Leave Wild Animals In The Wild

By Jeff Berti
Each year, dozens of Missourians find fawns without their mothers nearby and decide the young deer have been abandoned. Believing they are performing a good deed, they bundle the adorable, spotted animals off to the local conservation agent. It’s a scene that’s as tragic as it is common.
Wildlife biologists say wild animals almost always are better off in the wild than in captivity. For adopted fawns, the next stop is a private wildlife rehabilitation facility, where the deer are hand-fed until they are mature enough to be released back into the wild. Few of those deer survive the transition from captivity to living free.
Fawns adopted by humans lose their chance to learn survival skills from their mothers. They learn what to eat and where to find it, what to be afraid of and how to avoid predators from their mother’s examples. Fawns raised in artificial settings have to learn on their own.
This is unfortunate, because in most cases it is unnecessary. Most whitetail fawns brought to conservation agents were not deserted. Their mothers simply were not visible when the well-meaning humans happened along.
The confusion occurs because people expect deer to act like humans. Human mothers don’t leave their babies alone in clumps of grass, so people assume when they find a fawn alone that it has been abandoned. They don’t realize what’s good for human babies isn’t necessarily good for wild ones.
Whitetail does visit their fawns only long enough to nurse them. By staying away the rest of the time, they avoid drawing predators to their young.
People who take fawns out of the wild often do so within sight or earshot of the fawn’s mother. The good news is that the mistake can be corrected. Contrary to popular belief, deer and other wildlife won’t desert their young just because they have human scent on them. Chances are good that a doe will find her fawn if it is returned to the area where it was picked up, even if it has been gone for a day or two.
Conservation agents statewide receive hundreds of calls each spring and summer from people who find young birds, raccoons, opossums and a variety of other wildlife that they believe have been abandoned. In most cases nothing is wrong, and human intervention is inappropriate.
Birds often grow too large for their nests before they are able to fly. They fall or jump out, and parents continue to bring food for them on the ground. “Rescuing” a young animal from this situation is likely to result in its death. Most people aren’t equipped to supply young animals’ dietary needs.
If a child brings home a baby bird or rabbit, return the animal as quickly as possible to the place where it was found. If you have a flightless bird in your back yard, keep your pets indoors for a few days. The parent birds will continue to care for the little one until it can fly.
Some young deer, birds, rabbits and squirrels do die; victims of predators, inclement weather or just bad luck. But that’s how nature works. Predators need food to survive, and nature produces many more baby animals than needed to sustain wildlife populations. Death, cruel as it may seem, is a necessary part of life in the wild.