Wildlife Conflicts

Humans and wildlife need three common things:

1. A place to eat
2. Shelter
3. A place to raise their young

In town, there are very few places for animals to eat, be sheltered, and to raise their young. So wildlife turn to people’s yards to meet these needs.

However, some people do not want wildlife around their homes, even though they do no harm to humans. People live-trap wildlife and relocate animals. What they don’t realize is that by doing so, they put that animal and its family in danger. It may have babies, and without their mother, babies cannot survive. Also, adult animals have territories. If you introduce a new animal into an unknown territory, the animal “owner” of the territory will fight the relocated animal.

If one must remove groundhogs from their yard, here’s the correct way to do it: Cat litter! Scatter used kitty litter around their holes.

But please, please, please try to co-exist with wildlife. They need a place to sleep, and trapping and relocating them is like if someone dropped you off in another country. You’d be lost and alone. Nobody wants that.

If you are having wildlife issues, skunks raccoons, squirrels, ect. STOP PUTTING OUT LIVE TRAPS! YOU ARE INVITING THEM TO COME EAT!

① Make sure your house is in good repair… if you have a hole, animals will move in. They want what we all want: a safe place to raise their young.

② If you feed feral cats or birds, guess what? You get to feed everything. You don’t get to pick and choose. Food is food, and it attracts every animal, not just the ones you want to feed.

③ Live trapping them and hauling them off or killing them is making orphans! If you remove the mother, the babies will die. Also, putting an animal in unfamiliar territory subjects it to death by rivals in that territory, exposure, and starvation.

④ Make your home not a nice place for wildlife to live. Scatter cotton balls with perfume on them, put lights and a radio on, leave no food outside and they will pass by. And after the mother has left with her babies, please fix your house. Get a handyman to help you fix holes in house if you cannot do it. Ask around or call a local hardware store for names.

We can refer you to a Humane Nuisance Wildlife operator who can help you as well. Not all Humane Nuisance Wildlife operators are humane, even if they say they are, so please call us here: (765-) 585-5244.