Los Angeles wildfire drives wildlife to backyards
By Steve Gorman LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – For residents of the scenic foothill communities above Los Angeles, chance encounters with deer, coyote and other wildlife are commonplace. The occasional bear or mountain lion will even wander into a backyard. They’re about to become more visible. As the threat to humans from the 10-day-old Station Fire subsides, allowing displaced families to settle back into their homes, four-legged refugees are starting to emerge dazed, injured and hungry from the charred chaparral of the San Gabriel Mountains. The Los Angeles County Public Health Department issued an advisory to residents on Friday warning them to “avoid wild animals that may have been displaced by the fires” and urging people not to feed them. Animal control agencies say more residents are calling to report distressed or nuisance wildlife, and they expect those calls to increase as critters frightened into hiding from the fire begin to forage again for food and water. “The wildlife will start coming down closer to urban areas outside of places you would normally expect them,” said Ricky Whitman, spokeswoman for the Pasadena Humane Society. “Some people have reported seeing injured animals — bears, some deer,” she said. “We got a call from a woman yesterday … and her backyard was loaded with deer. But she was upset because they were eating her bushes. They’re hungry, they’re thirsty, they’ve been driven out by the fire and they really might eat your bushes.” More than 145,000 acres have burned, mostly in Angeles National Forest, in what is now the 10th largest fire on record in California. … “My advice to people in the foothills is to keep your domestic animals inside, cats and dogs, and certainly children,” Whitman said. …
