If you’ve ever had a baby bird fall onto your stoop, encountered a lost pet or seen the Bay Area’s iconic sea life wash up to shore, you know how shocking it can be — and how important it can feel to jump into action quickly to help.
The spring and summer, when baby wild animals tend to be born, are the busiest for local animal response teams.
“Spring has sprung, and animals are reproducing, and they can get into a lot of trouble,” said Deb Campbell, spokesperson for San Francisco Animal Care and Control.
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But how do you know whether an animal is just off alone and scared or actually needs help? And who would you call, anyway?
Right here in the Bay Area, we have a wealth of animal rescue specialists at the ready for these types of emergencies. So we put together their list of top tips if you encounter an animal, wild or domestic, in need of help:
“You often don’t know if you should intervene; you don’t know if you should help,” said Alison Hermance, spokesperson for WildCare, a San Rafael-based wildlife hospital, nature education center and wildlife advocacy organization. They take in every type of animal imaginable, from songbirds to raccoons to a coyote hit by a car, she said, was in the X-ray room as she spoke.
Staff at WildCare, a wildlife rescue center, feed a baby deer. There is a special type of formula developed for each type of baby animal seen at the San Rafael Animal Hospital. (Courtesy WildCare)
Every animal shows its distress in different ways, Hermance said, and the signs can sometimes be confusing. But there are a few cardinal rules, which led her to develop what she calls “the five Cs”:
Cold: Even if you don’t see an obvious injury, cold skin could indicate sickness. But keep in mind: You should avoid approaching and touching wild animals, especially ones in distress.
Crying: Ask yourself — is the animal making noise constantly? If so, it may be crying out for help.
Coming toward you: Healthy wild animals see humans as predators and will want to get away — unless they’re sick or in need of help.
Covered in bugs or blood: These are signs that the animal may need treatment for an injury or infection.
Caught by a cat or dog: Any animal that has been attacked will need to go to a wildlife hospital.
Sue Pemberton, assistant manager of marine mammal stranding at the California Academy of Sciences, which is part of the Marine Mammal Stranding Network, said when it comes to marine animals, “the behavior can be very ambiguous. What looks normal in a baby harbor seal is abnormal in the California sea lion.”
It can get confusing with land animals, too. Hermance said mothers of fawns often walk their babies to a safe place and leave them there for extended periods of time so as not to alert predators to their presence. But sometimes, that can be in someone’s property, and a well-meaning person will go through a lot of effort to bring a perfectly healthy baby animal into the hospital, causing undue stress for the animal.
The same is true with songbirds, which learn to fly first by hopping around on the ground, and often get “kidnapped” by humans, even when they’re healthy.
Campbell said her San Francisco office gets calls all the time reporting baby birds that appear abandoned on the ground.
“In almost all cases, the baby bird is fine,” she said. “It’s being fed by the parents on the ground — the only thing to watch out for is if there’s a cat stalking in its area, a dog could get to it, or if it’s near the street,” she said. “We’re always telling people: don’t kidnap the baby birds.”
The good news is that if you aren’t sure if an animal is in need of rescue, there are a number of agencies in the Bay Area with dispatchers and on-call experts available all day long to send out teams or answer questions, and they will ask you about what you’re seeing to help determine if they need to send out a response team.
“The public is our eyes and ears along this massive stretch of coast that we respond to,” said Giancarlo Rulli, spokesperson for The Marine Mammal Center, which rescues and rehabilitates marine animals found along 600 miles of the California coast, including in the Bay Area.
Here are some numbers to call depending on the animal you encounter and where:
For injured or sick marine wildlife, including whales, seals, sea lions, sea otters, dolphins and porpoises, call the Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito: 415-289-7325.
What should you do immediately to help the pet or creature in need?
Once you’ve determined the animal might need help, try to leave the animal be, but be aware of other people or dangers to it.
Pemberton said sometimes marine mammals use the beach to rest, get warm or evade some other threat, so allowing them that space is important — around 150 feet is recommended by the Marine Mammal Center. And if you can stick around to deter others from approaching, that’s even better.
“You never want to return a sick or injured animal to the ocean,” Pemberton said. “They don’t derive comfort from our presence or our voices or our touch.”
Take a photo of the animal if you can, Pemberton said, to help response teams assess any help that may be needed. And write down or tell responders about the type of animal, its behavior and any signs of distress.
For pets like dogs and cats, it’s best to observe the animal from a distance and, if on a roadway, try not to force it into further danger, according to Miguel Abi-hassan, chief program officer at Joybound People & Pets, a Walnut Creek-based pet adoption, training and vet care organization. Also, be cautious about handling any pets — even if they appear friendly and healthy, they may act unpredictably.
“Domestic pets are likely in a stage of flight/fight when injured or even when stressed by an unfamiliar environment,” Abi-hassan said. “Sick and injured animals can often respond to the discomfort of their injuries or illness with unpredictable behavior, up to biting or scratching, and some illnesses that animals get can be spread to humans, so we do not recommend you try and handle an animal that is obviously sick or injured.”
Encountering an animal in distress can be difficult for you, too, so don’t hesitate to use the resources at your disposal, Hermance said.
“We are here not to just help the animal, but also to help the human that’s going through a really stressful moment,” Hermance said.
A WildCare staff member holds a baby swallow found in a school yard. (Courtesy of WildCare)
What will happen to the animal in the short and long term?
Once you talk to a dispatcher, they’ll get your location and decide whether to send professionals to assess and maybe transport the animal to care or to be released somewhere safe.
If a marine mammal is in need of rescue, it will be brought to a triage center and then to the Sausalito Hospital for admission and rehabilitation care, which can take weeks to months, depending on the animal and its needs, but success rates are high, Rulli said.
Hermance said while WildCare, too, tends to be successful in rehabilitating and releasing baby animals back into the wild, it’s often much more difficult to treat adults.
At first, they feed the babies by hand (she said every species of mammal has a different formula) until they can wean them onto adult foods, which is also when they cut off human interaction with them entirely. They also microchip the mammals they treat so the person who brought them in can check on their progress.
“We want to do everything we can for the animal medically with as little intervention as possible,” Hermance said. “Do all that is needed to get them back out into the wild — that is always the goal.”
But not every animal can or will survive, and some that have sustained severe injuries or are extremely ill with diseases may ultimately be euthanized to end their suffering.
“They will not have a chance to survive in the wild,” Campbell said. “It’s not a decision that we would expect somebody in the public to make. Our staff and our veterinary team are professionals. They’ve seen everything. They’re the ones that will absolutely make the best decision for the animals that they find.”
Is it “interfering with nature” to get wildlife to treatment?
To Rulli, “the answer is crystal clear. These animals, when they wash ashore sick, are often reflecting wider issues in the ocean,” he said. “We as humans are flying blind in terms of understanding what’s going on in the ocean and how that can, in turn, impact us.”
Rulli said responding to animals in need not only helps relieve their suffering, but can also serve as a “real-time early alert system” that can better inform us humans of risks to our health and our environment and can alarm us of our role in creating some of that environmental damage. The Marine Mammal Stranding Network sends its data to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which then uses it to track trends in marine animal deaths and their causes, Pemberton said.
Staff from San Francisco Animal Care and Control handle a baby raccoon on May 15, 2018. (Courtesy SF Animal Care and Control)
“The marine mammals that we are responding to here at the Marine Mammal Center are eating the same foods that we do,” Rulli said.
Plus, many of the animals treated at hospitals like WildCare, for example, sustain injuries or experience issues as a direct result of human intervention or activity — and humans are certainly encroaching on their habitat. It’s also a myth that parents won’t take back animals that humans have handled, Hermance said.
The current increase in whales foraging in the Bay, Pemberton said, is unusual, but “there isn’t anything we could or should do to deter them from coming inside the Bay. This is likely a natural behavior,” she said. But with an increase in whale activity comes an increase in deaths, too.
“While we didn’t think that gray whales foraged on their long migration from Alaska to Mexico and then back to Alaska, some of them use San Francisco Bay as a bit of a snack bar,” Pemberton said. “Unfortunately, that snack bar is right in the middle of a four-way intersection.”
What can you do in the long term to reduce animals’ risk?
The Marine Mammal Center doesn’t just rescue animals, its staff also focuses on education around the impact of climate change — and in particular, around the negative effects of human disturbance to marine wildlife.
After three years of collecting data, Rulli said 26 to 30% of the marine mammals they rescue have experienced “some form of disturbance by the public or by their pet on local beaches,” usually people or their dogs getting too close to the animal.
“The disturbance data is quite alarming,” he said. “A little under a third of the marine mammals that we’re responding to are being impacted unnecessarily, and there’s an increased stress burden put upon an already severely compromised animal that’s in distress prior to rescue.”
Rulli said observing signage, maintaining the recommended 150 feet of distance and keeping dogs leashed and away from marine life can make a big difference.
You can also come visit the centersto learn more about the animals they treat and the wider education and advocacy work the organizations do. To Rulli, understanding the entire ecosystem is key to protecting the animals that depend on it to survive.
“The ocean is stressed,” he said. “And the marine mammals that the center responds to are very much a direct reflection or a window into the health of our ocean.”
To Pemberton, not only is “being a good steward of the land and the sea” important, but so is embracing the Bay Area’s wealth in wildlife.
“We live in a really amazing part of the world with a lot of diversity and richness and health in the environment,” she said. “So get out there and see it, enjoy it, and really advocate for it.”
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