Nice closed system 'cause there's no hunting outside of that, and so it makes for a nice natural experiment.

The first year right around 23, 24% of hunters took advantage of our free ammo and used it, and we saw a perfect correlation between the eagle lead levels dropping that same amount.

The next year, same thing.

So we know it works, and we know that every individual that makes a choice to go lead-free is good for the birds.

But it's also good for our sporting community.

I'm a huge hunter, I've hunted, you know, elk for the past 20 years.

And like you say, it's one of those issues where if people don't understand it, they can think it's a, you know, animal people versus hunter people.

But it's not, it's us doing the right thing because we're the original conservationists.

This is another, you know, badge of honor that we can wear and help wildlife at the same time.

So I think it's one of, again, wildlife being one of those unifiers.

- And you're finding the hunting community is increasingly responsive to this, feeling more positive about it now than a generation ago.

- Oh 100, even five, 10 years ago it was really hard to have this conversation, where now you know, we're working very closely with Wyoming Game and Fish Department, with a lot of our organizations in the state like the Wildlife Fund, and Muley Fanatic Foundation.

And really coming together to support the message of, "Hey, you know, we don't need any more regulations or, you know, rules against this.

We can do this with education and as a community ourselves."

- That strikes me as another potential unifying force too.

I always said that the last thing anyone would want would be for an animal to be listed as endangered.

'Cause it means everything else has failed to that point.

- Yeah.

- And if you could avoid that from no matter which approach you take, probably better for everybody, including the critter.

- 100%, it's always better to be proactive than reactive.

It's cheaper, it's more effective, better for us, 'cause we don't have all these added, you know, issues that we have to deal with, and better for the birds frankly.

- What are some of the other things we have on the table here helping you in your eagle research?

- Yeah, so we do a lot of eagle research and we do research on owls and hawks as well.

A lot of what we do is tracking the animals.

And so this is an example of a transmitter that we're using on golden eagles.

So this is a little bit larger, but it's cool 'cause it's solar powered- - Solar panel there, yeah.

- Yep, and so this can last up to 10 years and give us data remotely for up to 10 years.

And the crazy thing about this, this tiny little thing can give us one second location data on eagles.

- Wow.

- On the map, you can actually watch it go up in a thermal and come down and go to a nester or go after prey.

The sophistication of the sensors in this is awesome.

And what that's allowing us to do is map where those critical habitats are so we can avoid them, and also understand where our conservation efforts and dollars will have the greatest benefit for the birds.

- One of the things that we learned earlier in our tour today is that, and that brings me the point of the 10-year useful span of this equipment is that we're talking about a bird that could be alive 10 years from now if we're helpful.

So they certainly can be, these are long lives.

- Golden eagles so live up to 30 years.

- 30 years- - Or even over.

- Yeah.

- And so that's why conservation of eagles is so tough too, because when, you know, an eagle has to essentially be alive for 10 years and reproduce just to replace itself.

They don't breed until they're five.

At best, they have one chick every three years, and half of those are gonna not make it.

So those long-live species are the really big challenges for conservation.

But that's one of the beauties of the Rapture Center and working here for a long time is those long-term studies.

- And so a transmitter that can run on solar power and is also pretty tough, obviously, just a huge tool for you.

- Absolutely.

- How do you get the bird to wear this thing?

- So we put...

It sits like a backpack.

So this will sit on the back of the bird, and as it flies that's when it'll charge.

And this is Teflon-coated ribbon, so it's super slick, so it's non-abrasive.

And I stitch in this little elastic just for a little extra comfort.

And then the other thing we do is all four of these things, so it'll sit on the chest of the bird and two will go over the wings and two will go under the wings and attach to the transmitter.

And in the front, all four of these pieces are stitched together with just a couple cotton threads.

And so after three, four, or five years, the bird can pick away at this and it'll finally end up falling off.

We can recover it, refurbish it, reuse it, 'cause these are- - 'Cause it tells you where it is.

- It tells us where it is, and these things are about 2 or $3,000 a piece.

So we wanna be able to recover it and reuse it if we can.

And as we just mentioned, a golden eagle can live for 30 years, and I'd hate for it to have hardware on it that's not functioning, you know, it's not good for the bird.

And so it's a all around win-win with this kind of breakaway system that we've pioneered.

- And you don't mind it, that's interesting.

Well, that might fall off, it would be the thing that I would think.

Well, that's the idea eventually.

- Yeah, yeah, I mean if we can get five years worth of data from a animal, I think that's pretty solid.

- Great.

- Yeah.

- Now here's some stuff I think is more familiar maybe to the the layman.

- Yeah.

So these are examples of bands that we put on the legs of the birds.

These are sized for golden eagles, and this so the size seven, so that would be like a red-tailed hawk size.

So each bird we tag, and we've banded thousands of raptors now across the state.

Will all have a unique identifier.

So if it's found in Mexico or Yukon, somebody can call that number on it and they'll let me know where it was found.

And then more recently, you know, we use a lot of these color bands.

And so if somebody's out with a trail cam or a camera and sees a bird with any type of color band, all they'd have to do is call us up and we can give 'em the details of where it was at and get that data as well.

- You've had your hands on a lot of raptors.

What's that like?

- It's unbelievable, I have the best job in the world.

Yeah, to be up and close with an eagle is just like...

It's like they're like looking into your souls.

- Are they... - Awesome?

- Are they combative when they're being held this way?

Are they... - We have these falconry hoods that we put over the eyes of the birds.

Once you do that, they're super calm.

- Yeah.

- I wouldn't say they're docile.

You know, you never want to let go of the feet 'cause that's where the sharp bits are.

But once you cover their eyes, they're pretty calm.

I work with species like goshawks.

They're our largest forest raptor.

They are very aggressive.

I have been hit in the head and the shoulders and the arms climbing trees by goshawks- - And you came back to work the next day anyway.

- Yeah, I mean, call me a masochist, but I love it.

- Viewers of Wyoming Chronicle recognize this question I'm about to ask.

As a little boy, were you thinking, "One day I want to study golden eagles?"

What is the training and work and life path that got you sitting here?

- Yeah, couldn't be further from my mind.

- Really.

- I grew up outside of Chicago.

To put it in context, I was the first person in both sides of my extended family to ever really camp.

- To camp.

- Yeah.

Birds were not my thing.

I didn't even want to go to college.

I wanted to be a mechanic.

But just through, you know, random choices in life, I ended up at a college in Wisconsin where there was a professor studying Cooper's hawks.

And one day I was just walking down the street, he pulls up in his old Subaru, and he says, "Hey, you want to go catch a goshawk?"

And I was like, "I'm not sure what that is, but the answer is yes."

And I get in, and I'm sitting next to a live great horned owl, I'm like, "Whoa, okay, this is something."

And we go to the goshawk nest and he puts the owl down and immediately the female goshawk comes in to attack the owl, gets caught in the net he set up.

And I said to myself at that particular time, I was like, "This is what I'm gonna do with the rest of my life."

- What was your professor's name, do you remember?

- Yeah, it was Bob Rosenfield.

- Bob Rosenfield?

- Mm-hmm.

- What was the school?

- University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point.

- Mm!

- Yeah.

And so I, like many, came out to Wyoming for a summer following my then girlfriend, now wife, and stayed for the rest of my life.

- You're kidding.

Avian field biologist, Roger Smith and Margaret Creel, founded the Teton Raptor Center in 1991, and Smith remains with the center today, now with the title Chief Mission Officer.

He remembers not only when the center was founded, but why, and he makes sure that original inspiration isn't lost on the newer, younger staff.

Why not the Teton Duck Center, or Robin Center, or Chickadee Center?

- To be quite honest, these are birds that are truly telling a story of our world today, of our human-built environment, and have been for hundreds of years.

And so if you're really intrigued with a puzzle of how the humans are and how birds are interacting with their environment and how we're interacting with it, these birds more than others are gonna tell us that.

If you can explore and get a little window into their lives, it only creates this real deep sense of not just accomplishment, but we're really trying to contribute.

What's happening is really hard to see.

We're in our day-to-day lives, but if you step out of it like we are as scientists and looking at these birds, in particular, the raptor species, the bird of prey, they're truly a window into, you know, how we can take knowledge and turn it into some sort of real meaningful change if it's needed.

we're just focused about that, you know, we're really trying to say this is our lane, but yet we want to distribute that information to a bigger global community.