100 baby animals among ‘hundreds and hundreds’ rescued by SPCA’s rehab centre
Credit to Author: Susan Lazaruk| Date: Tue, 05 Nov 2019 02:02:56 +0000
The B.C. SPCA is better known for finding forever homes for domestic animals, but every year it also improves the lives of 3,000 injured or abandoned wild animals, including racoons, birds, fawns, geese, squirrels and rabbits.
Its Wild Animal Rehabilitation Centre near Victoria in the first 10 months of this year has been asked to rescue 2,700 animals, and “hundreds and hundreds” of these animals are nurtured back to health and returned to the wild, said manager Andrea Wallace.
This year that included about 100 baby animals that were reunited with their mothers in the wild, she said.
“Sometimes it’s because of a racoon being hit by a car and people will call that there’s a group of babies left in their yard,” she said. “And it’s not always that a group of young animals have been orphaned, but sometimes they do need a surrogate and that’s what we do.”
The animals they have rescued included a Canada goose with the skin rubbed off its neck and another one that had swallowed a hook that had to be surgically removed.
The most exotic animal they’ve received at the centre was a brown booby, a bird that normally lives as far south as California (and which, unfortunately, didn’t survive).
Wallace said the seven staff members of Wild ARC first determine if the animals need rescuing.
The centre gets calls about deer fawns alone at the side of the road, she said, assuming it has been abandoned.
Andrea Wallace, manager of the Wildlife Animal Rescue Centre near Victoria.
But if the fawn is curled up by the side of the road, it most likely means that mom is out foraging and she’ll leave the fawn in one spot and come back for it eventually.
“But if you see a fawn vocalizing and walking up and around,” that could mean it’s been orphaned and needs help, she said.
The biggest number of wildlife calls the centre receives are for injured birds, which account for 70 per cent of the rescues. That includes songbirds, which can be injured flying into plate-glass windows, or becoming ill after eating from bird feeders that weren’t properly cleaned, she said.
The U.S. humane society lists on its website the following signs that a wild animal may be distressed: It’s been carried by a dog or cat, it’s bleeding, it has a broken limb, it’s shivering, there’s a dead parent nearby or the animal is crying and wandering all day long.
Wallace said the best way to transport a sick or injured animal is in a box with breathing holes lined with a towel and enough room for the animal to stand and move around. The animal, once recovered, will be returned to the same territory from which it came.
The fear that human scent on a wild animal will cause its parent or group in the wild to reject isn’t true all the time, but it does happen.
She said in that case, the animal will remain at the centre.
Wild ARC is an independent branch of the B.C. SPCA with an $800,000 annual budget, which comes from donations. Wallace said there are smaller animal rescue centres in the Greater Vancouver area and said she would like to be able to open a centre in the Okanagan.
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