Today we’d like to introduce you to Rebecca Duerr.
Hi Rebecca, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
I started out working with wildlife back in 1988 at The Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito, CA. Working there first as a volunteer and later as staff exposed me to the challenges faced by wildlife, and how the wild animals that find their way into human care (by being rescued in distress) really are a window into what is happening in the environment as a whole. After working at several other terrestrial wildlife hospitals, I gradually shifted my focus away from marine mammals to birds, which are endlessly fascinating. Eventually I decided to go back to school and head for becoming a wildlife veterinarian. Over the past three decades I have become specialized as a veterinarian and researcher working on seabirds and other waterbirds, which is a pretty perfect mix of my interests in the ocean, marine life, and birds.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
I was a late blooming nerd. I went to college for 4 years right out of high school but didn’t graduate. I didn’t really know what I wanted to do and was headed for a lame degree in Interdisciplinary Studies – anthropology, linguistics, and studio art. I moved to California and got a job working for a jeweler. In 1996, I spent most of a year using my art skills to make science fiction hand props for movies and TV at a company in Culver City, first making armor for Starship Troopers, then worked on several other projects (Deep Space 9, Star Trek VIII, 1st Austin Powers, Spawn..). But as cool as that year was, I really missed working with wild animals. When I was finally ready to go back to school, I completed 4 degrees after the age of 30: first a BS in marine biology at San Francisco State University, then DVM, MPVM, and PhD degrees at UC Davis, with the graduate degrees allowing me to dig into my questions on starvation and recovery from starvation in wild birds.
The roughest part of my professional journey was the time after I had graduated from veterinary school and was working at International Bird Rescue (IBR) as the part time vet for their Bay Area center while working on my PhD. IBR operates two wildlife centers, one in the Bay Area and one in LA. Their LA vet moved to Alaska and the idea was floated for me to commute between the centers to be the vet at both centers, which meant upping to full time. This offer was impossible to turn down since it was exactly what I was after, but it was a few years early. It meant I simultaneously had a FT job with 50% of it involving travel several times a month while finishing the PhD requirements, writing my dissertation, and teaching a class on avian physiology at UC Davis all at the same time. To top it off, a family member had a medical problem that took my attention as well. Fitting all that together was a bit of a challenge to say the least. The traveling between the centers wasn’t intended to be a permanent solution, but it has worked out surprisingly well. I’ve been traveling back and forth since 2011, although as I get older the nonstop travel is becoming more of a challenge. We’re hoping to add a second vet soon.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
In my current position at IBR, which I have held for 15+ years, I am not only a clinical vet performing medical and surgical care of wild avian patients, but I also have my hands in various research projects spanning topics from toxicology to virology, to anatomy and physiology, to surgical techniques to repair certain injuries, to post-release studies of how rehabilitated wild animals do after release. Ultimately, I am using wildlife rehabilitation as a window into the goings-on in the environment, investigating the specific medical problems of different species, and aiming to do whatever I can to ensure the survival of wild species into the future. Even though Los Angeles is in many ways a concrete jungle with limited green spaces for wild animals to exist within, if you know where to look, the city has rich diversity of wildlife both living here as residents and as visitors passing through on seasonal migrations.
There are two parts of my job that give me the most satisfaction. First, I enjoy the detective work of figuring out a big picture ramification related to our daily work caring for animals. For example, I had a suspicion that a commonly used ‘safe’ medication was potentially lethal to pelicans so I lowered the dose and duration we used it in our clinics long ago. After many years of being just one person with an opinion that it was a problem, we completed and published a research study that showed that it was indeed likely harmful to pelicans because they don’t excrete the drug like other bird species do. I was recently contacted by a wildlife rehabilitator in Australia whose veterinarian had quoted our paper about the subject as a reason to not use the drug on their injured Australian pelicans, which gives me assurance that the information is being received into the right hands to prevent other vets from unintentionally injuring pelicans, worldwide. Secondly, I love having the opportunity to repair a lethally-wounded bird that has been directly hurt by humans and see it returned to the wild healthy and vigorous for a second chance at life; even better, to receive a resighting report on that bird going about its life years later. Facial reconstruction surgery for critically injured wild birds is my favorite surgery to perform. At IBR we have the privilege of repairing the wild waterbirds of California that have been injured by fishing gear (which is a HUGE problem), or have been hit by cars, or shot, or lack natural habitat to raise their babies and run into trouble within our cities, or have become oiled, or have other problems derived from cohabiting with people. We leg band all our former patients before release so we get a lot of feedback on what works well and what doesn’t, and this sometimes even includes photographs of a wing or a leg or a beak I surgically repaired.
I also do 25-30 lectures and other speaking or teaching events to academic, veterinary, wildlife rehabilitation, and general public audiences annually, both nationally and internationally. I think people who work on wildlife health issues enjoy my talks because I try to be careful to ‘find the level of the room’ and not talk over or under the heads of the audience. As a former college dropout who started as a volunteer in a science field, then worked my way up to being a DVM/PhD surgeon and researcher, I have tried to maintain my ability to talk to anyone with any of those levels of knowledge. I feel very strongly that complicated subjects can be explained to anyone who is interested, the explainer just needs to start at a different place with someone with zero background than with another expert in the field.
If we knew you growing up, how would we have described you?
I was a quiet kid, and my family was heavily into music and art. Each of us kids had to pick a string instrument and a woodwind, plus piano, so I played violin and later viola, piano, flute/piccolo, plus spent a year playing base for the school jazz band, and sang in all the choirs. Summers were spent building treehouses and spending time at our lake cabin reading books while paddling around the lake on an inflatable chair or playing games with my sister. I took all the art classes I could, although gravitated towards 3D media like ceramics and metalsmithing, 2D artwork such as painting was definitely not my thing. The art background definitely was a big help in being a bird surgeon. There are lots of the same skills involved, like fine motor skills and the ability to visualize three dimensional shapes and how disparate pieces can come together. Dealing with so many trauma cases in my avian medicine career has turned me into kind of a ‘flesh tailor’. We joke at IBR that one of the things we excel at is ‘pelican reassembly’ after a bird has suffered devastating injuries.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.birdrescue.org
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/intbirdrescue/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/intbirdrescue
- Twitter: https://x.com/IntBirdRescue
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/SavingSeabirds
- Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@intbirdrescue
Image Credits
All images courtesy of International Bird Rescue
