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Thursday, May 10, 2007

By TESS NACELEWICZ

Staff Writer

The five baby raccoons were so young their eyes still hadn't opened when they were discovered at a construction site last week. But they had the characteristic markings of their species.

"They already had their little masks," said Pam Richardson, an assistant gamekeeper at the Maine Wildlife Park in Gray. "They looked so cute."

That's the problem with young wild animals: They look so cute and helpless when people come across them in the woods or their backyards. And because their mothers may not be around, people want to "rescue" them and take them home.

But Richardson and other state wildlife experts say that well-intentioned people do more harm than good when they remove baby wild animals from their natural environment. Much of the time the animals aren't really abandoned, and they often die in the care of inexperienced caregivers.

"If you left them, the mother would come back," said Richardson, who is also a state-approved wildlife rehabilitator. "She may be out hunting (for food) or just hiding because she saw you there."

That's why at this time of year -- when Maine is rife with young wildlife born in the spring -- Richardson and other wildlife experts continually repeat the slogan: If you care, leave them there.

And they say that if you do run across a situation where an animal is injured or must be relocated -- as was the case with the baby raccoons at the construction site in the Buxton area -- don't try to deal with the animals yourself. Contact a state wildlife rehabilitator in your area -- there's a list at www.remainewild.org -- or the Maine Animal Wildlife Park for advice.

The park, on Route 26 in Gray, is operated by the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries & Wildlife. It is open seven days a week, including holidays, through Nov. 11.

Visitors can see more than 26 species of wildlife native to the state, including moose, black bears, mountain lions, lynx, bobcats, deer, skunks, eagles and turkeys.

All the animals at the park were too injured or too used to humans to live safely in the wild, said Superintendent Curt Johnson.

At this time of year, visitors can sometimes see baby wildlife at the park. The little wild animals generally are not born there, because the park doesn't seek to breed its wildlife, Johnson said. However, he said, the park's deer herd typically has one or two fawns each year.

Johnson said the park usually sends baby wild animals to wildlife rehabilitators to be cared for until they are old enough to make it in the wild.

"We're not in the business of keeping wild animals in captivity if they're able to survive on their own," he said.

Wildlife rehabilitators in Maine need to be licensed because the state doesn't allow people to care for wildlife without state and sometimes federal permits.

Workers who found the baby raccoons at a construction site last week put them in a shady area all day in hopes their mother would come for them, but that didn't happen and the babies ended up at the wildlife park, Richardson said.

She said they will be cared for by a wildlife rehabilitator in Oxford County who will gradually introduce them back into the wild when they're old enough in the next few months.

"They are five little sweet things," she said. "There are three girls and two boys."

Although she and others at the park who had received vaccinations against rabies held the raccoons with their bare hands, she said people generally should avoid touching baby wildlife because the animals could carry rabies or other diseases.

Unlike the raccoons, however, much of the young wildlife that comes to the park should never have ended up there, Johnson and Richardson said.

For example, Richardson said sometimes people bring in fawns they found in the woods and believe to be orphaned, when possibly the mother was foraging not too far away.

"They really think that they're doing good," she said, "But it's kind of hard to deal with when you think: 'It probably could have been with its mother.'Ý"

Staff Writer Tess Nacelewicz can be contacted at 791-6367 or at: