Helping Hands
Cedar Run protects Medford’s local ecology by rehabilitating local wildlife and teaching children about its importance.
Tucked away in the corner of the Pinelands and down a dirt path off Sawmill Road, you’ll find two buildings belonging to Cedar Run Wildlife Refuge. The first building is the Rehabilitation Center.
The Rehabilitation Center is used for rehabilitating local injured animals with the goal of getting them to the point where they can be released back into the wild. Unfortunately, this isn’t always possible, and some animals are forced to stay in captivity in Cedar Run because they would die in the wild. Most, however, make it out.
The Sun got an inside look at the animal hospital, where a red-tailed hawk was being tended to.
“A lot of the hawks that we’re getting in right now, they could be [babies] that came out of the nest this year that aren’t quite adept at hunting yet, so we’ll get them in very thin and emaciated and we just have to fatten them up and give them a little bit more time to learn how to hunt before they go,” said Director of Wildlife Rehabilitation Lori Swanson. “Other ones come in that seem like they might possibly have West Nile virus or something like that so we have to do supportive therapy, which can take multiple months depending on where the injury is.”
Swanson said the rehabilitation center has “probably 200 or more animals” in the hospital at any given time, which are delivered by local residents.
“I think the busiest day I had looked back on, we had gotten 65 animals that one day,” added Swanson. “It can be pretty crazy.”
Typically, the hospital will only tend to animals you’d typically see in your backyard, such as squirrels, rabbits and possums. Cedar Run’s permit only allows the rehabilitation center to tend to animals native to New Jersey.
“We see anywhere from 4,300 to almost 5,000 injured and orphaned wild animals each and every year,” said Cedar Run’s Executive Director Jeanne Gural. “And the state does not pay us to do this.”
Many states offer government subsidization of wildlife rehabilitation centers, however, New Jersey is not one of them. As a result, Cedar Run gets 100 percent of its funding from individual and corporate donors.
The Nature Center is the second of the two buildings and where people, mostly children ages 6–12, are sent by parents and teachers to learn about the environment. The kids will go on hikes, learn about the local ecology and why protecting Medford’s natural resources is important.
“We do a school program, so the kids can come here and go on field trips,” said Cedar Run’s Director of Education Denise Peters. “Throughout the year it’s about 20,000 students that we see. Sometimes it’s 120 students a day.”
The Sun joined some local children on a hike, where the kids learned about bird calls, caught frogs and enjoyed the outdoors.
According to a 2014 nationwide poll from The Nature Conservancy, only about 10 percent of children ages 13–18 say they are spending time outdoors every day.
Gural sees this as a problem. She feels it’s important kids spend more time outdoors so they can develop an appreciation for science and pursue a career path in a STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) field.
Gural sees Cedar Run as a way to motivate children to learn about nature and syphon off children into the science programs of local universities. Many of these children will come back to Cedar Run in college as interns. In fact, the refuge offers two internships: one for those interested in animal rehabilitation, called the Wildlife Care internship, and another for environmental education, called the Summer Camp Seasonal Counselor internship.
“[Our programs] are not only fun and active education, but we’re also a feeder stream for local colleges and universities,” said Gural. “We focus on STEM education — science, technology, engineering, math — but we make it fun. Kids think it’s about mud, but we know it’s about science.”
For more information about Cedar Run’s camps and rehabilitation facility visit www.cedarrun.org.
