{"id":33294,"date":"2023-06-22T16:04:49","date_gmt":"2023-06-22T22:04:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wildlife-officials-issue-warning-following-fawn-kidnapping-mooses-fatal-jump-from-parking-garage\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T02:08:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T08:08:10","slug":"wildlife-officials-issue-warning-following-fawn-kidnapping-mooses-fatal-jump-from-parking-garage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wildlife-officials-issue-warning-following-fawn-kidnapping-mooses-fatal-jump-from-parking-garage\/","title":{"rendered":"Wildlife officials issue warning following fawn kidnapping, moose\u2019s fatal jump from parking garage"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"A
A fawn that was brought in by a concerned citizen to Colorado Parks and Wildlife's offices when the person found it alone in the woods. The agency warns against this. CPW tries to place animals in a wildlife rehabilitation facility, but if it can't, animals must be euthanized. (Courtesy of Colorado Parks and Wildlife, via The Colorado Sun)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Colorado Parks and Wildlife is warning humans to leave young wildlife they encounter in nature alone, even if the animals appear abandoned.<\/p>\n

The message comes after an uptick of cases involving people stumbling upon what appear to be neglected fawns in the forest, then picking them up, packing them out and taking them to a CPW office.<\/p>\n

Bridget O\u2019Rourke, CPW\u2019s statewide public information officer, says the phenomenon happens more often than one may think.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe kind of see this every year, where people have the misconception of they see a fawn by itself and don\u2019t see its mother and think it\u2019s been abandoned,\u201d she says. \u201cSo they put it in their car and bring it to us, but they don\u2019t understand the behavior of wild animals and that it\u2019s common for a doe to leave a fawn alone when it goes looking for food.\u201d<\/p>\n

O\u2019Rourke says removing a fawn from its natural habitat \u2013 \u201cessentially kidnapping it\u201d \u2013 can come with devastating consequences. The worst is a \u201crescuer\u201d driving a fawn to a CPW office.<\/p>\n

\"Colorado
Colorado Parks and Wildlife said people have been bringing fawns like this one to its offices, thinking the animals have been abandoned. The agency says they\u2019re safest left alone. (Courtesy of Colorado Parks and Wildlife, via The Colorado Sun)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

\u201cBecause when it arrives, usually the animal is under a lot of distress and frightened,\u201d she says. \u201cThen we have to call around to rehab centers to see if one can take it. If we\u2019re not able to find one, which sometimes we can\u2019t, then the animal has to be euthanized because if you release it back into the wild, the mother can\u2019t find and take care of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

A news release Tuesday from CPW said: \u201cA mother deer\u2019s best survival strategy for her fawn is to leave it unattended for several hours a day. The mother carefully selects a location and will return periodically to feed her young. By staying away, she avoids drawing attention to its hiding place. Young fawns have exceptional camouflage, almost no scent and remain still, making it difficult for predators to spot them.\u201d<\/p>\n

But a moose that leapt Sunday from the top of a two-story parking garage near Steamboat Resort was a different story.<\/p>\n

CPW rangers responded to a call about the incident and, upon arrival, found an approximately 2-year-old bull splayed on the cement, dead, with a broken neck. Rangers removed the moose and donated its meat to the community.<\/p>\n

David Rehak Suma, Colorado Parks and Wildlife district manager, told The Steamboat Pilot<\/em> he had hoped to arrive in time to keep the public back and give the animal the room it needed to find its way safely off the structure.<\/p>\n

\u201cA witness said that people were crowding it, trying to take pictures of it,\u201d Rehak Suma told the paper. \u201cThen, sure enough, the moose jumped off the roof there on the north side and fell to its death.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWild animals need a sense of safe exits,\u201d O\u2019Rourke told The Sun.<\/p>\n

\"A
A moose trudges through a pond near Mineral Creek northwest of Silverton on July 21, 2013. (Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald file)<\/span>JERRY McBRIDE\/Durango Herald<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

O\u2019Rourke said around 3,000 moose live in Colorado, and that their numbers are growing thanks to healthy habitat. CPW encourages people to avoid thick willow habitats in riparian areas favored by moose to decrease the chances of an encounter. On Tuesday, longtime Coal Creek resident Robert Standerwick was walking his dogs on a trail when he rounded a curve in a trail and surprised a cow moose with her calf.<\/p>\n

The moose charged and knocked Standerwick down, stomping him several times, CPW reported.<\/p>\n

Standerwick was armed and fired two shots into the ground in an effort to startle the moose. The moose and calf were not shot and retreated, Standerwick said. He was transported to a nearby hospital with non-life-threatening injuries. The dogs were uninjured and off-leash at the time.<\/p>\n

The Colorado Sun is a reader-supported, nonpartisan news organization dedicated to covering Colorado issues. To learn more, go to coloradosun.com<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reminder comes during an uptick of apparently inadvertent abuses<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":33295,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[1031,233,28,603],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-33294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-colorado-parks-and-wildlife","tag-coloradosun-com","tag-headlines","tag-wildlife"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33294"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33294\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":82140,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33294\/revisions\/82140"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33294"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=33294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}