On today's This Week in Fish and Wildlife, Morgan Jacobsen educated viewers about Montana’s smallest creatures. This time of year, young wildlife are out and about, exploring their new surroundings.
Unfortunately, many of us don’t understand how the natural world works. Jacobsen says every year, someone tries to bring in a fawn or an elk calf that they say has been abandoned.
Jacobsen says those animals are not abandoned. Often times the mothers leave their young to go search for food, or as a way to distract predators away from the babies. He says many times people will say: "there is obviously something wrong with the deer, it didn’t run away when I walked up to it." Jacobsen notes, survival for the very young in the wild often means being perfectly still.
His suggestion is to let nature do its thing. If people see an animal they think might be in trouble, he says they should contact Fish, Wildlife and Parks before trying to take matters into their own hands.
Often human contact with these animals will ultimately lead to tragic ends because the mothers will often not take them back, or cannot be found once the babies have been removed.
