Bird health at the Sea has improved over the past four years, in part, because of a cooperative effort between the Authority, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Health Center.

This cooperative effort is built around daily patrols on the Sea, looking for sick birds. Trained personnel aboard airboats identify birds in the early stages of illnesses, capture them, take them to rehabilitation facilities and once they have recovered return them to the wild.

This approach has reduced the spread of disease among the large and varied flocks of birds at the Sea.

Since 1996, more than 5,000 pelicans, both endangered California brown and American white, have been retrieved alive but sick from the Salton Sea and sent to rehabilitation facilities.

• Once retrieved from the Sea, the birds are sent to the emergency facility at the Sonny Bono Salton Sea National Wildlife Refuge.

• The birds are then sent to one of four rehabilitation centers before being released into the wild.

When the effort began in 1996, very few of the birds survived. In 2001, about 75 percent of the sick birds were successfully rehabilitated. Construction of flight pens should increase those percentages to 85 to 90 percent.

Rescued birds are first brought to an emergency facility at the Sonny Bono Salton Sea National Wildlife Refuge. They are then sent to one of four rehabilitation centers: the Coachella Valley Wild Bird Center in Indio, Sea World in San Diego, Wetlands for Wildlife Care Center in Huntington Beach or the Pacific Wildlife Project in Irvine. Nearly $200,000 has been contributed to the program by the Salton Sea Authority.

State funding in the amount of $500,000 is also allocated through the Authority to support California's Department of Fish and Game's wildlife response program.

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