ORANGE BEACH — A federal grant will help expand programs to save lost or injured birds, mammals and reptiles and to educate the public about wildlife in Orange Beach, city officials said.

The Orange Beach City Council voted Tuesday, June 21, to authorize a grant agreement with the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources.

The grant will provide $424,450 through the Resources and Ecosystems Sustainability, Tourism Opportunities and Revived Economy of the Gulf States program, known as RESTORE. The money will be used to expand the Orange Beach Wildlife Rehabilitation Program Center, Phillip West, city coastal resources director, said.

"That grant money is for the build out of the wildlife center bathrooms the lab, enclosures, office space, kitchen and surgery room," West said.

West said the center has been operating for about five years, taking in animals and providing educational programs for the public, but the facility is too small for the needs of the program.

"The current center is very small, and the interns also live there so it's pretty cramped," West said. "We're limited on how many patients we can accommodate. And there's no real appropriate way to have any kind of public access or interaction. You don't want the public to have interaction with rehab animals. But we would like to have the ability to host the public, to do talks and lessons in visits for the education animals. So, the new center will accommodate that."

Melissa Vinson, center director, said the expansion will provide separate spaces for animals and operations. Animals used in education programs, that cannot be released, need to be kept away from wild animals brought in for rehabilitation.

"We really want more space for education animals to be separated from rehab animals that are coming in," Vinson said. "They shouldn't be so close together, just due to some of the illnesses and sicknesses and parasites that some of these wild animals might bring in. We don't want them to be cross contaminated with our education animals."

She said plans also call for improving on-site medical care for the animals.

"We're supposed to also have an X-ray machine there which will be really nice," she said. "Right now, we have wonderful veterinarians that we work with, but it is challenging to always load up a patient and take them 10, 15 minutes away and work them into a veterinarian's already busy day. There will be a lot less stress on the animals to just be able to do that in-house."

Animals needing critical medical care are also now kept in the same space as baby animals brought in. Separating the patients would reduce stress for all the animals, she said.

"We have one holding area for our critical patients and it also doubles as our nursery. So, we would like to have more separate space for species, our raptors in one room away from our other birds and those that are in critical condition. Then we'd have our nursery with our baby squirrels and baby possums, baby bunnies, you name it all in another room. That way, we kind of minimize stress for the variety of species."

The center receives many baby animals in the spring and summer, she said. The facility now has baby racoons, fox kits, skunks and young squirrels.

She said people often find baby animals and bring them into the center. Vinson said, however, that not all babies found in the wild are orphaned or lost.

"Sometimes the animal truly is orphaned, but sometimes people, while they have good intentions, they're actually unintentionally kidnapping these babies just because the mom has gone to go get some food or maybe the baby squirrel fell out the nest," Vinson said. "But they oftentimes can be reunited, and mom generally comes back for the babies. They come back and someone has intervened and taken off. We manage a hotline number. So, our first response when someone calls and says that they have a baby animal, we tried to get them to, to reunite it with mom if that is possible."

Anyone with questions about wildlife issues can call the dispatch line at (251) 981-9777. Additional information is also available at the center website, www.orangebeachal.gov/departments/coastal-resources/wildlife-management-program.