The Animal Rehabilitator's ALliance Story - Part - IV | Animal Rehabilitators Alliance of New Jersey

The Animal Rehabilitator’s Alliance Story – Part III

September 17th, 2009 |

Continuing on ….

I started this project to build the caging area in 2001. I still had my State permit to rehabilitate wild birds. The construction lead into the following year on which I had a Federal Permit that the State of NJ signed off on which was food thru 12/31/02. The permit was to rehabilitate wild injured birds.

The State of NJ would not renew the State permit which expired 12/31/01. Their excuse was I never trained under their program to receive it, and then the excuses changed as time went on. The person which denied my State Permit was Steve Toth. (Head Biologist). Steve had 2 exterminating companies in North Jersey. He would provide a service in which towns phone him and ask him to exterminate geese, deer, etc. pretty much anything. Since he was one of the heads in NJ Fish & Game he could approve the destruction of the animals. He would send one of his companies out to do the job. It cost the towns thousands of dollars. If the town insisted on another company for the job, Steve’s company was to receive a percentage as a “finder’s fee”.

One of the jobs called for the destruction of about 30 Canadian Geese. The animal rehabilitators up north heard of the problem and went to the area where the geese were captured and moved them to a new location. Their hard efforts paid off. Steve lost over $10,000.00 on that job, since there were no more geese to kill on that contract. He never did like animal rehabilitators. Since that time he has been investigated by the SCI (NJ State Commission of Investigation). He switched the ownership of the companies to his wife’s name. He was never charged with anything but interestingly enough he was forced to retire, and is now collecting his complete pension.

It took approximately 6 months to build the caging area after work weekends and evenings. It cost approximately $4,000.00. The renter of the house in front of the 9 acre property wanted to help with the birds because part of what was offered to him by the landlord was reduced rent for his efforts in helping care for the birds. Half the caging was used for pigeons, the other half was used for any birds which needed to be transferred to a rehabilitation facility.

The law states any good Samaritan has “a reasonable amount of time to get the birds out of their possession.” Birds came in from all over and were constantly moved in and out. Calls from local Law Enforcement, Veterinarians, Animal Control, the public, etc. kept me very busy. The caging was completed Easter Sunday of 2002. Work was very demanding and took too much of my time. So at this time, although my Federal Permit was in effect, I chose to transfer injured wild birds to other rehabilitation facilities; there was one in Newark Delaware, and Raptor Trust in Millington NJ.

I’ll continue on with the story shortly so check back in a few days!

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