2024/07/03 by Joseph W. Hinton, Kelsey San Martin, Kristin E. Brzeski +2 · 1 voice · 2 citations
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Environmental Science · #Animal Ecology and Behavior Studies #Wildlife Ecology and Conservation #Yersinia bacterium, plague, ectoparasites research
paper · pdf · doi:10.60102/stacks-24002
openalex publication_date 2024/07/03 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/11
Wildlife rehabilitation is a widespread practice, but it is rarely provided for research animals in wild settings when injuries such as bone fractures occur during field work. Integrating rehabilitation and post-release monitoring with field research involving radio telemetry could improve our ability to rehabilitate wild animals by assessing the efficacy of clinical and rehabilitation techniques. While conducting a study in coastal southwestern Louisiana during 2021–2023 designed to assess coyote (Canis latrans) populations for red wolf (Canis rufus) ancestry, we severely injured a coyote in a foothold trap. Instead of humanely euthanizing the animal, we opted to provide clinical treatment which involved amputating the coyote’s injured forelimb. The three-legged coyote was released with a Global Positioning System (GPS) collar and monitored until his death. Using time local convex hulls and resource selection functions, we observed the three-legged coyote exhibiting similar movement speed and space use as did his three uninjured neighboring GPS-collared coyotes (control animals). However, the amputee coyote exhibited stronger selection for roads and open wetlands than did the control animals, indicating that the amputation may have altered his ability to traverse some land cover types such as areas with increasing vegetation cover. Although the control animals were killed by humans while attempting to enter a fenced-in game preserve, the three-legged coyote avoided entering the same preserve and was presumably killed by an American Alligator (Alligator mississippiensis) within his territory indicating that he avoided areas with high potential for human-coyote conflict. Despite the small sample size of one clinically treated animal, we overcame other common limitations to post-release monitoring studies such as a lack of detailed space use data or use of control animals by using GPS technology on a treated coyote and its neighboring coyotes. Wildlife rehabilitation can provide second chances to animals severely injured by research activities, and we suggest that clinical treatment and rehabilitation should be considered in study designs as rehabilitated animals can maintain good general health and welfare following releases and contribute to local population persistence.