LITTLE ROCK — Arkansas is blessed with abundant wildlife and their offspring. As the green march of spring continues to increase outdoor recreation opportunities, many landowners and outdoor adventurers are likely to come across unattended baby wild animals. Offering a helping hand is not only a recipe for disaster; in some cases, it can be illegal.
First and foremost, don’t assume that these animals have been abandoned. One or both parents may be out of sight, waiting for you to leave. The spots on a fawn are nature’s version of camouflage; their strategy to avoid predators is to stay perfectly still and let the danger pass. The mother leaves the fawn alone for much of the day to feed and build up her milk supply for her young. Deer aren’t the only animals that use the stay away, stay safe strategy. A female rabbit only spends about one hour out of every 36 with her young. Many well-meaning good Samaritans have picked up a helpless baby deer only to have inadvertently stolen it from its mother.
Concerns over chronic wasting disease have made it illegal to rehabilitate deer in Arkansas because the removal of the infectious agent once a facility is exposed to the disease has proven impossible. As a result, taking an abandoned fawn also leaves the well-intentioned person in a sticky situation with no one to take it in and no way to care for it themselves…