Adopting animals that seem to have been abandoned by their parents isn't kind.
Each year, more than 100 Missourians find fawns without their mothers nearby and decide the young deer have been abandoned. Believing they are performing a good deed, they bundle the adorable, spotted animals off to their house and try to raise it themselves. It's a scene that's as tragic as it is common.
Wild animals are almost always better off in the wild than in captivity. If fawns are raised in captivity and released back into the wild, their chance of survival is slim.
In a study by the Conservation Department's research center in Columbia, radio-collard 40 fawns raised in captivity over a two year period. The "rehabbed" fawns were released and tracked for two years. Only six survived! The trouble is that fawns adopted by humans lose the chance to learn survival skills from their mothers. Fawns learn what to eat and where to find it, what to be afraid of and how to avoid predators from their mother's examples. Fawns raised in artificial settings have to learn on their own and are not likely to survive.
This is particularly unfortunate, because in most cases it is unnecessary. Most whitetail fawns found in the wild aren't deserted. Their mothers simply are not visible when well‑meaning humans happened along. A human mother would never leave her baby alone in a clump of grass, so people assume when they find a fawn in that situation its mother must be dead or gone. We don't realize that what's good for human babies isn't necessarily good for wild ones.
A doe will usually visit their fawns only long enough to nurse them. By staying away the rest of the time, they avoid drawing predators' attention to their young. People who take fawns out of the wild often do so within sight or earshot of their mothers. The good news is that the mistake can be corrected.
A mother has a big investment in her fawns. She's not going to give up on them easily. She probably will find them if they are returned to the area where they were picked up, even if someone has had them for a couple of days.
Similarly, Conservation Agents statewide receive hundreds of calls each spring and summer from people who find young birds, raccoons, opossums and a variety of other wildlife that they believe have been abandoned. In most cases nothing is wrong, and human intervention is inappropriate.
Birds often grow too large for their nests before they are able to fly. They fall or jump out, and parents continue to bring food for them on the ground. "Rescuing" a young animal from this situation is likely to result in its death. Most people aren't equipped to supply young animals' dietary needs.
If a child brings home a baby bird or rabbit, forget the popular myth that human scent will prevent the parent from taking it back. Return the animal as quickly as possible to the place where it was found. If you have a flightless bird in your back yard, keep your pets indoors and chase away the neighbors' cats and dogs that come snooping around. The parent birds will continue to care for the little one until it can fly.
Some young deer, birds, rabbits, raccoons and squirrels do die; victims of predators, inclement weather or just bad luck. But that's how nature works. Predators need food to survive, and nature produces many more baby animals than needed to sustain wildlife populations. Unfortunately, death is a necessary part of life in the wild.