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What should you do if you find a baby deer? Nothing!

I recently visited a famous New Hampshire tourist destination and was surprised to see several large signs saying “The fox families in this area are wild animals. Please do not approach them.” I am amazed that people have to be told things like this. Is the average person really so divorced from nature that we now approach the entire planet as though it were a zoo, stocked with not-quite-wild animals on display just for our viewing pleasure?

My drive to work takes me past a riverside soccer field where a flock of Canada made their home. Every morning I would watch their family progress, as the eggs hatched and the fuzzy goslings grew into awkward teenaged geese. Then one morning they were all gone. I read in the newspaper that they had been “culled”, which is wildlife management speak for rounded up and killed. Why? For daring to poop on private property! The land owners had tried to discourage the geese, but other folks were feeding them, and the desire for food won out over the deterrent measures; eventually the geese were officially deemed a nuisance and removed. I’m sure that the folks feeding the geese meant no harm, but they really were to blame.

There’s an old saying in the North Country: “A fed bear is a dead bear”.  People who feed bears, either accidentally by leaving bird feeders in easy reach, or on purpose, do the bears a terrible disservice. Bears are intelligent and they have good memories; once they have gotten used to easy handout meals they tend to stay around and give up the tedious work of foraging naturally. They also lose their natural fear of humans, coming closer and staying around the food source more and more. Eventually they move on to helping themselves, in some cases entering cars or buildings in search of even more of that delicious human food. At that point the bear, having done property damage, is officially deemed a nuisance, and is done away with.

Every spring my local Fish and Game officials are faced with well-meaning people who found what they thought was an abandoned baby deer. They do not understand that deer will leave their fawns to nap in a safe spot while mom goes to eat. The fawn’s only defense is to stay still and wait for its mother to come back to get it. When a person approaches, the fawn will follow its instincts and lie still; if the person removes the fawn, the chances of ever reuniting it with its mother are slim, and most are euthanized. 

People need to understand that wildlife is just that, wild. If animals’ lives sometimes intersect with ours, that should be a pleasure and a privilege. Humans need to learn to enjoy wildlife without interfering with it; our attempts to be “helpful “go astray far too often, and the animal usually loses. In most cases the animals were there first, and it is up to the humans to educate ourselves to do the right thing, which, 99% of the time, is to quietly watch from a respectful distance, and nothing more. Appreciation is not the same as manipulation. Humans are supposed to be the most intelligent animal species – let’s prove it.