A self-described "plant guy" by training, Eric Lin first came to the California Raptor Center in 2013 hoping to learn a little bit about the birds he occasionally saw standing on the T-shaped hawk perch where he worked. He quickly fell in love with the birds and the CRC and became involved in several aspects of rehabilitation and education.

“The first time I released a bird, I remember being so amazed by the amount of work and dedication everyone at the CRC had put into rehabilitating the bird for release. Putting an injured bird that you’ve helped rehabilitate back into the wild is an amazing feeling."

Since then, Eric has become one of the center’s most dependable volunteers and has helped train volunteers, undergraduate students, veterinary students, and other groups on raptor handling and husbandry practices. He also enjoys the camaraderie shared among the volunteers, students, staff, and veterinarians who help make the raptor center a valuable public resource, and he appreciates working with everyone toward the same goals.

When rehabilitating birds is occupying less of everybody’s time (particularly during the "down season" when raptor admissions decrease), Eric also enjoys attempting to plant flowers and kill weeds at the CRC to help make the center’s space more welcoming and enjoyable for everyone—though, he notes with some chagrin, the efforts sometimes produce mixed results.

Though he works in horticulture and agronomy, a field that occasionally conflicts with conservation, Eric believes the CRC’s core missions of rehabilitation, education, and science are more important than ever in a changing world. Helping to mitigate human-associated impacts on raptors through rehabilitation and education can be a rewarding, if at times challenging, endeavor. In addition to rehabilitation, the California Raptor Center also educates visitors on ways raptors provide ecosystem services in the world we live in, provides information on ways to reduce our impact on raptors and other animals, and supports scientific discovery. Minimizing our impact on birds, like the bees we need to pollinate fruit and nut trees in our region, could help preserve this precious natural resource we depend on for agriculture, rodent population control, and insect population control.