Ailing Wildlife About To Lose Friend His Center Helped More Than 700 Animals In The Past 6 Months
Dave Siddon, whose love of wildlife led him from toting gear for a Walt Disney nature film to founding one of the nation’s leading wildlife recovery centers, is dying of cancer.
Siddon, 64, had been in remission from the colon cancer he was diagnosed with last year, but last month learned he has pancreatic cancer and expects to die in a matter of weeks.
“This is really the first time I’ve ever had anything take me down like this,” Siddon said. “It’s kind of discouraging.”
Since establishing Wildlife Images wild animal rehabilitation center in 1973 at his home along the Rogue River, Siddon and a mostly volunteer staff have nursed countless eagles, hawks, bears, cougars and other wildlife back to health and returned many of them to the wild.
Wildlife Images was particularly known for taking bears that no one else wanted. One of Siddon’s favorites is Griz, a grizzly bear whose mother was killed by a train in Montana.
John Thiebes, district biologist for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, said he considers Wildlife Images the nation’s top wildlife rehabilitation center. During the last six months it has helped 700 different animals.
Those that could be returned to the wild were set free. Those that could not fend for themselves, either due to their injuries or losing their fear of man, are kept at Wildlife Images the rest of their natural lives. Many are used in educational programs that visit schools and other venues.
“Dave teaches us - he educates us about wildlife,” said Ken Goddard, director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Forensics Laboratory in Ashland. “What Dave is doing is the only thing that will save wildlife. Law enforcement and management will not. The public has to understand and care.”
Siddon said the future of Wildlife Images is good and a new person to lead the organization will be named next week.
Born in Hollywood, Calif., Siddon recalled how as a youngster he thought he was rescuing a mourning dove chick that had lost its mother, only to learn later that the mother was trying to draw him away from the nest by feigning a broken wing. He raised the young bird and named it Rudy.
“I’d be riding down the street - five or six boys on bicycles - and this dove would swoop down unerringly to land on my shoulder,” Siddon said.
Living just down the street from the Walt Disney studios, Siddon got a job toting gear for the famous nature film “The Living Desert” and went on to be a photographer himself on a variety of projects.
He served in the Korean War with an Army K-9 unit of the military police.
After the war, one of his first dates with his wife, Judy, was going to a remote place at night to release a rehabilitated owl. Their lifelong devotion to wildlife was recognized in 1984 with the 54 Founders Award of the Izaak Walton League of America.
Siddon’s releases of wild animals were frequently featured on the TV show “American Sportsman.” He returned a cheetah to the wilds of Africa with singer Olivia Newton-John, and released a golden eagle with Bobby Kennedy Jr.