The Forest Preserve District of DuPage County has decided to no longer allow the rehabilitation of raccoons at Willowbrook Wildlife Center in Glen Ellyn. Starting in 2024, per their new policy, any injured or orphaned infant raccoon brought to the Willowbrook Wildlife Center will be euthanized.
In July of 2023, the FPDDC (Forest Preserve District of DuPage County) published a document (linked below) with information on their new raccoon acceptance policy. The list below summarizes this new policy and describes the three main reasons why the FPDDC states they will no longer rehab the raccoon species. In response to this, members of the volunteer staff who work as animal keepers at Willowbrook Wildlife Center, and who are fiercely opposed to this policy, have provided counter arguments (underneath each reason) along with supplemental data with the hopes of showing the community why this policy needs to be reversed.
Reasons FPDDC States They Are Stopping The Rehabilitation of Raccoons:
1) “They simply do not need our help.”
Most wildlife brought to rehab centers are orphaned or injured through human activity. Far too often are these animals hit by cars while crossing the road, caught in fencing, wounded through use of illegal traps, or orphaned due to their mothers being killed in any one of the examples previously listed. To state that these animals “do not need our help,” especially when we as humans are the ones responsible for so much of their suffering is extremely callous.This new policy will not only severely affect the wildlife of DuPage County, but it will have an impact on wildlife in the surrounding Cook County, Will County, and Kane County communities as well. Willowbrook Wildlife Center is currently the largest wildlife rehabilitation center in Illinois. Since there are no rehabilitation centers located in Cook County, and neighboring counties either have a minimized capacity for raccoons or don’t accept them at all, Willowbrook frequently experiences an overflow of injured wildlife from the surrounding areas. That being said, if the FPDDC prohibits Willowbrook from accepting injured or orphaned raccoons, these animals will have nowhere else to go and therefore, per the new policy, they will be euthanized.
2) “It takes a lot of time and space to rehabilitate raccoons, resources that take away from the treatment of other wildlife.”
FPDDC has falsely claimed that the care and resources previously allocated towards the successful rehabilitation of raccoons was a misuse of their staff’s time and energy at Willowbrook as well as their overall budget. However, in 2022, Willowbrook admitted a total of 240 (adult and infant) raccoons which was 2.29% of the total 10,468 animals admitted. As for the orphaned raccoons, which according to FPDDC require “significantly more care,” in 2023 out of the 10,913 total animals admitted, infant raccoons made up 0.58% with Willowbrook only admitting 64 orphans.Furthermore, as omnivores, raccoons are easy to feed because they can eat a variety of fruits, vegetables, and proteins. Raccoons are also extremely social animals and can be housed together in one enclosure, making it easy for Willowbrook to accept a large number of raccoons each year.
3) “Because the Forest Preserve District propagates and releases endangered and threatened species and because raccoons prey on these species, rehabilitating raccoons conflicts with this ordinance [Ordinance #20-193] and the mission of the District.”
The “endangered species” vaguely referenced here by the FPDDC is the Blanding’s turtle and it is the main reason behind this entire policy.The Blanding’s turtle is a type of turtle found in the upper Midwest, New York, New England, and Southern Canada and it is currently on the endangered species list for the state of Illinois.The FPDDC suggest that raccoons are the leading threat to the native Blanding’s turtle population in Illinois, however this information is unsupported. According to the Illinois Natural History Survey and the Nature Conservancy, the greatest threats to Illinois Blanding’s turtle populations are habitat destruction (Ex: cutting down a wooded area to build houses or a natural forest fire) and habitat fragmentation (Ex: breaking a large habitat into smaller ones by building a road that runs through it).Additionally, for the FPDDC to insinuate that this policy is acting as a conservation effort on behalf of the Blanding’s turtle’s species and in turn will increase the Blanding’s turtle’s population is absolutely absurd. Other native mesopredators (red foxes, striped skunks & opossums) also prey on the Blanding’s turtle in addition to raccoons that are also impacting the size of their population. There have even been studies (linked below) documenting how a decrease in the raccoon population was then followed by an increase in other species (primarily skunks) because the competition to find food was lowered.Finally, after a raccoon is successfully rehabilitated by Willowbrook and is ready to be released into the wild, a team of senior animal care staff members carefully select a forest preserve location in DuPage’s District that is NOT near where the Blanding’s turtles and other species of concern are known to nest. Raccoon releases are highly calculated, and knowing that the average home range (the geographic area an animal normally lives in) is around 60.5 hectares (~0.23 miles), it is highly unlikely that the raccoons once released will ever travel to areas inhabited by species of concern, such as the Blanding’s Turtles.
We urge the Forest Preserve District of DuPage County to reverse this decision and allow Willowbrook Wildlife Center to continue to admit and treat orphaned and injured raccoons. Please sign and share this petition if you believe in preserving all wildlife species within our community.
If you wish to learn more about the FPDDC’s new raccoon admittance policy, native raccoon ecology, or species of concern in Illinois, all of the resources referenced in this petition have been linked below.
DuPage Forest’s New Policy: https://www.dupageforest.org/hubfs/Raccoon%20Acceptance%20FAQ%207.28.23.pdf.pdf
U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service - Information on Blanding’s Turtles: https://www.fws.gov/species/blandings-turtle-emydoidea-blandingii
Illinois Department of Natural Resources - Information on Blanding’s Turtles:
https://dnr.illinois.gov/education/wildaboutpages/wildaboutturtles/watblandingsturtle.html#:~:text=Illinois%20Status%3A%20state%20endangered%2C%20native,the%20loss%20of%20marsh%20habitat
Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife - Information on Blanding’s Turtles:
https://www.maine.gov/ifw/docs/endangered/blandingsturtle_72_73.pdf
The American Midland Naturalist Journal - “Raccoons Use Habitat Edges In Northern Illinois” Article by Erin E. Barding and Thomas A. Nelson:
https://bioone.org/journals/The-American-Midland-Naturalist/volume-159/issue-2/0003-0031(2008)159%5b394:RUHEIN%5d2.0.CO;2/Raccoons-Use-Habitat-Edges-in-Northern-Illinois/10.1674/0003-0031(2008)159%5b394:RUHEIN%5d2.0.CO;2.short
Prairie Research Institute’s Illinois Natural History Survey - “Conservation Guidance for Blanding’s Turtle” Report by Bridget M. Henning and Leon C. Hinz Jr:
https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/158317828.pdf
The Nature Conservancy Organization - Article:
https://www.nature.org/en-us/get-involved/how-to-help/animals-we-protect/blanding-s-turtle/#:~:text=Habitat%20destruction%20and%20fragmentation%20is,Road%20mortality%20is%20high
The Journal of North American Herpetology - “Effect of Raccoon (Procyon Lotor) Reduction on Blanding’s Turtle (Emyoidea Blandingii) Nest Success” Article by Rachel E. Urbanek, Gary A. Glowacki, and Clayton K. Nielsen:
https://journals.ku.edu/jnah/article/view/11924
