Category: Educational

World Class Raptor Rehabilitation Facility

Download .PDF Document about the Eagle Flight Chamber

The Cedar Canyon Nature Park

In October 2000, Rocky Mountain Power donated 22 acres of majestic canyon property in Cedar City to the Southwest Wildlife Foundation of Utah.

Step by step, with the assistance of countless local businesses and volunteers, we have been working to develop the Cedar Canyon Nature Park into a permanent wildlife rescue facility and nature park.

Flight Chambers

The reason for the Eagle Flight Chamber here at the Cedar Canyon Nature Park is because we rescue many eagles, both golden eagles and bald eagles, every year.

Currently, our largest flight chamber is 10 feet wide, 12 feet tall and 40 feet long. That’s fine for housing them, they are able move around a little bit, and falconry techniques can be used to get them further exercised for release.

We really desperately need a chamber that is 50 feet wide, 100 feet long and about 30 feet tall to give the eagles enough room so that they could actually fly and circle within the chamber to build up their wing strength and exercise before they’re released back to the wild.

The Eagle Flight Chamber
World Class Raptor Rehabilitation Facility

Here’s the concept, in any place that grows, especially alfalfa, we have hay barns. Hay barns are basically nothing but a roof supported by some metal pillars. Hay is stored under the roof to keep it out of the weather. There are no sides to these hay barns. We have lots of them here in Utah, they’re quite common.

For the eagle flight chamber, we would start with the completely open framed structure with just a metal roof type that is clean and smooth with no sharp edges that animals could get hurt by.
We would also purchase four 40 foot cargo containers and two 20 foot cargo containers. These containers would line up to form two sides of the outer walls and function as various sized smaller chambers.
From there we would use thin walled tubing, metal tubing, and weld the thin walled tubing going up vertically, so we have bars. So the first half is a solid wall with the cargo containers, then barring all the way around the top half of the flight chamber so that there would be lots of ventilation and the birds could see out.
A long narrow building in the center of the outer structure would leave about 20 feet on each end leaving a clear path for recovering large birds to circle around. That would be a big enough facility for the birds to circle and build up their strength and endurance.
Inside the center building would be a little observation area where the birds couldn’t see the public but the public could see out and see the animals exercising inside the chamber.

It’s a big, big facility, but again it would be a world class facility that these animals could get their exercise. Not just eagles but large hawks and owls and falcons could exercise in a facility like this.

The great thing is that our park here in Southern Utah is very centrally located which would allow us to receive other eagles that have been rescued by other rehabilitators and place them into our flight chamber. We could certainly see eagles coming from all over the United States to get exercise in the flight chamber. Not only could we help eagles in the flight chamber, but the California Condor which has been relocated here to Southern Utah.

The goal of the flight chamber is to care for the animals and secondly, to function as an educational facility.

The Southwest Wildlife Foundation of Utah

The mission of the Southwest Wildlife Foundation of Utah is threefold.

1) Wildlife Rescue and Rehabilitation

2) Wildlife & Environmental Education

3) Development of the Cedar Canyon Nature Park

We believe the Eagle Flight Chamber is a vital as well as monumental next step to fulfilling our mission.

A Monumental Structure

As the first major structure for wildlife at the park, it must also accommodate the following needs:

1) Work area for rehabbers and other staff.
2) Food storage and food preparation areas.
3) Reception and…
viewing areas for VIP Visitors.
4) Quarters for visiting student interns, academics or researchers.
5) Quarters for 24/7 on site caretakers.

Please Help

The community is so excited about what we’re trying to do, however, it’s small town Utah. Raising the funds is very difficult. We have to be able to reach out well beyond Cedar City and Southern Utah out into the rest of the country to say please help us.

This is something that your children, your grandchildren, your great grandchildren will be able to come to this amazing park and wouldn’t it be wonderful to be able to say that you had a small piece in the development of the Cedar Canyon Nature Park?

We would love everyone to roll up their sleeves, give us a hand, and we’ll make this park a world class facility for everybody.

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