Blue Ridge Wildlife Center

06/02/2026

Our babies are growing up!

For our young raccoons, there is a lot to learn over the 4-6 months they're with us - how to climb, how to find food, what leaves are, etc. That's why enrichment is so important! Their little minds are growing right along with their bodies, and while proper nutrition and calories are important for growth, we want to make sure these babies are developing normally mentally as well.

This can look like giving various different items for touch enrichment (like seashells!), leaves and grass, pools to explore in, boxes and branches to climb on, live insects, scents, and so much more.

Keeping them mentally stimulated helps ensure they're staying engaged but also helps keep them out of trouble!

06/01/2026

We've admitted over a dozen baby skunks in the past week!

These youngsters often come to us after their den has been disturbed, or after mom has been illegally trapped and relocated or killed.

Please remember that skunks are considered a high-risk rabies vector species (RVS). NEVER handle these animals without some sort of protection and always avoid bare-handed contact. This means using thick leather gloves, or a towel, or anything else that acts as a barrier between you and them. Fortunately, the finders of our recent skunk patients all followed this advice and got these babies to us safely.

While we're never happy that animals need our assistance to begin with, skunks are a special favorite of many of our staff and volunteers, and we're honored to be able to help give these youngsters a second chance at a wild life!

05/31/2026

This White-tailed deer fawn was handed to an employee at the Humane Society in Warren county, VA. The finder had said the baby was in the median of a roadway, but they did not give the employee an exact found location before they left. Knowing this baby needed professional care, the employee brought the fawn to us.

In Clarke and Warren counties, there is no rehabilitation of deer fawns due to being a chronic wasting disease (CWD) containment zone. That means that CWD has been found in these or adjacent counties, and when that occurs, rehabilitation of fawns becomes prohibited to prevent further spread of the disease, which is fatal to the deer that contract it. It is also prohibited for these fawns to be moved out of these zones for rehabilitation, as this could introduce the disease to areas that CWD has not yet reached or been detected. And once CWD is in an area, it is essentially impossible to get rid of it - it can live in the dirt and environment for multiple years, spreading to any other deer that consume any food or water that’s been contaminated. This is a serious disease that can have severe impacts on our local deer populations.

Since Clarke (our center's county) and Warren county are CWD containment zones in which rehabilitation is prohibited, the only option for this fawn was humane euthanasia. While this fawn didn’t have any obvious injuries, this youngster was quite emaciated, indicating he had not received any care for quite some time and was likely truly orphaned. While sometimes we recommend that otherwise-healthy babies be returned to their found area to attempt reuniting, this fawn was too skinny for that to be a humane option, and without a found location, we had no place to return him.

Mother deer leave their fawns for multiple hours, upwards of half a day or longer, as they forage for food and keep predators away from their babies, who are too young and weak to escape. If a fawn gets disturbed by traffic, dogs, predators, or inclement weather, they may get up and search for a new place to bed down if given the opportunity.

Finding a fawn alone is NOT reason enough to believe they may be abandoned. Even if a fawn is wandering and crying out, that fawn should be allowed to cry and be given plenty of space and time, as either mom will return for them, OR a nearby lactating doe may adopt the baby.

Fawns that are visibly injured or ill, laying on their side with their legs out rather than tucked up neatly beneath them, or covered in flies or maggots need immediate help. However, be aware that if you’re located in Warren, Frederick, Clarke, Shenandoah, Loudoun, Fairfax, Prince William, Fauquier, Arlington, Culpeper, Madison, Orange, Page, Rappahannock, Carroll, Floyd, Franklin, Montgomery, Patrick, Pulaski, Roanoke, Wythe, Bland, Smyth, Tazewell, there is NO rehabilitation of fawns, and fawns can NOT be transported out of these counties to non-CWD zones for rehabilitation.

PLEASE be honest when disclosing where you found a fawn - not doing so could put an entire county at risk of being shut down to rehabilitation later. While euthanasia may seem sad for an individual, our responsibility is to protect the larger ecosystem and population, and we must abide by state regulations. At best, these fawns will not be left to suffer if reuniting them is not an option, or if they’re truly injured, ill, or orphaned.

If you find a fawn you believe is in need, please call us or your nearest fawn rehabilitator so we can advise you on the best next steps according to your unique situation!

05/30/2026

While it may be baby season in our area, it's also Turtle Season! In just one day, we took in 15 turtles, which covered FIVE different species - Woodland Box Turtles (our most common turtle patient), Snapping Turtles, Eastern Painted Turtles, a Red-bellied Cooter, and a Wood Turtle!

With the recent warm and wet weather, this is the perfect signaling to turtles that it's time to move to find moist dirt to dig a nest and lay eggs, or search for mates, food, and water. That means those "rocks" you see in the roadway? They're likely turtles trying to cross!

Turtles come to us for a variety of reasons, but most commonly due to traumatic injury from being struck by cars, mowers, or chewed on by dogs. If you find a turtle that is obviously bleeding or has a cracked shell, that turtle needs help.

Other turtles come to us due to illness, indicated by swollen eyes, swollen ears (which appear as swollen bumps on one or both sides of the head), or nasal or ocular discharge. These are all signs that a turtle needs professional assistance.

Found a turtle in the roadway? If they're uninjured (remember to check the bottom shell too!), simply move them across the roadway in the direction they were headed.

Please do not "move turtles to a better place;" turtles can live 60+ years, and have often lived successfully in their area despite the habitat destruction occurring around them. These turtles know their territories and rely on them to survive, knowing exactly where to brumate each winter and where to find food and water at various times of the year. Moving these turtles somewhere else can take them away from their known resources, causing them to risk their lives more as they cross even more roadways attempting to get back, or preventing them from finding unclaimed resources to survive. Turtles can also carry location-specific germs and diseases, and moving them outside of their territory can introduce new diseases to a population that has never developed resistance to it, or introduce new diseases to the turtle that was moved.

05/29/2026

Caring for a multitude of animals is hard work!

So far this year, we have admitted almost 1,700 patients, representing over 130 species, with a wide range of issues - infectious diseases, trauma, wounds from predator attacks, abandonment after injury of parents, and unfortunately, intentional and unintentional damage from humans.

During the busiest part of the season, we are all hands on deck! We are regularly putting in 12+ hour days for the patients we have in care to ensure that all baby birds and mammals are fed and receiving necessary medications. There is close and constant communication between rehabilitation and vet staff to adjust treatment for those in care as needed, and extensive collaboration with our front desk staff allows us to identify species and assess situations remotely so that animals who do not need to be in care can stay in the wild.

While this is going on, our fantastic education team takes care of our animal ambassadors - those who are permanently in our care as they cannot be released and are comfortable in a long-term captive setting. Alongside these ambassadors, they give presentations to the public and create fun and educational events for our community.

Day to day, we could not function without our amazing team of volunteers and interns who help with cleaning, diet preparation, feeding from sun up to sun down, and being extra pairs of eyes on our long-term rehabilitation patients to be attentive to any issues that may come up in care.

Our amazing front desk coordinators are communicating with hundreds of finders each day in addition to local animal control officers, and local health departments when there are concerns for human or domestic animal exposure to wildlife disease. With 300+ calls per day this time of year, it is possible that we will not answer when you call. Please be sure to leave a voicemail so that we can call you back.

Our staff must understand the state and federal laws surrounding care for each animal species, their life history and ecology, the current weather, and how they behave in different seasons and life stages to best advise every caller. Every animal has very different needs, and the internet has a lot of good and bad information for the public to freely search - every volunteer, receptionist, rehabilitator, and veterinarian working at our center has gone through hundreds of hours and oftentimes decades of training to understand the needs of the animals in our care.

We understand that you may be very stressed when you come upon an animal in need and we appreciate your desire to help! Please be patient with us and please treat our staff with respect - whether on the phone or in person. If you are waiting for us to respond to a voicemail, please call other rehabilitators in the meantime. Virginia is very fortunate to have an extensive network of permitted wildlife rehabilitators who are also very knowledgeable about animal care and their needs. There is someone out there that can help you - just know that we are in our busiest season and doing the best we can for you and wildlife everywhere! Thank you for your support!

05/29/2026

Thanks, Fox 5 DC for highlighting a few of our recent bald eagle patients as well as the amazing animal control officers involved in this rescues and our phenomenal transporters who ensure that injured wildlife get into care promptly!

Four injured bald eagles have been rescued in Stafford County this week, with animal control officers and wildlife volunteers stepping in to help transport the birds for treatment.

05/28/2026

In addition to saving wild animals, wildlife rehabilitators are essential partners in a wild variety of research projects that help wildlife and conservation.

This week, the article “Updating Silver-haired bat, Lasionycteris noctivagans, range Confirmations in Virginia” was published in the Virginia Natural History Society’s journal! This project was led by Dr. Powers, a wildlife biologist at Radford University and data from multiple rehabilitators in Virginia was used to assess wild populations of these bats and confirm new locations where this species has been found in the commonwealth.

Rehabilitation records and citizen science reports allowed us to document this species in 22 new counties and 16 independent cities for the first time. Intake dates also helped to assess seasonal movements of this species and common reasons for injury or fatality. Check out the full article at the link in the comments.

This article is a great example of multiple organizations contributing to help move conservation forward! Data from our hospital, Wildlife Center of Virginia, Southwest Virginia Wildlife Center of Roanoke, Bat Conservation & Rescue of Virginia, Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation, and Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources were used for this study.

Hundreds of thousands of wild animals enter rehabilitation facilities in the U.S. each year and sadly, most of the data gathered from these animals is only known by the individual rehabilitator or facility. When rehabilitators share information, we can discover fascinating new information about secretive species and by publishing, we can make sure that information is available to other rehabilitators and biologists working to protect these animals in the wild.

05/27/2026

We wanted to post a huge THANK YOU to all of our supporters who really came through for us this past week by purchasing items from our Amazon Baby Registry! For multiple days our reception area was FULL of donation items coming through, many of which are already being put to good use for the 200+ patients we have in care currently.

We really couldn’t do what we do without generous and caring people like you, so thank you. It’s because of you that we’re able to care for the 4,000+ animals we see annually. You guys are wildlife heroes!

05/27/2026

With the recent stormy weather, we have had MANY baby birds falling from nests. Fortunately, in the overwhelming majority of cases, parents are still nearby and in most cases, we are able to “renest” uninjured babies in the original nest or a makeshift nest to reunite them with their parents.

Unfortunately, in a small percentage of cases, the mom and dad do not come back to the new nest. This may be because they are not alive and the babies are true orphans, or they may have abandoned the nest for another reason. This is why it is so important to monitor and call us back if needed. You may not always see parents nearby and our staff can help you assess how the babies are doing if you have any concerns.

The nest that these two baby mourning doves were in fell during a storm and the finder contacted us right away. They were assessed at the center and determined to be perfectly healthy, so we did send them back to that found location in an attempt to reunite. By the next day, both youngsters were lethargic and clearly had not been fed or cared for, so we got them back to the center so that we could provide care ourselves. Now a few days later, both are doing well and we hope to get them home in just a few weeks once they are fully grown.

We understand that it can be frustrating or even scary for many finders when we tell them we want to renest the babies they just brought to us, but we hope that everyone can appreciate how important it is to let the parents raise their own babies whenever possible.

Although we have excellent success raising babies like this at our facility, no rehabilitator will ever come close to raising wild orphans as well as mom and dad can. Doing the right thing and renesting means we will occasionally have cases that fail, like these two. However, by attempting renesting whenever possible, we have allowed the majority of healthy babies to be raised in the wild by their own parents. And you can’t beat that!

05/26/2026

This adult Yellow-billed cuckoo came to the center after being found down in a roadway. This time of year, migratory species like this cuckoo head back to the United States and Canada from where they overwinter in South America. Some of these birds fly up to 4,800 miles between these habitats and they arrive in Virginia exhausted, depleted, and dependent on arboreal grubs and insects that they find in trees.

If the weather is bad or their habitat is destroyed for ongoing development, they may struggle to find food and fail to breed. Cuckoos are excellent at providing “ecosystem services” in the form of natural pest control for humans and our agriculture. Widespread pesticide use harms these natural food webs and is one of the reasons why the population of these birds is declining so quickly.

This Yellow-billed cuckoo is thin and struggling from bruising over the keel from a likely vehicle collision, but she was lucky to have been found by a concerned neighbor and brought into the center. We are hoping she can recover quickly and get back out to the wild to help create the next generation of incredible cross-continental avian migrants.