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Anheuser-Busch Adventure Parks Rescue, Treat and Release Hundreds of Wild Animals Each Year
Returning Healthy Animals to the Wild is the Program's Goal
St. Louis, Mo., May 7, 2003 - In an average week, animal care specialists at SeaWorld and Busch Gardens parks will rescue five injured, ill or orphaned animals. More than two-dozen others will undergo veterinary treatment as part of an intensive, weeks-long rehabilitation process. And -- realizing the program's ultimate goal -- healthy animals will be returned to the wild.
No organization in the world today rescues, treats and returns to the wild more animals than the Anheuser-Busch Adventure Parks. Over the past five years alone, more than 3,000 manatees, dolphins, seals, sea lions, whales, birds and reptiles have been rescued by animal care specialists at SeaWorld San Diego, SeaWorld Orlando, Discovery Cove, SeaWorld San Antonio and Busch Gardens Tampa Bay.
Michael Scarpuzzi, vice-president of zoological operations at SeaWorld San Diego, oversees the most intensive animal rescue program among the parks operated by Anheuser-Busch. The park's proximity to coastal migration routes and seal and sea lion rookeries means a steady stream of animals needing human assistance.
"Animal rescue has been central to this company's conservation mission for almost 40 years," Scarpuzzi said. "At certain points in the year we will spend nearly as much time tending to beached animals as we do caring for our own."
Even Anheuser-Busch parks that are hundreds of miles from the ocean are often called upon to aid animals in distress. SeaWorld Orlando routinely rescues beached dolphins and whales from both the Atlantic and Gulf coasts in addition the more common manatee rescues in Florida's inland waterways. SeaWorld San Antonio has been called upon scores of times to aid marine mammals on the Texas Gulf Coast. Even Busch Gardens Tampa, whose collection consists almost entirely of land animals, has assisted reptiles, mammals and birds in Central and South Florida.
A few recent examples of animal rescues conducted by the Anheuser-Busch Adventure Parks:
- A months-old West Indian manatee trapped in a Florida storm sewer was rescued by SeaWorld staff and hand-raised, one of more than 100 of the endangered marine mammals aided by SeaWorld since the program's inception.
- Animal care specialists have been dispatched to a golf course lake in the Arizona desert to rescue endangered California brown pelicans blown off their migration routes by powerful monsoon storms. The birds were treated and returned to the wild.
- An orphaned newborn California gray whale calf was rescued and raised to adulthood by SeaWorld. Before her release in the waters off Southern California, she had been taught to eat solid food and had gained an astonishing 17,000 pounds.
- Following the Valdez oil spill, gravely ill Alaska sea otters were flown to SeaWorld for treatment of crude oil poisoning. The technique for treating the toxic effects of crude oil consumed by the otters in a desperate attempt to clean their own fur was pioneered at SeaWorld and the Hubbs-SeaWorld Research Institute.
- Killer whales trapped in a tidal lake in southeastern Alaska were guided to freedom by a team that included SeaWorld animal care specialists, curators and veterinarians.
Visit the Fund Web site at www.swbg-conservationfund.org.
Contact: Fred Jacobs, Communications Director, 314/613-6077.
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Busch Gardens Tampa Bay welcomes the birth of baby Geri into the park's black rhino population. Busch Gardens' veterinarians conduct blood studies on the black rhino both in the park and out in the wild to better understand the health of the endangered species.
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