A Warm Welcome to New Board Member, Jesse Pline

Jesse’s Story: I grew up in Michigan, spending much of my childhood outdoors in the forests and fields around my rural home while homeschooled. My classroom was everything from going for hikes in the forest, collecting mushrooms and arrowheads, hunting in freshly plowed farm fields, to doing Great Backyard Bird Counts at our backyard feeders, and explorations during our annual cross-country family road trips to National Parks. I began my environmental career straight out of high school, spending several summers with the U.S. Forest Service as a wilderness ranger in Alaska while earning my degree in the winters.

In 2020, my career shifted unexpectedly to wildlife rehabilitation when the pandemic upended my seasonal plans. I found myself volunteering with the West Michigan Wildlife Center, where I instantaneously fell in love with wildlife rehabilitation as the environmental career niche I was searching for. I quickly began to broaden my experience in wildlife by specializing in raptor rehabilitation and training at Wildside Rehabilitation & Education Center. As the pandemic shutdowns eased in 2021, I began travelling for seasonal positions again. This allowed additional diverse experiences through the Juneau Raptor Center and Alaska Raptor Center. My first introduction to living, working, and rehabilitating wildlife in Oregon came as a wilderness ranger with the Willamette National Forest for the 2022 summer field season, and as a hospital volunteer at the Cascades Raptor Center. Though birding had been an occasional pastime in the earlier years of my life, it was working with wild birds in-hand as a budding rehabilitator and setting out cross-country on my own which really fueled the birding passion.

In late 2022, I departed from the Pacific Northwest for two years to rehabilitate wildlife at WildCare Oklahoma, where I provided care for over 15,000 wildlife patients encompassing over 200 species. Through the International Wildlife Rehabilitation Council there, I became a Certified Wildlife Rehabilitator (CWR). For the first time in many years of not working a seasonal job and moving frequently, birding expanded from being a hobby and passion to becoming a borderline obsession. As a result, I struck out to do my first Big Year in Oklahoma, eventually setting the Oklahoma eBird Big Year record in 2023!

My love for the Pacific Northwest only grew stronger with distance however, and I soon answered the call of the mountains by returning to Cascades Raptor Center as the Senior Wildlife Rehabilitation Technician in fall 2024.

Today, I can infallibly be found involved in one of many bird-related endeavors here in Oregon. Outside of the Cascades Raptor Center clinic where we provide treatment for over a thousand wildlife patients each year, I am an extremely avid birder, racing towards the goal of seeing 400 species in Oregon. Through my passion for learning about the many intriguing details of avifauna, I also developed a passion for teaching. So I also spend much of my free time sharing knowledge about birds in the many online Pacific Northwest birding circles.

I am very fond of volunteering my time and skill as a rehabilitator and ornithologist with many different projects including serving as an eBird Regional Reviewer for Lane County, conducting raptor surveys for the Willamette National Forest, beach surveys for the Coastal Observation and Seabird Survey Team, the Winter Raptor Survey Route project, and more. I now look forward to bringing my passion for birds, education, and especially wildlife rehabilitation and humane wildlife conflict resolution to the Coast to Cascades Bird Alliance as a Board member, to help connect people with wildlife and be a resource to all about anything and everything pertaining to birds and birding.

— Jesse Pline, CWR