Saskatoon animal rehab centre takes in abnormal number of injured pelicans

A Saskatoon animal rehab centre faced a unique situation over the Labour Day long weekend: It had to care for four injured pelicans.

“It has been many years since we had our last pelican,” said Jan Shadick, the executive director at Living Sky Wildlife Rehab in Saskatoon. “One is generally considered fairly unusual, so four is just extraordinary at this point.”

According to Shadick, the first two pelicans were brought to the centre from separate places. They had been picked up by some volunteers.

“We had two (pelicans) come in at once from two different places,” she said.

Shadick noted that all of the injured pelicans have different stories.

She said the first one that was brought to them appeared to have suffered several gunshot wounds, but she couldn’t confirm that as there wasn’t any metal fragments found after a radiograph.

Shadick said the other one didn’t have anything structurally broken, but rather was already emaciated and thin.

As the centre’s staff was caring for those two birds, they got a third pelican that had a wing injury and was emaciated. The fourth pelican came from out of town and was also very thin.

Shadick mentioned pelicans are usually hard birds to bring down, which is why this situation is so unusual.

While they were all injured in the Saskatoon area, Shadick doesn’t believe the incidents and injuries were related.

“I’m going to assume this is just one very large coincidence,” she explained.

“It seems like sometimes when we get one thing in of a particularly special species like a pelican that people start to pay attention to those animals in the wild and realize some of them are in trouble and they end up coming into care.

“It’s kind of like when you buy a new car and realize how many of that same kind are on the road.”

As of Tuesday afternoon, one of the injured pelicans had died. The other three were still recovering at the rehab centre.

Shadick is asking for the public to help as the formula to help the pelicans recover is very expensive. A GoFundMe page has been launched to help fundraising efforts.