Fish skin can help animals burned in California wildfires, video shows. Here’s how

Two bears and a mountain lion now have scales on their paws after suffering severe burns from wildfires in California, a video from the state’s Department of Fish and Wildlife shows.

But wildlife veterinarians are treating them with fish skins in the hopes of one day releasing them back into the wild.

California has had 7,700 individual wildfires burn through “3.7 million acres of wildlife habitat so far” in 2020, wildlife officials said in a news release.

Each of the animals were brought in for treatment in September at the Wildlife Investigations Laboratory in Rancho Cordova, where vets bandaged their paws with tilapia skins — a procedure used in previous years as well.

The animals were injured in the Zogg, Bear and Bobcat fires.

“Both bears and the lion are receiving our burn protocol, including the fish skin bandages, and we are optimistic that their burns will heal so that they can be released,” Dr. Deana Clifford of the state Department of Fish and Wildlife said. “But it’s likely that we will receive more wildlife with burns … we are only halfway through the regular fire season.”

Vets also treated animals’ burns using fish skins in 2017, 2018 and 2019. Jamie Peyton, chief of the Integrative Medicine Service at the UC Davis Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital, used the innovative treatment in 2017 to treat a bear burned in the Thomas Fire, according to a 2018 news release from UC Davis.

Peyton had read about doctors in Brazil who used tilapia skins to treat burns, the release says, but the treatment had never been used on animals or in the U.S.

“The high collagen level in the fish skins helps with healing and acts like a matrix,” Peyton said. “It would act as protection and it was pretty inexpensive and available.”

After receiving the fish skins and sterilizing them, vets stitched the skins onto the bears’ paws.

“One of the first things that the bear did was stand up after we applied them,” Peyton said. “She was more mobile, which in my mind is a huge success for pain control.”

Skin grew back onto the bears’ paw pads within weeks. Although, a mountain lion who received the same treatment “ended up eating his.”

Peyton also used the treatment on a pony that sustained third-degree chemical burns on its face in 2018, according to the university. While the wounds the animal suffered generally take about six months to heal, it took only two weeks for 80% of its skin to grow back with the fish skins.

With wildlife continuing to suffer during wildfire season, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife and the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine have teamed up to propose a “wildlife search and rescue, field triage, transport and long term rehabilitation care system for injured wildlife resulting from wildfires.”

The program is named the Wildlife Disaster Network, which “will include veterinarians, wildlife biologists, ecologists, trained animal care volunteers and rehabilitation centers,” dedicated to helping animals “trapped by wildfires in California’s changing climate,” officials say.

“These animals in need of care are a visible, tangible and poignant reminder that climate-change induced wildfires are impacting our wildlife and ecosystems,” Clifford said. “They remind us that each of us should continue efforts to reduce the impacts of climate change.”

This story was originally published October 7, 2020 at 11:26 AM.