Vancouver Island rehab centre asks for helmets to keep volunteers safe from fawns | 24CA News
A wildlife animal rehabilitation centre on Vancouver Island is asking for protecting headgear to assist maintain volunteers protected because it prepares for the upcoming fawn launch season.
Each yr, B.C. SPCA’s Wild Animal Rehabilitation Centre (Wild ARC) takes care of the younger fawns they’ve acquired till they’re sufficiently old to be launched into the wild, in accordance with Wallis Moore Reid, the centre’s senior wildlife rehabilitator.
By the time they’re able to be launched, the fawns have grown giant sufficient to pose important dangers to the volunteers, notably when fawns are herded into particular containers like a modified horse trailer and are prone to leap off, kick and harm the folks steering them inside.
This yr, the non-profit has opted so as to add protecting headgear to its private protecting tools.
“We’re asking for helmets that offer 360-degree protection with full visibility. So, ideally, something with a visor, clear visor in the front, that fully covers the head,” Reid advised All Points West host Jason D’Souza.
Most fawns introduced in ‘unnecessarily’
The centre receives and cares for a few dozen fawns a yr.
Reid stated fawns are typically introduced into the care of the rehabilitation centre by well-meaning individuals who suppose the younger ones are deserted. Most of the time, they are not.
“Most of them are orphaned, but we do admit the occasional fawn who’s been contained and brought in unnecessarily,” she stated.
“When they’re quite young, they aren’t strong enough to keep up with the mother, so she essentially parks them while she goes off to forage,” she stated.
That behaviour is usually known as bedding, in accordance with wildlife ecologist Adam Ford.
“In the early days of a fawn’s life, the strategy is to wait in a quiet area where predators won’t find them and the mothers will come and visit to feed them,” stated Ford, who can also be the Canada analysis chair in wildlife restoration ecology at UBC Okanagan.
He advises folks towards approaching a fawn if it seems deserted as a result of “there’s a 90 per cent chance that a female deer is nearby and is waiting for you to leave.”
Nevertheless, folks do deliver fawns to the Wild ARC, and yearly, the centre cares for a few dozen of them.
“Most of the fawns are admitted from May to June, and we provide specialized care to ensure that they develop properly,” stated Reid.
This consists of offering fawns with a milk substitute formulation particularly developed for black-tailed deer.
“We also try to give them a diet that closely mimics what they would find in the wild.”
Volunteers then steadily wean the fawns off the formulation from July till August, once they actually begin to develop in dimension and lose their spots.
“So, come September, we start preparing for their release,” stated Reid. This yr, 5 fawns will likely be launched into the wild.
Anyone fascinated with donating is requested to contact Wild ARC.
