Our Goals are Transparency, Accountability and the Welfare of the Birds

Mickaboo leadership continues to misrepresent our position. This is not about money being spent on sick wild conures. It’s not about us wanting to “kill” a handful of animals because they’re costing too much money. It is about the prolonged suffering of and cruelty to multiple birds. Take, for instance, Evie the African Grey, whom Dr. Van Sant dismissed as “permanently damaged.” For more than four years, Evie languished at For the Birds (FTB) under that label. Yet once she finally left, she began to thrive, demonstrating that her suffering had been both needless and preventable. Read her story here.  

The financial aspect is a separate, though also troubling, issue. Vast sums have been spent at one veterinary clinic for repeated exams, treatments and boarding for a small percentage of birds. In Evie’s case, it amounted to $62,000. These resources could be better utilized to benefit the wider flock, as well as those birds who have spent years living at FTB.

Other concerns are detailed in our full report available on this site, as well as a summarized version here.

What We Want

We are calling for meaningful reforms rooted in transparency, accountability and competence. Specifically:

• Independent transparency and audits. We want complete transparency, verified through independent audits by non-interested parties. This must include:
  • Finances: Where are the adoption fees and personal donations that are supposed to be recorded in our animal management software (ASM)? When individuals surrender their birds, how much of the money they donate is spent on their specific bird(s)’s care?
  • Veterinary care: What are the vague “hospital treatments” referred to in invoices from For the Birds? Test results, necropsy reports and all medical documentation should be recorded in ASM, as it’s supposed to be. Leadership has repeatedly lied about critical issues (click here to read a discussion of this), and members of leadership maintain close personal ties to the vet in question—including employment of Michelle’s daughter. Trust requires evidence, not assurances.
• Qualified life-and-death decision-making. No animal’s fate should rest on Tammy’s subjective sense of whether a bird still has “a will to live.” Decisions of this gravity must be made by qualified, experienced professionals, not by intuition and not by a veterinarian with a financial interest in keeping these birds alive. It should also be noted that many wild conures and other birds are now taken to another veterinarian, who keeps them in her home and is unpaid. She apparently has the authority to euthanize at her discretion. She is not an avian specialist as Sarah claimed in a recent email to discuss.
• New governance. The current board has failed to act for years. All members should resign and be replaced with new individuals who have experience relevant to Mickaboo’s work. That board should oversee the hiring of a separate, paid CEO tasked with enforcing changes that bring Mickaboo back in line with its mission statement.

To be absolutely clear:
We do not want to be on the board.
We do not want paid positions.
We do not claim to have the qualifications necessary for the roles we are calling for. Our only aim is to secure leadership that is competent, transparent and faithful to Mickaboo’s mission of serving the birds.