An Outdoor Column From:
Tom Conroy, DNR information officer
Someone picked up a problem the other day and dropped it off in the lap of the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR) wildlife manager at New Ulm. He sat there pondering the problem, a rock to one side of him, and a hard place on the other.
Every spring the DNR sends out advisories urging people to leave any baby animals they might come across alone. And every spring people do just the opposite. The phone calls to the DNR begin soon thereafter.
On a recent sunny morning, a near perfect summer day, the wildlife manager was taking care of business in his office when he was summoned to the front counter. A lady was at the counter with a box. A box with a blanket and four baby raccoons inside. Cute baby raccoons, curled up in a bundle, purring and whimpering softly. The sky suddenly turned dark.
The wildlife manager had three choices, none of them good. Or easy. He could take them out and drop them off somewhere. They wouldn’t survive but it might be easier than his second choice. He could destroy them himself. He said he had to do that once with fox kits and it bothered him for a long while. His third choice was to call a wildlife rehabilitation organization and see if they would take them.
Raccoons are cute as babies but they make lousy pets as adults. Docile and cuddly one minute, they can suddenly turn and sink their sharp teeth into you for no reason. Other than they are wild animals, not domesticated pets. They belong in the wild, not a cage.
Even in the wild raccoons are widely considered a nuisance, if not downright scorned. Among other things, raccoons eat eggs - songbird, duck, pheasant eggs. They can also wreak havoc in cornfields and gardens. And sometimes they carry disease, such as rabies. Raccoon populations have skyrocketed over the past couple of decades as the market for their fur has tumbled.
And so here sits the wildlife manager, wondering what to do about the problem that has been dropped in his lap. Eventually he calls the nearest wildlife rehabilitator located in Spirit Lake, Iowa. To his surprise, the rehabilitator agrees to drive two hours to New Ulm to accept the babies. They will be nursed until they are old enough to make it on their own.
In fact, according to the rehabilitator, this situation is not uncommon when it comes to raccoons. Someone decides to get rid of an adult raccoon from his property. After shooting or trapping the adult, they discover the babies - but don’t have the heart to destroy them as well. So, the call goes out to the DNR.
My daughter is home from college for a couple of weeks. I told her the raccoon story and explained the wildlife manager’s predicament. Her response was not atypical. “You’re the Department of Natural Resources, it’s your job to take care of wildlife, right?!” Well, yes and no.
The DNR has a responsibility to manage wildlife populations. It is not the DNR’s role to raise individual animals. If it were, the important business of providing quality habitat so that substantial populations of wildlife can survive would be sacrificed. As it was, the baby raccoons consumed a couple hours of the manager’s time that could have been spent doing more important things.
Several hours after dealing with the raccoons, the manager receives a phone call from someone who lives an hour away. There is a pelican on a lake that appears to have a broken wing and she wants the manager to send someone over to rescue it. The manager has learned through experience that even in cases where a bird might actually have a broken wing, it is almost impossible to catch. He declines to intervene, at least for now. Moments later, the Enforcement office receives a call about an orphan fawn deer. ‘Tis the season.
From baby robins and rabbits to fawn deer, the calls come into DNR offices throughout the state during this time of year. The callers are all well intentioned but, unfortunately, misinformed. Most often the mother is nearby and the babies will do just fine. But not always. That’s Mother Nature’s way and it has worked just fine for all of time.
And so the message goes out once more: do baby wildlife a favor and leave them alone.