Progressive predator policies

Commentary by Rebecca Dmytryk

Today, the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission adopted provisions to the state's wolf management program that will make lethal control of wolves involved in livestock deaths a last resort.

The result of a lawsuit brought on by conservationists in 2011, these new rules make previously ambiguous language very, very clear - ranchers must now show that they have implemented non-lethal measures to prevent conflicts with wolves before a depredation permit will be issued. As it should be. 

Ranchers must also show evidence that a particular radio-collared wolf was in the area at the time of the killing to ensure only the problem animals are targeted.

The new rules clearly define "chronic depredation" as four qualifying incidents attributed to the same wolf or wolves within a six-month period, and even under this four-strike policy, the state maintains final say - if the animal is killed or not.

These changes make this one of the most progressive wildlife management plans in the country - a model for others to follow.

Read more, HERE, and a detailed description of the settlement HERE.

Read More

Of gulls and ducts

Yesterday, WES received a call from the owner of a business in Santa Cruz. She had just opened her office door to do some weekend cleaning and found a baby gull wandering around on the carpet. Also on the floor, was one of the ceiling air vents. 

The baby must have fallen in from the rooftop and slipped through the ducts and into the office space. It had probably dropped in sometime after closing on Friday night.
The downy chick was transported to Native Animal Rescue on 17th Avenue where it received a through examination. It was in excellent shape.

That afternoon, Duane and Rebecca set out to return the baby to its parents. 

As Duane climbed the ladder, the parent gulls became alarmed. Their calls got the attention of other gulls that came to investigate. 

Once on the rooftop, Duane found the nest with another baby gull nearby. He also found what had happened - one of the metal doors of the building's air conditioning units had fallen off.

Gulls are semi-precocial. They hatch with their eyes open and covered in down. Within a day, they are able to walk and leave the nest to explore. When frightened, they will hide in or under vegetation, or whatever they can find.

The chick must have been exploring or maybe it got scared and tried to hide in the air conditioning unit.

After securing the door back in place, Duane collected the one baby gull and placed it on the nest with its sibling - the one that had fallen. He covered them with a dark piece of fabric to keep them quiet while he walked away. This technique reduces the chance of them panicking and scattering.

Once on the ladder, Duane tugged a rope to remove the fabric off the chicks. They stood and walked off together, slowly, which is what we wanted.

This morning, another chick was found inside the building!

Duane returned that one, too.

Read More

Marmot: The Saga Continues

Photo by Susan McCarthy

The marmot saga continues, with one of WES' lead responders, Susan McCarthy hot on the trail of the wily member of the marmotini tribe. 

Susan has been dedicating her free time to tracking down the rodents whereabouts, speaking with neighbors in the Bernal Heights area where it's been hanging out. She has cage traps set during daylight hours, baited with delicious spinach fried with bacon (a suggestion made by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers).

Meanwhile, we've had a few residents call us to say that they had returned from trips to the Sierras around the time the marmot showed up. One in particular seems promising. 

With luck, we'll lure the beast into one of the cages by the end of the week so it can be returned home. 

Stay tuned!

Read More

Squirrel, caught in the act!

This afternoon, WES was alerted of an emergency involving a tree squirrel - it was caught in a bird feeder. Somehow, it managed to get its back end stuck in garden wire meant to protect the feeder from squirrels. Check out the video of its rescue.

MANY THANKS TO EVERYONE WHO HELPED

BY ALERTING WES OF THE EMERGENCY!

Read More

Skunk Freed

This morning, WES received a call about a skunk that had been inadvertently trapped and in a cage trap for over 24 hours. Apparently, there was no one in the Monterey County area that could or would respond to set the skunk free. 

WES responders, Duane and Rebecca, were on scene within 30 minutes. They found the skunk to be in good shape, even though it had spent at least one full day and night exposed to the elements.

Thankfully, the homeowners had covered the trap with a shirt and provided the animal with food. Duane carefully opened the trap and waited for the animal to find its way out. Check out the video:

Cage traps are used to trap animals alive, but, in California, relocation of trapped wildlife is prohibited, and for good reasons. Not only is it an unsound practice, studies show most relocated animals die trying to get back home. Lawfully trapped animals, then, must either be released on site or euthanized. The key word being "lawfully".

There are quite a number of regulations governing the trapping of wildlife. Rebecca and Duane are founding members of the Humane Wildlife Control Association, HERE, on their company's web site, they attempt to clarify the State's trapping regulations and discuss why trapping is not the answer.

Read More

Turkey poults in Morgan Hill

Photo by Kevin Cole.

This morning we received a call from a family in rural Morgan Hill. Earlier, they had inadvertently startled a female turkey and her young that had been walking across their front lawn. Reacting to their mother's alarm call, the poults scattered.

According to the RP, two of them split off in separate directions and took cover in shrubbery, and six or seven slipped under the side gate and into the backyard.

The hen kept up with the peeping poults, following them into the yard. She stayed close, nervously patrolling, ready to fend off predators while seemingly trying to calculate an escape for her wee ones.

Duane was on scene within 40 minutes. Here is his account:

When I got there, the family had most of the poults confined to a corner of the yard. They were hunkered down on leaf matter in the shade of a bushy tree.

Since it was the Fourth of July and there was a fair bit of activity in the neighborhood, I wanted to get them away from the houses. I felt this would be better than letting them out directly onto the street.

As I approached the corner where the babies were corralled, the hen flew onto the fence right above me. She watched intently as I gathered her little ones into a pet carrier.  

Wild turkey poults are lightening-fast - lightening-poults! Two slipped by me. One went in one direction, the other headed down the fence line.  

While I was collecting the escapee to my left, the hen began escorting the other poult away from danger, leading it to the farthest corner. There, it found a hole in the wooden fence and squeezed through into a neighboring yard, where it quickly sought cover.

With the hen becoming increasingly agitated, I thought it best to reunite her with those I'd already collected. We'd come back for the lost ones.

I took one of the poults in hand so it would make a loud distress call. This quickly got the mother's attention. I walked to the front of the house. She followed, flying to the rooftop where she watched me cross the street to an open field.  

Following the sound of her chicks, she crossed the road and approached the crate. I tipped the carrier and released all of the poults at once. At first, they scattered, but quickly regrouped at their mother's side. I then went back to look for the missing ones. 

When I entered the backyard, I heard a peep. Then silence. A couple more peeps, then quiet again. It sounded like it was coming from the corner where I'd collected the babies. I decided to sift through the leaf matter, and when I got down about 4", out shot another fuzzy poult!

I needed to get it back to the hen, quickly. I knew where she was. She had taken refuge in the shade of some trees next to an old wooden shed. 

Instead of walking up on her, I used the truck to get close. I parked on the shoulder of the road, about 40' from where she was bedded down with her brood. With the poult in hand, I got out of the truck and positioned myself at the front where my frame was hidden, but where I could see through the windshield.

The poult's distress calls drew the hen from the bushes. As she approached the truck, I placed the baby on the ground, facing her, but the baby turned and ran for cover - under the truck! It's mom was right there, though. She quickly collected her baby and guided it into the shade.

Later in the afternoon, Rebecca went back to the location to scout for the remaining poults. Here is her account.

It was about 4:30 in the afternoon when I arrived. I decided to focus on locating the one or two poults that had been separated from the start. I sat in the shade, quietly, waiting, listening. After about 30 minutes, I decided to drive around the block, and as I was pulling out, I heard a distress call. I stayed in the truck until I honed in on the sound.

There it was. The little poult emerged from a bush and was headed for the street.

When it saw me get out of the truck, it started to bolt for cover. Without taking my eyes off of it, I grabbed for my net from the back of the truck and went after it, netting it in a planter. I placed the baby in a carrier and took a minute to record its calls to use later.

Next, I went to the property that backs up to the yard where the poults had been - the yard that the one had slipped into. Thankfully, the family was home and answered the door. They had actually just seen the poult - about fifteen minutes before, but after trying to capture it, they lost sight of it.

I scoured the backyard. Nothing. I played the recorded calls. Nothing. I walked up and down the block. Not a peep. So, I decided to look for the hen.

Windows down, I drove through the residential neighborhood and up and around the small rural lanes off Hill Road. I came across a lone turkey, and a jackrabbit, but no hen. I went back through again, this time playing the distress calls over my iPhone. I felt a little silly. It was pretty loud, and I was just creeping along like an ice cream truck.

I was just about to call it, when I spotted her! There she was, up ahead of me on the country lane, crossing back over into the field where Duane had left her. There were six poults trailing her. They had just made it across the shoulder. I needed to be fast. 

I leaned over and grabbed the baby from the box, turned on the camera, and pulled over onto the left shoulder. The hen was almost to the tall grass when she heard her baby calling, and stopped. I popped the door open to do a "drive by" and started to lean out, when my seatbelt put a sharp stop to my otherwise graceful move. Fumbling, I got free and gently tossed the ball of fluff about a foot out from the car - but it immediately turned and headed for the cover of the truck (now stopped). 

The hen was quick - she was on it! Her maternal instinct kicked in and she paid no mind to anything but getting her little one to follow her, which it did... and, as fast as she turned "on", she was "off" again - emotionless, Reptilian. She regained that slow, deliberate, theropodian-stride and led her babies into the tall grass where they disappeared. 

Check out the video:

We checked back with both households to see if they had spotted one of the lost poults, but they had not. We'll keep checking and will post an update.

Interesting turkey links:

Full episode of PBS' My Life As A Turkey

More Than A Meal: The Turkey in History, Myth, Ritual, and Reality

Read More

From across the pond...

Every once in a while we share news from colleagues in the United Kingdom. Check out the latest news from East Sussex Wildlife Rescue & Ambulance Service (WRAS) written by Founder & Casualty Centre Manager, Trevor Weeks MBE.

These two hedgehogs have come into WRAS’s Casualty Care Centre covered in dried mud after being trapped in a foundation trench on a building site at Westham over the weekend.  Builders discovered the two hedgehogs now named “Bill and Ben”  and rescued them from the trench. 

WRAS volunteers Chris and student Bryony came with me to check out the situation and none of us expected to find such muddy hedgehogs. I have never had to rescue a hedgehogs as badly covered in mud as these before. We often get them with mud on but not with so much caked and dried onto their fur and spines, especially round the faces like this. 

WRAS would normally release the hedgehogs back in their home range that same evening, but due to the building work being undertaken and the depth of the trench  the hedgehogs are being kept in care for a few days.

The first thing we did was to check to see if they were boys or girls, as we wouldn’t want to keep a female away from her babies at this time of year. Luckily they were boys so they were delivered to the Casualty Centre for a clean up. Student Bryony helped me wash them both. 

Now with their spines shining once more the two hedgehogs are being housed and fed in their new accommodation and will be released back at Westham at the end of the week once the trench has been filled in and is no longer a risk. The builders are going to keep an eye on the trench and check it regularly to ensure no others get stuck.

WRAS rescues between 400 and 600 hedgehogs a year. Pevensey Park Road, Rattle Road, Castle View Gardens and the surrounding roads are all very lively areas for hedgehogs certainly a hot spot for them.

Fingers crossed we will get them released safety later in the week.

To make a donation to this wonderful charity, click HERE.

Read More