Nate Sink, a firefighter based in Missoula, Mont., holds a newborn elk he encountered in a fire-ridden remote area of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains near Mora, NM, today Saturday.
Nate Sink via AP
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Nate Sink via AP
Nate Sink, a firefighter based in Missoula, Mont., holds a newborn elk he encountered in a fire-ridden remote area of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains near Mora, NM, today Saturday.
Nate Sink via AP
SANTA FE, NM — Firefighters rescued an abandoned newborn moose found among the ashes of the nation’s largest wildfire, as breeding season neared its peak in New Mexico and raging fire across the American West.
Nate Sink, a firefighter based in Missoula, Montana, said Tuesday that he came across the moose motionless on the ground of a black-fired New Mexico forest while he was on patrol. and extinguish existing hot spots.
“The whole area was just surrounded in a thick layer of ash and the trees burned,” said Sink, who was dispatched to the state to help contain a wildfire on Wednesday that had spread 486 square miles. I don’t think it’s alive.” (1,260 square kilometers) and destroyed hundreds of structures. It is one of five major fires of unknown cause that burned in New Mexico in extremely dry and windy conditions.
A newborn elk rests alone in the fire-filled remote area of the Sangre de Cristo mountains on Saturday.
Nate Sink / Nate Sink via AP
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Nate Sink / Nate Sink via AP
A newborn elk rests alone in the fire-filled remote area of the Sangre de Cristo mountains on Saturday.
Nate Sink / Nate Sink via AP
Wildlife officials generally discourage interaction with moose that are left alone during the first weeks of life when their mothers forage at great distances. Silver said he had been diligently searching for traces of the mother and the calf but could not find it.
The 32-pound (14.5-kilogram) male calf, named “Cinder,” has been cared for on a nearby farm and is now regaining strength at a wildlife rehabilitation center in Espanola. , north of Santa Fe.
Veterinarian Kathleen Ramsay at Cottonwood Rehab said she paired Cinder with an adult surrogate moose to be raised with as little human contact as possible.
“They do elk things, they don’t do human things,” Ramsay says, noting that Cinder is up to a day old young with the umbilical cord still intact.
Ramsay said the calf could hopefully be released into the wild in December after moose hunting season. This strategy has worked many times with elk being tracked with tags as they rejoin wild herds.
The calf rescue is reminiscent of events 70 years ago in New Mexico involving a scaly black bear and the fire prevention mascot “Smokey Bear”.
The United States’ fire safety campaign gained new urgency in 1950 with firefighters rescuing a black bear badly burned by a wildfire in southern New Mexico. The cubs – named Smokey Bear after the mascot – recovered and lived at the National Zoo until his death in 1976.
Wildfires have broken out this spring in many states in the West, where climate change and prolonged drought are increasing the frequency and intensity of wildfires and grasslands.
