The Grounded Eagle Foundation had its beginnings in January 1983, when founder and Swan Valley native Ken Wolff stopped along the local highway to help a gunshot great horned owl. For the next several years, Ken and his wife Jody searched to gain knowledge and experience, built and rebuilt makeshift cages and housing, and struggled with money (the founders’ were both starving artists at the time). Finally, in 1987, construction began on GEF’s current facility, a process that continued for ten years. GEF was actually organized in 1988 to provide the fiscal vehicle needed to build and operate what at the time was to become the largest facility of its kind in the United States. Occupying over 11,000 square feet, the facility provides a quarter-million cubic feet of treatment and exercise space for a variety of injured wild birds. Since that time we have admitted for care approximately 130 species of birds, specializing in injured eagles, ospreys, and woodpeckers.
     Between 1985 and 2005 we admitted nearly 400 injured eagles, with approximately 60 percent being released back into the wild. Our birds typically come from an area stretching from the middle of Montana to the middle of Washington state. A majority of our eagles suffered vehicle collisions while feeding on road-killed animals, especially on MT200 and MT83. From 1999 to 2002, we rehabilitated injured bald eagles from Alaska while the Alaska Raptor Center in Sitka was rebuilt. The eagles were flown gratis both ways thanks to Alaska Airlines and were banded before release back in Alaska. At one point during this project, our flight room, the largest in North America when it was completed in 1996, housed 18 eagles.
     As part of our mission, we help train rehabilitators throughout the country, with a particular focus on areas where bald eagles are repopulating following several decades of absence. We lecture at the international level and teach in the local schools. Our eagle rehabilitation training curriculum has been accepted by the US Fish and Wildlife Service as a prerequisite to issuing a federal permit enabling rehabilitation of injured eagles. In addition, GEF sponsors several bird counts in Condon each year in an effort to establish baseline data for local bird populations as human development takes its toll on the surrounding habitat.
     In 1993, GEF was awarded a Special Citation from Mutual of Omaha’s Wildlife Heritage Trust; in 2003 we were presented with a certificate of appreciation from the US Fish and Wildlife Service for our work raising baby bald eagles (which were later released in Idaho). Ken Wolff served on the board of directors for the National Wildlife Rehabilitators Association, in international professional group, from 1992 – 1996, has presented 13 professional papers, and in 2002 published the first scientific paper concerning the rehabilitation of injured eagles. In 1997 he was selected as a life member of The National Registry of Who’s Who, and in 1998 became a life member of The National Registry of Who’s Who in Executives and Professionals.