After being found hungry, abandoned and afraid, an American pronghorn fawn has made its way to the
San Diego Zoo Safari Park
.
The fawn, a male, was first found on private property in New Mexico. He spent a brief stint at
Wildlife Rescue
in Albuquerque, New Mexico, before moving to the
New Mexico Wildlife Center
just north of Santa Fe.
After some time in New Mexico, the fawn made the trek to San Diego and will now call the Safari Park home, at least for a little while.
The
New Mexico Wildlife Center
mainly handles birds and small mammals. It focuses on rehabilitation and release, and that was the goal this time around for the fawn. However, the center quickly realized that wasn’t feasible.
“The consensus was essentially that a singleton orphan is basically not going to be releasable, and your best chance at having it survive is transferring it to somewhere for permanent placement, where it can be with a herd and in an appropriate setting,” said Laura Seigel with the center.
According to Melodi Tayles, the wildlife care manager for the San Diego Safari Park, pronghorn fawns will imprint almost immediately on humans in the absence of a mother or a herd. This orphaned fawn was no exception. So the Wildlife Center looked for a long-term option.
A staffer at the New Mexico Center who previously worked at the Safari Park reached out to Tayles for guidance. From there, the San Diego Zoo Safari Park officially stepped into frame. The park worked with the El Paso Zoo to find facilities closer to New Mexico for the fawn. For one reason or another, closer facilities didn’t have the availability or the resources to take on the fawn.
“You don’t want to raise a herd animal in isolation, because you’re not going to get the proper social development that this animal needs,” Tayles said, explaining it was deemed the easiest to place the fawn with the San Diego Safari Park.
The fawn arrived at the Safari Park on June 26 and has been in the park’s care for just over two weeks. Because it was found in the wild and is from out of state, the fawn was placed in an extended quarantine. After quarantine, it will be introduced to the park’s peninsular pronghorn herd.
Before its full-fledged introduction to the park’s herd, the pronghorn will be meeting Hope, a female adult hand-raised pronghorn who lost her own fawn earlier this year.
“She’s going to be a kind of a nanny to this guy,” Tayles said.
“She’s very comfortable being around people and also being around animals. Her name is Hope. So we’re going to put all our hope on her,” she continued.
Though the fawn has found a home in San Diego, this new home is not permanent either. Because the fawn is an American pronghorn and the herd at the park is peninsular pronghorn, the fawn will have to move once he reaches mating age.
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He will either be moved to an American pronghorn herd, or he will be placed with a bachelor herd of peninsular pronghorn to prevent the crossbreeding of the two subspecies.
“We just want to give him a herd so he’ll have a herd for this part of his life, which is a very important developmental part,” Tayles said.
While the pronghorn fawn now calls the Safari Park home, it still touched the hearts of the New Mexico Wildlife Center’s staff during its stay.
“It was honestly kind of an interesting and fun thing for our staff to be able to experience at this time of year,” Seigel said. “The staff is just slammed with feedings every half hour. It can be really exhausting … It was nice to be able to, you know, take a break and go say hi to the pronghorn.”
