Kathy Ramsay's Busy Trying To Save NM's Animals From The Fires

John writes regarding an old classmate, Kathy Ramsay:

Hey Marc,

I was getting my daily update on the Gila fire when I noticed a familiar name. I don't know if you ever knew Kathy Ramsay but she was in some of my freshman classes. She was a pre-med student and transferred, I think, to UNM at some point. In the Catron County blog there is a mention of help being needed to take care of animal currently endangered by the Bear Fire. A veterinarian named Kathy Ramsay is spearheading the effort. I figure it must be the same person. Anyway, I thought you knew her but was not sure.

John

What do Kathy Ramsay's efforts entail?:

I just got a call from Dr. Kathleen Ramsay, the wonderful wild-animal vet in Espanola, and she said they're trying to mobilize assistance for the animals and folks in the Ruidoso area who are being overwhelmed with the fast-moving Little Bear fire.

[I]f you know of someone who can help move or shelter calves, sheep, pigs, llamas, horses and the like, and who is on the southern end of the state, please let her know. She is coordinating with NM State Livestock Board's Dr. Fly and with Dr. Rebecca Washburn in the south to try and identify transportation and destinations for these animals.

The fire's moving fast and already a bunch of cows have died, standing to surround their calves, and so she and other vets will be bring in the burned calves to treat them.

Roads in to the area, especially from the north, are extremely limited, so they're hoping for southern-located helpers if possible, but any assistance could be useful if it can get there.

This is scary stuff. I replied to John:

Hi John:

Damned memory! I can’t quite recall her, but she was part of our class!

There are some real nice profiles of her too.

Meanwhile, the news from New Mexico is so dispiriting. When will it rain? When will this madness stop?

Marc

Here is one of those profiles:

So went another evening at work for Ramsay, who has devoted her life to saving New Mexico's wild creatures one turkey vulture and black bear at a time. The Los Alamos native founded the Wildlife Center in 1986 in the 500-square-foot home she lived in then.

...About 20,000 rehabilitated animals later, Ramsay's passion has turned her fledgling clinic into New Mexico's only treatment facility for all species of injured or abandoned wildlife, which in December expanded into a 5,000-square-foot building on 20 acres with a mountain view.

Ramsay does veterinary duty at the center for free while maintaining her own domestic-animal private practice. She sets aside every other afternoon and weekend plus numerous evenings to tend to her wild charges.

To cram it all in, she works 80-hour weeks and sleeps little.

..."We do what we can with what we have," Ramsay said. "I've had to work with so little for so long, it's amazing what our facility can do."

...Everson said that emphasis on education outweighed the center's rehabilitation efforts. "The educational message, it's a larger message, that humans and wildlife are able to coexist ... to get folks in the state to function as stewards of their own ecosystem," she said.

...Although Ramsay grew up with a horse, dogs, cats and "anything [she] could smuggle into the bedroom," she didn't settle on veterinary medicine until her junior year at New Mexico Tech in Socorro, where she was studying biochemistry and metallurgy. In 1977, she was accepted to Colorado State University's veterinary program.

...She came to love raptors — eagles, hawks and other birds of prey — and specialized in treating and rehabilitating them. She soon expanded her wildlife center and medical expertise to treat all species.

"If I did anything with my life, I wanted to give wildlife a second chance," said Ramsay, subject of a 1994 nonfiction children's book, "Wildlife Rescue: The Work of Dr. Kathleen Ramsay," written and photographed by friends who support the Wildlife Center.

She spent part of her teenage years in Saudi Arabia with her hydrologist father who worked there, and has traveled to Brazil to work with jaguars as part of an ecotourism project.

She returned to her beloved northern New Mexico after an early 1980s vet stint in Salem, Ore. She chose Española because of its proximity to the mountains and its "desperate" need for local veterinary care.

...There is no question why Ramsay is here.

"You watch that bird play in the winds and feel the air currents under its wings," she said, "and the tears come to your eyes every time you do it.

"You think, because of me, that bird had a second chance."

And another profile:

A: What prompted you to start treating other kinds of animals?

KR: Well, all these mammals kept showing up. What was I supposed to say, Sorry, I only do birds, so now I have to kill you?

A: You once had 56 bears in your care. That must have been a challenge.

KR: It was a nightmare. Bears don’t process food very well. They have the most inefficient GI tracts I’ve seen and don’t absorb more than 10 percent of what they eat. So 90 percent comes out the other end. We were cleaning cages morning and night. About 25 wheelbarrows of crap a day.