Is It Illegal to Own a Baby Seal
Officials: Don't bear on or pick upwards seal pups
SEATTLE -- As harbor seals are being built-in in the Pacific Northwest this time of year, marine mammal advocates up and down the West Coast are urging people not to touch or selection up pups that come upwards on beaches and shorelines to rest.
At to the lowest degree five times this flavor, well-meaning people have illegally picked up seal pups in Oregon and Washington thinking they were abased or needed help, merely that interference ultimately resulted in two deaths, said Michael Milstein, a spokesman with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
State wildlife officials had to euthanize one harbor seal pup last month after a adult female picked it up on a embankment in Westport, Washington, and apparently carried it back to a business firm in a shopping tote. The animal was later on adamant to be unresponsive and lethargic, Milstein said.
Another couple found a seal pup on the embankment in Garibaldi, Oregon, and fearing the beast was lone or abased, wrapped the seal in a embankment towel, put it in their car and placed it in their shower at domicile, said Kristin Wilkinson, NOAA's regional stranding coordinator.
Wildlife officers returned that seal to the beach where it was found but the animal was found expressionless the next 24-hour interval, she said. That couple received a written warning.
"It is an ongoing consequence throughout the entire West Coast," said Justin Greenman, NOAA'due south assistant stranding coordinator for California. In recent years, with high death rates and strandings for bounding main lions and fur seals off the California declension, there take been some cases of people wanting to pick upward and rescue bounding main lions, he said.
"We try to go the give-and-take out to go out them be," he added. Selfies with seals or bounding main lions are too a growing trouble.
People's impulse is to rush in and help, simply it's better to let nature run its class, she said. The take a chance in taking these animals off the beach is that developed seals may abandon their pups. "The best chance they take to survive is to stay wild," Wilkenson said.
Last month, in a example that garnered national attention, a Canadian man and his son loaded a bison dogie into their SUV at Yellowstone National Park because they thought it was an abandoned newborn that would dice without their help. The calf had to be killed because it couldn't exist reunited with its herd after being handled.
"This is our Northwest version, obviously," Milstein said.
NOAA has launched a "Share the Shore" campaign to remind beachgoers to leave marine mammals alone, to stay at to the lowest degree 100 yards away and reduce other disturbances, such as keeping dogs on leashes. It's illegal to harass, disturb or try to motility young seals or other marine mammals.
Wilkinson says they typically see 6 to 10 illegal animal handling cases a yr, but the trend this yr is concerning because they're happening earlier in the flavor and inside a wider area.
Harbor seal pups are born forth the West Coast, typically from February to May in California and from late jump to summer in the Northwest. They use beaches, docks and other shoreline areas to rest, regulate their body temperatures or wait for their mothers, who typically are nearby but may not come near the pups if there are besides many people or other disturbances.
In April, Portland's Seaside Aquarium told CBS chapter KOIN there were two reports of seal pup sightings on Oregon beaches. Officials said if a seal pup is solitary on the beach, it is probably but resting while its mother hunts for food.
"What happens, they get out the babies on the beach and go feed themselves and come dorsum and nurse," the Aquarium's Keith Chandler told KOIN. "Sometimes they accept them in places where there surface area lot of people and that's when we have issues, when humans endeavor to interact with them."
The pups are adorable, are friendly and volition approach humans, simply touching a baby seal hurts the chances of information technology reuniting with its mother, Chandler said. He emphasized that people should feel costless to take pictures from a distance, but to give the animal infinite and exit it lonely.
Jeff Boehm, executive director of The Marine Mammal Center in Northern California, said and then far this year 18 marine mammals accept been brought to his eye because they were harassed or illegally picked up. Most were eventually released into the wild subsequently being treated just 3 have died.
"These animals accept an innate charm. When you see one on the beach, they but draw you in. They're minor. They're vulnerable," he said, just people should really pause, take a step dorsum and call local regime who know all-time what to do with them.
NOAA wildlife officers in Washington are investigating a number of cases, including one in which a seal pup built-in prematurely parked up on the beach and a homeowner placed the animal in a tote and removed it, worried about baldheaded eagles preying on the seal and making a mess on the beach, Wilkinson said.
Last month, a seal wasn't illegally picked up but the pup was killed after wildlife officials determined that also much traffic and people on the embankment meant that the mother was not probable to reunite with her pup.
In another case, a adult female picked upward a seal and briefly put it in her car earlier someone else told her to put the creature back on the beach, said Marc Myrsell, who directs the Westport Aquarium and whose staff responded to that incident. That pup returned to the water on its own.
Terminal week, a pup was handled so extensively throughout the day past people with dogs at a beach park that wildlife responders determined the constant human interaction permanently separated the pup from its mother. People held the pup in their laps, cuddled it and pet the animate being for many hours, she added.
That seal was somewhen taken to a PAWS facility in Lynnwood, but experts say an animal's best chance for survival is in the wild.
With rehabilitation, "yous're giving them a second first, but you might not be giving them all the tools they need," said Joe Gaydos, a wild fauna veterinarian with SeaDoc Society. "They probably take a much improve run a risk if they stay with their moms."
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