{"id":99033,"date":"2018-06-22T18:45:52","date_gmt":"2018-06-23T00:45:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wildlife-officials-ask-public-to-leave-baby-animals-alone\/"},"modified":"2018-06-22T18:45:52","modified_gmt":"2018-06-23T00:45:52","slug":"wildlife-officials-ask-public-to-leave-baby-animals-alone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wildlife-officials-ask-public-to-leave-baby-animals-alone\/","title":{"rendered":"Wildlife officials ask public to leave baby animals alone"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Colorado
Colorado Parks and Wildlife urges people not to approach or pick up young wildlife.<\/span>Courtesy of Colorado Parks and Wildlife<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

It\u2019s that time of year, and the message is the same: Do not pick up, interact with or touch wildlife, especially baby animals.<\/p>\n

Colorado Parks and Wildlife<\/a> spokesman Joe Lewandowski said the third week of June is usually the peak of fawn births in Colorado, at which time baby deer are the most vulnerable before they\u2019re able to walk.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a common sight, Lewandowski said, to see fawns alone without their mothers.<\/p>\n

He stressed the message, however, that the fawns have not been abandoned. It\u2019s typical for mothers to leave their young to go off and feed so they have the energy to continue nursing the fawn.<\/p>\n

Still, every year, people are compelled to \u201csave\u201d the baby animals, which in actuality, serves as a death sentence. Fawns taken from their environment can\u2019t be rehabilitated, and the situation usually ends in an euthanization.<\/p>\n

In 2016, for instance, someone put a baby deer in a car and took it to the La Plata County Humane Society. The fawn was euthanized.<\/p>\n

Lewandowksi said the same goes for raccoons, skunks, birds and other critters. Many of these animals have no scent and are well camouflaged when they are left alone.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll these animals have been doing this for thousands and thousands of years, and they\u2019ve done quite well,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

jromeo@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

disturbed or \u2018rescued\u2019 often end up dying<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":99034,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[603],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-99033","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-wildlife"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99033","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=99033"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99033\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/99034"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99033"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99033"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99033"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=99033"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}