Spend time caring for wildlife at Pacific Wildlife Care as it transitions from Morro Bay to San Luis Obispo

Volunteers preceded Pacific Wildlife Care before the rescue and rehabilitation center even had a physical space.

Originally called the Central Coast Wildlife Rehabilitation Guild when volunteers Pat McClenahan and four others started the organization in 1984, Pacific Wildlife Care began with a mission of healing injured and orphaned native animals and returning them to the wild.

“At the time, there was no central facility and only a handful of permitted rehabilitators,” Pacific Wildlife Care Executive Director Kristin Howland said. “Volunteers quite literally brought wildlife care into their homes, building cages, paying for food and medical supplies out of pocket, and answering emergency calls at all hours of the day and night.”

Pacific Wildlife Care emerged out of volunteers’ homes into a formal rehabilitation center on Morro Bay’s Main Street in 2006, thanks to decades of fundraising, grant writing, professional contributions, and perseverance. 

Now, as the organization prepares to move out of the aging center to San Luis Obispo near the county airport, its 350 volunteers will still provide year-round care before the new facility opens in fall 2026.

“Animal intakes have reached record levels year after year, and the demand for adequate treatment, rehabilitation, and volunteer coordination space has become increasingly urgent,” Howland said. “The new San Luis Obispo center allows us to expand responsibly, better support our volunteers, and serve wildlife more effectively.”

Volunteer coordinator Brook Segall has worked with wildlife in other parts of California, but Pacific Wildlife Care stands out to her for several reasons, including “the high standard of animal care, having a vet that’s available to us five days a week, sometimes more during the summer.” 

“We also have advanced volunteers that we appoint as leads and they assist with the training,” Segall said. “They know their volunteer role front and back and they can pass on that knowledge.”

Volunteering with Pacific Wildlife Care doesn’t require prior in-depth knowledge on animal handling, but rather an open mind and a willingness to learn on the job.

Volunteers can be assigned to the wildlife hotline, which requires calm responses to questions and finding help for wildlife in need. Locals looking to help are also assigned to the Rescue Transport Volunteers crew, which transports animals in distress when hotline callers are unable to do so; the rehabilitation center under the supervision of highly trained staff where they perform a range of tasks from washing dishes to reading blood values; the front desk; maintenance, where they handle tasks like constructing pens; or fundraising, grant writing, and other similar administrative tasks.

Segall told New Times that people who wish to volunteer can also start small in the baby bird room—her favorite space to be in. 

She trains incoming volunteers to work in four-hour shifts cleaning bird enclosures and feeding instruments, and feeding baby birds that need food every hour over half a day. A lot of these infant birds come to Pacific Wildlife Care because hotline callers spotted them without their parents or they had fallen to the ground after tree trimmings.

“I think that’s the most fulfilling volunteer task when we have a new volunteer,” Segall said. “I love showing them the baby bird program because it’s so rare to see baby birds. Birds’ parents are really good at hiding them in their nest. … They also experience a lot of success. I know not everyone is comfortable seeing animals who are suffering.”

The types of animals that come through Pacific Wildlife Care’s doors changes a bit from year to year. But the most common critter is the opossum, especially as its litter size can be as high as 13 babies—many of whom end up orphaned in the wild.

“The mothers who are hit by cars, you can actually retrieve the babies from their pouch. There’s a special way to take them off, so we recommend you just bring the whole mother in,” Segall said. “We also receive shorebirds like pelicans who are in the stage where they’re juveniles and can’t fish on their own.”

Sometimes the public confuses Pacific Wildlife Care’s services as extending to their pets. 

“We do get animals that are pets like domestic rabbits, that was a big thing last year,” Segall said. “It was a handful of them, but it felt like they were there for a long time trying to get placement. A lot of volunteers end up adopting them, but we don’t take in domestic animals as a rule.”

Unlike other organizations, Pacific Wildlife Care has space for many volunteers because it helps roughly 3,000 animals every year. It also serves almost every kind of wildlife in the region and doesn’t limit itself to specializing in care for certain species.

Though winter is typically the off season for the rehabilitation center because of low wildlife activity, Pacific Wildlife Care is gearing up to bring in more volunteers to help during the peak demand in summers.

“We have a very small staff in our clinic,” Segall said, “and to take care of the amount of animals and to rescue the number of animals we do, we need all hands on board.” ∆

Reach Staff Writer Bulbul Rajagopal at brajagopal@newtimesslo.com.

This article appears in Jan 8-15, 2026.