The problem is that our government and do-gooders ALWAYS go too far. Two examples:
When I first became a professional firefighter not many houses in our jurisdiction did not have a smoke detector. Our department put a lot of effort into encouraging people to install smoke detectors, even giving them away. My wife and I just sold a house that was originally built in 1900. To make it legal in our state we were required to install 14 smoke and CO detectors. We have detectors everywhere; it is wasteful and counterproductive. In new construction all of these units have to be expensive hard-wired units whose planning, purchase, installation and inspection add thousands of $dollars to the price of a new home.
20 years ago, my wife was delayed by a slow down on her way home. A squirrel had been hit by a car and was flopping around in the road. People were stopped and looking at it, while other looky-loos tried to figure out what was going on as they slowly drove by. My wife pulled over on the shoulder, found my firefighter protective clothing in the trunk, put on my leather gloves, picked the squirrel up and carefully wrapped it my nomex hood. All the while others were yelling at her not to go near the squirrel, that it would bite her and give her rabies, and that it was ILLEGAL to help a squirrel and they were going to report her. That is what it is like here in liberal land.
She took the squirrel home, put it in a doggie carrier, then called the “wilderness vet”. She was told by a very authoritative person on the phone that she was illegally harboring a dangerous wild animal and that she could face both fines and jail time and that she was required by law to surrender the squirrel to them so they could euthanize it. My wife hung up.
It took about 3 months for the squirrel to recover from its injuries and then we turned it loose from our house which is in a wilderness area. It was recognizable because it's tail had been damaged in the accident. We put food and water out for it, so she hung around in the tall firs surrounding our house for the next couple years.
She was never particularly appreciative of our efforts, but she did chatter loudly from the trees when we went out on the back porch. I don't think it should be ILLEGAL to help an injured animal even if other do not feel that it is a good idea. In cases like this legislating one size fits all solutions is a bunch of nonsense.
When I lived in a certain southern state I'd go the Renaissance Festival every year; one of the things I enjoyed most was the falconry demonstration that was conducted by a lady and her husband who were licensed falconers and ran a bird rescue. They gave a great presentation and a lot of the birds in their show had some really cool rescue stories behind them, and every year I'd grab a flyer/program from their demonstration.
One day while I was out walking my dog, I saw a cat that was toying with something on the ground beneath a tree and a male cardinal was dive bombing it, trying to either distract the cat or get it to leave. As we approached the cat saw my dog (who was straining at the leash as he was a rescue that was very cat aggressive) and took off. As we got close, I saw it was a baby cardinal that had fallen from the nest and had a broken wing. It was still alive, but the nest was way too high for me to even think about putting it back...so I took it home and made a little nest for it.
I called the # for the bird rescue on the falcon lady's flyer, and was asking her what my best course of action was, and she cited the law and told me it would be illegal to try to rescue the bird.
I asked, if hypothetically, it was legal, what the best way to rescue a small bird would be. By the tone of her voice, I could tell she thought the law was ridiculous as well, and so we carried out the whole conversation interspersing the word, "hypothetically," once or twice in just about every sentence. We spoke for about hale an hour. She told me unfortunately the chances for the hypothetical bird weren't good, but told me what to try and feed it, the best temperature range etc. I told her that a hypothetical person in that situation would be really grateful for her time and her advice, and she said that she would hypothetically have been very glad to have helped :-)