| Since its founding in 1984 the Ohio Wildlife Center has: • Treated over 50,000 injured or orphaned wildlife, • Provided educational experiences to 950,000 children and adults, • Responded to over 550,000 wildlife hotline calls. This has all been made possible by the donation of 500,000 hours of dedicated volunteer work. |
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Clearing Up Misconceptions About Wild Infants Wild animals rarely abandon their young Every year, tens of thousands of baby wild animals are rescued that didn't need to be rescued. In most cases, well-meaning people are trying to help an animal that they believe has been abandoned by its parents. All wild animals have very strong parental instincts and will often risk their own lives in defense of their young. It would be extremely rare for a wild animal to abandon its young. Many wild infants are believed to be orphaned because a parent animal is not seen. Some mammals, such as rabbits and deer keep a distance from their young during the day so as not to draw attention to their location. A commonly believed fallacy is that wild animals will abandon their young if touched by a human. While no wild animal should be handled unless absolutely necessary, enhancing an infant animal will certainly not cause the parents to abandon it. If the mother/parent is dead Mammals You can be certain that you have a legitimate orphan only when you have a dead mother, in the case of mammals.
Finding a dead adult rabbit or squirrel in the street does not necessarily mean that the nest of young in your back yard are orphans. Steps should be taken to determine if the young are being attended by a parent before any human intervention is instituted. See reuniting tips under the particular species.
Birds If both parents are dead in the case of most birds, then you can be relatively sure that the babies are orphaned. If a mother bird is killed, in most species, the father bird is capable of caring for the young after hatching.
Exceptions to this: hummingbirds, pheasants, turkeys, grouse, woodcocks, and most ducks. In these species, only the female cares for the young. People often want to "rescue" fledgling birds or infant mammals to protect them from dogs, cats, or kids in the neighborhood. Obviously, bringing all the wildlife indoors for their own protection is not feasible. The solution lies in controlling the domestic animals and children, not the wildlife. Human Intervention One of the more prevalent misconceptions is that hand-rearing of wild animals by humans is an acceptable alternative to parent rearing. Human intervention should be the absolute last resort for any wild infant. Callers to wildlife rehabilitation facilities often cannot understand why the rehabilitators are willing to expend so much effort to reunite infant animals with their parents. This is not because they are trying to lessen their animal care workload. While hand-rearing may facilitate the immediate survival of an infant animal, it greatly reduces its potential for long term survival in the wild. This is equivalent to winning the battle and losing the war. Unfortunately, hand-reared animals do not have the same survival skills, and perhaps more importantly, may not have the fear instincts of a parent-reared animal. Imprinting - a loss of fear No wild animal should ever be hand-reared by itself. To do so will nearly always result in imprinting or socializing of the animal. Imprinted or socialized animals will not fear people and probably not dogs, cats, automobiles, or many other things that can do them harm. An imprinted animal is one that doesn't recognize what species it is. Imprinting is irreversible. Because the fear of humans has been removed, imprinted animals can also present a risk to human safety. A socialized animal is one that knows what species it is, but feels comfortable around people. While socializing is possibly a reversible process, most socialized animals do not survive in the wild long enough to revert to a wild behavior. It is very cruel to release any animal into the wild that doesn't have the skills to survive. Wild Animal -turned- Pet? Yet another misconception is that if a wild animal is imprinted or socialized, it might make a good pet. While juvenile animals may appear cute and cuddly, when they grow up they will have natural urges that will make them unsuitable as pets. Imprinting can make an animal think that it is human, but does not remove its natural instincts. This is very frustrating to the animal. It is simply inhumane to deprive a wild animal of its natural behavior. It is also illegal to possess any native wild animal without permits from state wildlife agencies, and also from U.S. Fish and Wildlife to posses a native bird. Anyone illegally possessing native wildlife in the U.S. is subject to fines, imprisonment, or both. 
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