Greg Hickman, an animal advocate who founded the Wetlands and Wildlife Care Center in Huntington Beach, has died.
Hickman, 72, died unexpectedly on May 15 when he was on a fly fishing trip in Montana, according to Wetlands and Wildlife Care Center executive director Debbie McGuire.
“He’ll be sorely missed,” said McGuire, who knew Hickman for more than 30 years. “He was doing what he loved to do — fly fishing was his favorite pastime. I knew he was found at the house, and they presume it was a heart attack.”
Hickman, who moved to Lake Elsinore a couple of years ago but was a longtime Newport-Mesa resident, was still the chairman of the board for the Wetlands and Wildlife Care Center. He had been involved in this work for five decades.
A veteran of the Vietnam War who served as a PT boat captain for the U.S. Navy, Hickman received the first wildlife rehabilitation license in the state of California in 1972. He first operated in Anaheim out of the North Orange County School District’s Regional Occupation Program, where he also taught.
His rehabilitation center was then known as Alliance for Wildlife Rehabilitation and Education, and operated there until the school district sold the site.
“They decided they should start licensing us, instead of people finding wildlife and doing it in their bathtub type of thing,” McGuire said. “He was the very first one, I think because Alliance for Wildlife Rehabilitation and Education started with ‘A.’ No. 2 was the Lindsay Wildlife Museum up in Walnut Creek, probably because they were ‘L.’ But he got to be No. 1.”
Later, in 1987, Hickman and veterinarian Joel Pasco opened a veterinary hospital in Costa Mesa called All Creatures Village. Some of the oiled birds during the 1990 American Trader Oil Spill off the coast of Huntington Beach were taken there.
AWRE and newly formed nonprofit HBWC forged a partnership to build a wildlife rehabilitation center using money from damages collected from the American Trader Oil Spill. On March 31, 1998, Hickman opened the nonprofit Wetlands and Wildlife Care Center with the assistance of the California Department of Fish and Game Office of Spill Prevention and Response, Southern California Edison and others.
From the WWCC’s opening through the end of 2021, it has taken in nearly 80,000 wild animals. It costs an average of $125 a day to rehabilitate each animal.
Hickman also was a part-time RV salesman in his later years, McGuire said.
Hickman was divorced and is survived by his son, Paul, McGuire said. His family is planning a memorial, but the date has not been announced.
“I offered to have a memorial at the Wildlife Center, but I think they wanted a little bit better setting,” McGuire said with a laugh. “I think Greg would have liked it, though, to have a pelican run through or something.”
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