DuPage naturalist: Blizzard tough on animals

If clogged streets and power outages seem to be making life rough, remember countless other area residents face much bigger problems.

Like survival.

The furry and feathered creatures who live throughout the region will be hit hard this week as heavy snow and lower temperatures make food sources scarce.

“Can it threaten them? Definitely,” said Ron Skleney, a naturalist at Willowbrook Wildlife Center in Glen Ellyn. “It becomes hard for the plant -eaters and meat-eaters.”

Creatures such as great horned owls, for example, might get a bit hungry after their food tunnels into the ground to avoid the blizzard’s aftermath.

“Let’s say the owl is young and still acquiring hunting skills, and now it’s looking for rodents like the vole that were, for the most part, on top of the snow and now have tunneled,” he said.

Sure, the snow helps rodents like voles hide from predators and avoid high winds and cold (Skleney says this blizzard’s snow is the “perfect type” for building shelter). But it also buries already-scarce food for herbivores like deer and omnivores like squirrels.

To combat that, animals such as squirrels have the option to hibernate briefly, Skleney said.

“In some instances, this is a strategy animals will use during a period of inactivity,” he said. “They save the calories they would spend finding a low-quality food source and, instead, hole up for a few days until the weather breaks.”

If the weather stabilizes, the ecosystem balances. But if we get swamped with more excessive snow or experience an extended cold snap on top of this week’s blizzard, Skleney admits some animals’ lives could be threatened.

Ultimately, he said, staff at the DuPage County Forest Preserve District and elsewhere must simply let nature take its course and not interfere.

“Those animals are living in the wild and there really isn’t a way to intervene,” he said. “This is not like a farmer putting out extra bales of hay or alfalfa sprouts for his livestock. All you can do is make sure they have an appropriate habitat.”