Wildlife Caregivers Seek Legal Shelter

Hoffman-Butler said she had planned to release the raccoons before a planned vacation later that month. Instead, she stayed home and pleaded with DNR officials to let her release the raccoons.

On Oct. 27, state agents arrived again. It was then that they euthanized the animals. "We felt there was a significant disease threat with returning them to the wild," said Paul Johansen, assistant chief of DNR's wildlife resources section.

"She knew that it was illegal, what she was doing," said Maj. Jerry B. Jenkins of DNR law enforcement. "It was unfortunate that the animals had to be put down, but she's the one that created the problem."

DNR sent 19 of the carcasses to a veterinary lab for testing. None had rabies, and all appeared to be well fed, Johansen said. One had parvovirus, a potentially fatal disease for animals, and half had roundworm, which can infect people. Both are relatively common in wild raccoons.

Jenkins, who was at the house that day, said the smell of raccoon waste was "pretty bad," the cages were dirty and "you could see lesions on their feet."

But animal rehabilitators who know Hoffman-Butler said she took good care of the animals and that the smell was not surprising, because "animals being terrorized excrete from every orifice," said Ed Clark, president of the Wildlife Center of Virginia in Waynesboro.

Clark, a past president of the International Wildlife Rehabilitation Council, said he does not approve of Hoffman-Butler's breaking the law but criticized West Virginia's "overreactive, thuggish response."

Hoffman-Butler appeared in a Berkeley County court Dec. 13 and was fined $20 plus court costs.

"Because of the publicity that the raccoon story generated, there have been people who have expressed a need for animal rehabilitation and for that legislation," said Del. John Overington (R-Berkeley), co-sponsor of the bill that seeks to license rehabilitators, require training and set standards of care. "I think many people were horrified at the way it was done, especially when you had a lot of juvenile animals just at the point where they could have been released."

He said the bill answers state officials' concerns about disease by requiring supervision by veterinarians and will address objections about costs by raising license fees.

West Virginia licenses only two wildlife rehab centers, both devoted to saving injured birds of prey, and Johansen said setting up a broader program poses problems beyond disease and cost. The fact is, he said, many people rescue animals that do not need help. They mistakenly think a fawn has been abandoned when its mother is away temporarily. They erroneously think a fledgling is injured when it is merely learning to fly.

It is "relatively rare" for someone to come upon a genuine orphan -- and even then, Johansen said, "engaging in wildlife rehabilitation is not the way to go. When you bring that animal up and raise it under an artificial situation . . . it's not going to have the skills it needs to survive."

"In many ways, that is a value-driven controversy," he said. "There are folks who very firmly, deeply believe that it's their responsibility to save every animal that gets injured or orphaned."

But the bill's supporters, including the Humane Society of the United States, said wildlife rehabilitators steer people away from rescuing animals that do not need aid. They said that people will raise an animal themselves, which creates worse problems, if they have nowhere else to turn.

The bill's opponents "need to . . . realize that this is a public service that rehabilitators provide for people and wild animals," said Laura J. Simon, field director for the Humane Society's urban wildlife program. "It's true that rehabilitating an animal is not as good as mom, but if you don't have rehabilitators, it's the public taking them in."