Rescue team helps a thirsty Key deer
Irma made landfall near refuge in Big Pine Key
A small Key deer received some muchneeded relief after running into crew members with Delray Beach Fire-Rescue, working as part of a Keys Strike Team.
There has been a lot of concern about the fate of the population of the tiny, endangered deer after Hurricane Irma slammed into the Florida Keys, tearing up homes, boats and a lot of natural habitat.
In a posting on the Monroe County Commission’s Facebook page, Broward Sheriff Fire Rescue Lt. Nicholas Johnson, a member of the multi-agency Strike Team, explains that he and other crew members were getting pictures of an “incredibly damaged” structure in the Lower Keys Monday when a Key deer suddenly popped up and startled him.
“I don’t know who was more scared — myself or the deer,” Johnson said.
The rescue crew concluded that the little deer looked weak and thirsty, so they brought bottles of water and hand-fed the deer with four of them.
In a Facebook video the deer with a partially black snout is seen eagerly slurping water from one of the plastic bottles.
Johnson said a state wildlife officer later told him that Hurricane Irma likely mixed a lot of salt water with the fresh water that animals, like the Key deer, would normally drink.
Officials stress that people who come across a Key deer, or other wildlife that appear to be in distress, should contact the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission instead of trying to intervene
themselves.
Since Hurricane Irma’s destructive strike on the Keys there have been several social media postings showing Key deer roaming around on Big Pine Key, home of the National Key Deer Refuge.
A typical Key deer is about the size of large dog. Their only known habitat is in the Florida Keys and the animals were targeted for recovery after nearly going extinct, largely because of poaching, in the 1950s. The effort helped the population rebound to somewhere between 700 and 1,000 animals, the Washington Post reported last week.
The manager of the National Key Deer Refuge, Dan Clark, isn’t sure how the population as a whole fared after Irma, but he was optimistic. He noted that Key deer have lived on the islands for thousands of years and have managed to survive.
“They’re wild animals that live in the wild, and deer are probably best able to prepare themselves,” Clark told the Post.