Group works to prevent deer deaths

By Maricela De La Cruz

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    EL DORADO COUNTY, California (KCRA) — As deer birthing season has begun and continues through June and July, the Sierra Wildlife Rescue team in El Dorado County is taking a seasonal — and common — spike in calls, as more deer end up trapped and impaled by a common denominator.

“Hazardous fencing and one of the worst ones is wrought iron with the sharp points right at the top,” says Dave Cook, who’s been volunteering for 22 years with the Sierra Wildlife Rescue team.

Cook adds that while most people use wrought iron fencing with spikes for home protection, it’s not useful when trying to keep humans out, and it usually ends up hurting wildlife and children.

Getting caught in fencing is the second deadliest cause of deer deaths — and it also often leads fawn to face other dangers.

“If they are orphaned within the first roughly five weeks of age, they’re going to starve to death. They’re milk-dependent, so if we don’t scoop them up and get them on the formula that they need to be on, they’re going to starve to death,” Cook said.

Sierra Wildlife Rescue works in El Dorado County and parts of Sacramento — where a group of volunteers respond to calls and take care of fawn. It takes them a day or so to try to stabilize them and then the rehab process begins.

Earl Jansa, a decade-long volunteer at Sierra Wildlife Rescue has four isolation pens and a bigger enclosure in his backyard “We’ve had about nine or 10 [fawn], although that’s a workload for us,” he says.

This effort raises the survival rate of fawns up to 90%. Those costs usually stay at around $250 per fawn if feeding is the only care they need.

Human contact and interaction are minimized so that once the fawn is released, it can adapt quickly to wildlife. The rescue team tries to release fawn within days of their rescue and three weeks at max.

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