Tag: rabbit

Hotlines for Wild Animal Rescue

  • Possums pretty much just want to be left alone – and they let you know by opening their mouths full of teeth. It’s called an alligator gape. (Photo by Patti Roman)

Let’s say you find a baby chipmunk that fell

out of a tree… or worse, you hit an animal with your car.

Who do you call? Rebecca Williams has the story of people

who feel it’s their duty to nurse these animals back to health…

and get them back to the wild:

Transcript

Let’s say you find a baby chipmunk that fell out of a tree… or worse, you hit an animal with your car. Who do you call? Rebecca Williams has the story of people who feel it’s their duty to nurse these animals back to health… and get them back to the wild:


(sound of phone ringing)


“Thank you for calling the Friends of Wildlife hotline for squirrels, chipmunks and other small rodents. If you have rescued a small animal please keep it warm and quiet…” (beep)

There are hotlines like these set up all over the country. There are bunny hotlines, woodchuck hotlines… you name it and there’s a volunteer hotline for it.

The woman who answers the Possum Hotline is Patti Roman. She volunteers in Michigan. She has a basement full of baby possums.

“Mom has 13 babies so if you get a weekend where two or three moms are hit I’ll get a lot of babies in a few days.”

She says possums get hit by cars a lot. They love to eat roadkill, and they’ll just sit there in the middle of the road, staring at your headlights.

Possums are marsupials like kangaroos. Except they don’t hop out of the way. They keep their babies in their pouches. When a mom gets hit, a lot of times the babies will survive. Someone will find the babies and call the Possum Hotline.

Patti Roman says she’s had up to a hundred baby possums in her basement at one time.

She puts gloves on before she pulls a possum out of its terrarium. I don’t know if you know possums, but they look like a huge hairy rat on its worst day. But this baby possum is kinda cute. He’s giving us a sharp-toothed little grin. It’s a I’ll-rip-your-hand off kind of grin.

“He’s doing the alligator gape right now. But he’s not biting me, but he is trying to scare me.”

That mouth full of sharp teeth is your first clue that possums just want to be left alone. If your dog chases after one, the possum might play dead. Then it’ll get up and waddle off when you’re not looking.

Patti Roman takes care of the possums until they’re a few months old. Then she takes them into the woods and lets them go. She says wildlife is always better off in the wild. But she says she does get criticized for interfering with nature.

“A possum who gets hit by a car is not supposed to die. It has nothing to do with natural selection. And if we can help I think we should.”

But some scientists debate that. Jim Harding is a wildlife specialist at Michigan State University.

“I think the majority of rehabilitation efforts is often just based on a human need to care for things. It isn’t really related to conservation unless you’re dealing with a very rare species.”

Harding says rehabbing some types of common animals can actually make things worse. For example – he says there are so many raccoons that they can wipe out a lot of birds because they eat their eggs.

But Patti Roman says she really feels like she’s doing the right thing. She spent 18 years at the Humane Society rescuing dogs and cats. But she never knew for sure those animals would be placed in good homes.

“When you call to check on the animal a year later – it’s been given away or run away or accidentally been killed. It was breaking my heart. And after awhile I thought, you know, I enjoy doing the wild animals because when they’re ready to go I’m not dependent on people anymore. It feeds my soul. It really does. I do this and I feel very, very good every morning that I can save a life.”

She says when she lets the possums go they don’t look back. They just take off into the woods. And even if that little possum ends up getting eaten by a fox, Roman says that’s okay, because at least that’s natural.

For The Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

Related Links

Essay: Tuning in to Urban Frogs

  • Ed Herrmann tries to hear some frogs through the traffic near the Rouge River. (Photo by Ed Herrmann)

Each Spring, thousands of people spend their evenings listening to frogs and toads. It’s not just for fun. They’re helping assess the water quality of rivers and wetlands around the country. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Ed Herrmann joined the search for amphibians, and has this essay:

Transcript

Each Spring, thousands of people spend their evenings listening to frogs and toads. It’s
not just for fun. They’re helping assess the water quality of rivers and wetlands around
the country. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Ed Herrmann joined the search for
amphibians, and has this essay:


I’ve always enjoyed being outside and listening to nature. Recording nature sounds is a
hobby of mine. So when I saw an ad asking for people to listen for frogs and toads, I
thought, “All right. Beats watching campaign commercials.”


I called up Friends of the Rouge…(that’s a local group dedicated to helping out the Rouge
River watershed) and a few days later I got a package in the mail. It was full of maps and
information, and had a CD with the songs of the local frogs and toads. I studied my area,
and found some good looking wet spots where I thought they might live.


I memorized the sound of the Wood Frog (sound), Chorus Frog (sound), Spring Peeper
(sound), and American Toad. Then, on the first night when the temperature and wind
conditions were just right, I headed out to hear some frogs.


(sound of traffic roaring by)


I don’t know what I was thinking. This is suburban Detroit, not exactly a wildlife refuge.
In fact, the only animal I see is a rabbit dodging traffic. And the only thing I hear is…
(more traffic sound)


The Rouge River flows into the Detroit River and then Lake Erie. It used to be one of the
dirtiest rivers around, mainly from all the industry down by the mouth. That problem is
more or less under control but now there’s a larger one.


If you look at a map from the 1970s, you see miles of wetlands, small farms and
orchards. Today you see nonstop subdivisions and shopping malls. It might seem like
progress to you, but for the river, the constant barrage of fertilizers, pesticides, soap and
other chemicals that everybody uses to keep their suburbs looking pretty is a lot worse
than an occasional dose of battery acid from a factory. Also having acres of concrete
instead of wetlands means there’s nothing to soak up and filter the water, which means
after a big rain, it floods. It’s obvious this river needs some help.


(sound of river)


In 1998, volunteers began surveying the frogs and toads in the Rouge watershed. These
creatures were chosen because they sing, so they’re easy to track. The reason they’re
good indicators is that, like other amphibians, they absorb water through their skin. That
means they get poisoned by everything that we in the civilized world pour into the water.
Plus, their eggs hatch in water and their larvae (the tadpoles) live in water. It’s pretty
simple: if the water is good, there’s plenty of frogs and toads. If not, they disappear.


So, night after night, I’m out there listening. Listening in the dark. Listening hard.


Not a peep.


I’m beginning to think that the price of all these well-manicured lawns is a silent spring.
Then finally one night, (sound of American toads) the good old American toad! All
right, it is the most common species around, but at least it’s a start.


(sound of chorus frogs and green frogs)


A few weeks later, I join a group at a “mitigated” wetland. That means that when a
developer decided that a real wetland would be the perfect place to build condos and a
golf course, the government said, “Sure, go ahead. Drain it. Just be sure to dig a hole
over here and fill it with water.” Now, five years later, some frogs have moved in and
seem to be fine.


But they still have a little problem…


(jet roars overhead, followed by a few green frogs)


Ah, location, location. This new wetland is right
next to the airport.


Now, the reason these frogs sing is to attract a mate. So if nobody hears them, there are
not going to be any tadpoles to make next year’s frogs. In order to survive, they need not
only to sing, but to be heard.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Ed Herrmann.


(frogs fade out)

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BIOLOGISTS TRACK LYNX’S RETURN

  • Canada lynx are rare in the U.S. Their populations fluctuate following the population cycles of snowshoe hare, their main prey. Photo courtesy of the Gov't of NW Territories.

Some areas of the Great Lakes are again home to an elusive wild cat. Canada Lynx disappeared from the region about twenty years ago. Now, considered threatened, lynx are turning up in the Superior National Forest for the first time in decades. Biologists are trying to figure out why they’ve come back, and whether they’ll stay. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Bob Kelleher reports:

Transcript

Some areas of the Great Lakes are again home to an elusive wild cat. Canada Lynx disappeared
from Minnesota about twenty years ago. Now, considered threatened lynx are turning up in the
Superior National Forest for the first time in decades. Biologists are trying to figure out why
they’ve come back, and whether they’ll stay. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Bob Kelleher
reports:


Lynx have tufted ears, a stubby tail, and big snowshoe feet. They’re a northern forest cat,
about the size of a cocker spaniel. Lynx range across much of Canada and Alaska, but
historically they were found in the Great Lakes region as well. Lynx are loners and range a huge
territory. They seem to follow their favorite prey, snowshoe hare, and recently, Minnesota’s
Superior National Forest has been jumping with hares.


“It doesn’t matter where snowshoe hares are. If they’re there, that’s where cats are going to be.”


University of Minnesota Researcher, Chris Burdette, has one possible explanation for the return
of Canada Lynx.


“There’s a lot of snowshoe hares in this part of the area, and up to 90% of a lynx’s diet is
snowshoe hares.”


Hare populations boom and bust in about seven-year cycles. But in recent population booms, the
lynx were missing. By the mid-1990s, lynx were considered gone from Minnesota, until now.
Three years ago, the cats were spotted again in the region.


Burdette has just begun to count and track northeast Minnesota’s lynx. Two cats have been fitted
with radio collars. It’s not yet clear how many others are wandering the forest. And Burdette
says, lynx do wander.


“It’s very likely that the majority of these animals migrated from Canada. These animals innately
want to disperse long distances.”


Burdette was checking his traps recently, marching through dense balsam fir and the last
remnants of spring snow.


(walking through snow)


His lynx traps are chicken wire boxes, the size of a big dog house, with a bit of hare or beaver in
the back and a door on the front poised to slap shut. But on this day, there were no lynx to be
found.


“It seems like it’s been in there. We cover it up with some balsam, spruce, pine
boughs – whatever we have to sort of make it look more natural. So this one looks clear.”


Lynx were added to the list of threatened species three years ago. An environmental group sued
the U.S. Fish and Wildlife service, saying the agency’s recovery plans overlooked lynx
populations in the Western Great Lakes, Maine and the Southern Rockies.


Mike Leahy, Counsel for Defenders of Wildlife, says it’s clear there are lynx in the Great Lakes
Region.


“The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources had for a long time vehemently denied that
there could possibly be more than one or two lynx in the entire state, and, they found indeed,
there’s a resident population of lynx in Minnesota.”


Lynx aren’t entirely welcomed. Some residents worry that rules protecting the threatened species
might stop timber sales, or close roads and recreation trails. They remember the Pacific
Northwest, where logging was stopped for spotted owls. But that won’t happen for lynx,
according to Superior National Forest Biologist, Ed Lindquist.


“It’s certainly not a four-legged spotted owl. It really likes regenerating forest – dense
regenerating forest – that provides good snowshoe hare habitat.”


And regenerating forest is what you get after harvesting timber. New aspen growth attracts hares.
Lynx also need older growth nearby for shelter.


Chris Burdette’s study will help create a lynx recovery plan. But he says recovery – actually
getting the cat off federal protection – isn’t even on the horizon.


“No where near it. Very preliminary stages. We’re just in the data collection stage right now, so we
can put some kind of scientific thoughts into the process of managing this species.


There’s little known about the elusive cat or it’s prey. Understanding snowshoe hares will help
researchers understand the lynx.


“Are they going to be here in three years? Are they going to be here in five years, or whatever?
That’s a very open question.”


Burdette will trap lynx until bears begin raiding the bait in his box traps. Then he’ll radio track
collared lynx and monitor hare feeding areas for signs of lynx. The lynx study is funded for three
years, but it might take ten to begin understanding this rare cat.


For The Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Bob Kelleher.