The Chocolay Raptor Center again came to the rescue of injured wildlife, the latest being two rehabilitated American kestrels released back into the wild at Gentz’s Homestead Golf Course Wednesday.

It’s another success story for the center, which has been doing as much as it can to save injured birds and get them back into the central Upper Peninsula woods.

The nonprofit center, founded just five years ago, has as its mission to “rehab sick, injured and orphan raptors, educate public about raptors and other birds.”

It has been doing all that, indeed.

Adults and children alike benefit from the center’s educational efforts and the community benefits from the center’s work in trying to bring back to health the various birds of prey who have injured, too often by human negligence or stupidity.

Wednesday, for example, the crowd at Gentz’s met one of the Raptor Center’s permanent residents, Phoenix, a peregrine falcon hatched in 2011 at the Presque Isle Power Plant nest box.

“He was the first peregrine falcon hatched in Marquette since the late 1950s when they were extirpated due to DDT,” CRC cofounder Jerry Maynard told them.

State and federally licensed, the Chocolay Raptor Center has saved a number of birds through the years and will no doubt save more. We hope the community supports the center, both financially and by attending programs it puts on for the public.

People can visit the center by appointment only.

Call 249-3598 to find out more or schedule a visit to the center, a gem of an effort we hope continues for many years to come.