“I am reaching out to you in a hope that your readers will see this and remember why it is so important for them not to remove baby wildlife from the wild,” Beckham County Game Warden James Edwards explained.
Edwards says he has witnessed an increase in this, sometimes, illegal behavior.
“I don’t know what the deal is, but there has been a big uptick this year,” Edwards sighed. “Every year, well-intended people will think they are doing the right thing because they see these cute little animals and assume that it has been abandoned. Now, maybe sometimes the mama deer or mama skunk has been killed and therefore cannot return, but most the time, she is off getting something to eat because she has to feed herself to nurse her babies. Mama birds have to go off and get something to bring back to their hungry babies. Yes, there are times that a wild baby has been abandoned, but that is also a reality in the wildlife. Not every baby born in the wildlife will make it to adulthood, but the damage done to an animal improperly removed from its mother is far worse risk to the animal and to humans.”
He then added, “It is also not always legal. You may be breaking the law if you take a wild animal out of the wild and it is definitely not always best for that animal.”
While Edwards acknowledges that it can be heart-wrenching for many humans to think of leaving a potentially defenseless baby animal in the wild to fend for itself against predators, he says being snatched up into the human world will leave the animal more vulnerable to becoming prey in its adulthood. “There is this cartoon that I think really highlights the absurdity of this. In it, there is a human baby sitting in a blanket in its fenced backyard as two deer come up and see it. One deer then says basically, ‘Oh no, this cute human baby has been abandoned. We should take it and raise it.’ Now, we all know that a mama deer can’t raise a human baby. That baby would die because a deer doesn’t know how to raise a human baby safely and properly. Well, that is the same for baby deer with humans. Sure, you might be able to bottle feed it and keep it alive for a while, but a human mama cannot teach that fawn how to survive in the wild to avoid predators and find food as an adult,” Edwards stated.
Edwards did note that circumstances do arise when a young animal must be rescued, but that the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife has procedures for those occasions.
“This last year, a farmer was in his field harvesting when a resting baby deer was accidentally run over and injured while lying in the field,” Edwards recounted. “Unfortunately, the mother deer was also laying there and was killed. So, we knew that the fawn needed to be rescued. But the animal couldn’t legally stay in the care of that farmer. The farmer did the right thing and called us. We then could take the deer to a licensed rehabilitator, as required by law, who will then raise the deer until we can safely return it to the wild. But they are always returned to the wild. You cannot legally take an animal from the wild and make it your pet. There are licensed breeders of some wildlife for exotic pets, but that is very regulated.”
Edwards also says that transporting some wildlife can inadvertently spread disease to healthy animals.
“Right now, we really don’t want people handling and then moving birds because of the risk of avian flu. We also see Chronic Wasting Disease, or CWD, spread among healthy deer populations when a deer is moved around,” Edwards said.
Lastly, Edwards says baby animals start out as harmless cute guests, but puberty can often make them dangerous for their human rescuers.
“The point is you can take the animal out of the wild, but you cannot take the wild out of the animal. If you see a baby animal in the wild, the best thing is to leave it where you found it. If you are concerned for its safety for some reason, don’t touch it and call us,” he concluded.
