A Conversation with Leonard J. Soucy
Jr. D.Sc.,
Founder of the Raptor Trust
Len and his wife Diane have devoted the last thirty years to
the care of sick and injured birds, particularly birds of prey. They got into
this without any special training in veterinary medicine or ornithology. By
trade Len is a tool and die maker. For the first fifteen years, he and his wife
funded the entire operation out of their own pockets--the purchase of the material
for cages, medical supplies and food. In the early days they caught fish and
collected dead frogs off the road in order to feed injured herons. That would
no longer be possible. As he says, the amphibian populations are just not there.
His organization, The Raptor Trust, now treats over three thousand birds a year
and has an annual budget of $300,000 which is donated by four to five thousand
individuals and foundations. Fifty thousand people a year now visit the aviary
in what was originally his backyard. One spring day we sat back there and Len
shared his story.
When my wife and I were first married, thirty-nine years ago, we travelled a
little bit. One of the places we had read about, I think in an old Audubon magazine,
was a place in Pennsylvania called the Hawk Mountain Sanctuary, where in the
fall, if the hawk gods were kind to you, you could see tens of thousands of
predatory birds in migration.
I had read about migration and birds and hawks and whatever, but it didn't really
register until I visited Hawk Mountain. We were going to stay a day but we were
astounded by the spectacle. That first day, I think we saw twenty thousand hawks.
It was in September and the broad wings were migrating. We also saw Sharp-shin
Hawks and Cooper's Hawks and an eagle. It kind of fractured our minds. That
single event changed our lives. It led us to get serious about raptors--watching
them, banding and doing basic research. A short while later an injured Red-Tailed
Hawk wound up on our doorstep. Someone in the neighborhood knew that we were
bird people and without saying anything just left it for us. That's pretty much
how we got started. We wanted to do what we could.
But early on we figured out that if we are going to have a real impact it wasn't
going to be because I fixed five hundred Red-Tailed Hawks in my life, and put
them back into the wild, which I have, and probably considerably more than that,
come to think of it. The real answer is convincing people that what a hawk needs,
we need. A good environment for a hawk is a good environment for your kid. Good
clean air, good clean water.
Telling people what to do, of course, doesn't work. Doing it by example doesn't
work worth a damn either, but a little better. We've chosen the little bit that
we are able to do. Maybe change a few opinions along the way. I think we have,
quite honestly, showed through a humane example how important it is to care.
That's important. Even if it weren't important, I would still do it, because
I chose personally, and the people here chose to do it that way. I hope it does
some good. I've been working at this for thirty years, and things just keep
getting worse. A lot worse. But you can't let that stop you. Trying and falling
on your ass is nothing to be ashamed of. You should be ashamed if you don't
try. Things might be even worse if we, and others like us, weren't trying.
So we have put a lot of effort in the last ten or fifteen years into education--when
people's minds are malleable--when they're young. That's who we want to talk
to. Now we now have two full-time teachers and a classroom to talk to the kids
who come here to see the birds. Three educational programs today were given
to literally hundreds of kids--in one day. And we've talked to millions of them.
I have and we have collectively. About a world we know really well, that we
are sympathetic to, and that other people--inner city kids and others--don't
know at all.
When I go to a third grade class and sit an owl on the table, I say, `Look at
this magnificent thing. You don't have to be afraid of it. You don't have to
be afraid of anything in this world, except your own kind, unfortunately. Life
on this planet that we all co-inhabit, that sustains us, is stable because it
is made up of many, many different plants and animals. They are all important
to the stability of the whole. When one element disappears, we are all more
vulnerable.
`This world is truly intricate, truly marvelous. A really, really interesting,
diverse, beautiful place to have visited for a short time. Some of us get more
out of it than others. Some try to get to get more out of it than others....I
think you should make a conscientious effort to try. To be nosy. To look and
to marvel. And not only to look but to see. Not only listen but hear on all
different levels. It is indeed a marvelous world. Part of what makes it marvelous
is our own kind. Part of what makes it incredibly marvelous to me are other
than our own kind. It is important biologically to have them, but it's also
important for my quality of life. I would not want to live in a world that had
only people in it. I need snakes and frogs and creepy, crawly things and marvelous
birds that can fly two hundred miles an hours and free my spirit....
