First, I believe CannyDan wins the thread. Excellent post!
Second,
Wild rabbits are becoming a plague and pestilence in Calgary - I can’t go outside and swing my cats without hitting a rabbit.
Calgary is about an hour away from the Rocky Mountains and more wilderness than you can shake a stick at (therefore we all go to the Mountains for recreation). We are taught, and have it re-inforced over and over and over that you leave wild animals ALONE. I’m not making distinctions between black bears, rabbits, bighorn sheep, elk or raccoons - you see 'em, you retreat slowly. We don’t know what any particular animal is capable of - you wouldn’t think herbivores like bighorn sheep or elk would be a problem for humans, but they’ll kill you if they’re in rut. That’s not even considering the parasites and diseases that wild animals harbour. Things really aren’t any different in the city, except you have to take extra precautions to keep the wild things out of your garden and garbage. You still don’t mess with them.
And stay on the paths and pack out what you pack in.
Yeah, well, I know how those thrifty Wisconsin Lutheran types are, and what their favorite things are, so until I hear otherwise from QtM, I’m not going to accepting any offers of this stuff from him! :eek:
No can do. I use dead animal products all the time. Leather, muscle tissue (rich in complete proteins), heart valves (rich in bi and tricuspid goodness), scent glands (keeps the biting flies away in an environmentally responsible way), retinas (you can make solar panels out of them, don’tcha know?)
I’m planning a move to the country and actually look forward to seeing some other wildlife besides the teenagers that speed down our road, the neighbors cats that are always in my yard and the screaming, cussing children in the house behind me.
Some days, raccoon piss sounds like a blessing.
In defense of Musicat, it sounds like she provides food other ways predominately and only occasionally has ever hand fed her denizens. Having grown up in the country, I am aware that our yards and gardens do attract various forms of wildlife merely by being managed spaces with open grass. A compost pile will have regular possom/raccoon visitors, yards will host deer. Bird feeders (!) will host birds, squirrels and whatever likes what they toss around.
I hope to keep part of the land I get “natural” to allow the local fauna to exist. Right now, they are elevating gopher turtles to just below endangered due to the over-development of their habitats. There are backyard habitat programs funded by the state and federal governments that encourage us to have yards that are wildlife friendly. Usually it requires that their be water, shelter and food sources for critters. Now, I’m sure there is a happy medium between a hand fed buffet and a backyard habitat.
The fact is that wildlife populations ebb and flow based on availability of food. There are those that believe that if you fill a bird feeder it is a lifetime commitment for you and yet many people are not so diligent. Even a suburban yard can do a lot to provide for our wildlife without unnecessarily crippling them. We should be more mindful of creating habitats/sanctuaries where we can. It is our fault so many animals are losing their habitats.
I’m just waiting for the beetles to take over a planet that, by number, is pretty rightfully theirs.
Wait, I’m confused. Why do you have to hit a rabbit before you can go outside to swing your cats? And why do you need to go outside to swing the cats anyways? I should think that swinging the cats inside would be perfectly acceptable.
But giving wild animals handouts of food that isn’t naturally available to them in their own ecosystem isn’t really compensating for disrupting their environment. It merely disrupts their environment further by changing their habits and making them artificially dependent on the whims of human providers.
If compensating for wildlife habitat destruction is really your chief goal here, then why not just restore some natural wildlife habitat on your property? ISTM that that would ultimately be more beneficial than just providing the critters with handouts and encouraging them to be directly, and unnaturally, dependent on humans for their food.
As Auntbeast notes, there are a lot of things you can do to keep part of your property “natural” so it continues to support (at least some) indigenous wildlife. This is generally better for the local ecosystem as a whole than just providing a soup kitchen for the cute furry types.
Moreover, when you keep some natural wildlife habitat around you can still have the fun of observing the wildlife. You may not score as many sightings as you do now by bribing the animals with food to participate in your little pseudo-zoo setup, but you may find you appreciate it more when you do see them.
Auntbeast, I agree with you. I live this way on my six acres just outside city limits. I have deer, raccoons, turkey- all manner of varmint and vermin as well as a handful of rarely seen songbirds. The raccoons here make a great living on insects and crawfish from the creek in my front yard. The deer seek shelter in the perimeter of the lawn when the coyotes are running. Skunks, possums, rabbits, and groundhogs work the night shift year round. I have numerous bird feeders, and songbirds so plentiful that the trees around my house appear to be filled with wayward Christmas ornaments as I type this. Given the current state of the environment, I know how lucky I am to be able to observe healthy wildlife this closely. Here is a link to some old photos of my wildthings doing their own things.
But… any minute now, the Cooper’s hawk will swoop down and steal a dove in an explosion of feathers. The coyotes will raid a rabbit warren tonight, the opposum will tip over the trash can, a male mallard will rape a female, and the kingfisher and blue heron will snatch my fat bluegill out of the creek, and a deer will be hit by a car. Last year I lost my entire garden to the fawn that was ophaned when his mother was hit. The year before that, I was sprayed by a skunk when I surprised it at dawn. Hateful brown water snake bit me last week. Stung by bees, pooped on by a hummingbird, and fed more mosquitos than an Equatorial fisherman. I don’t kill anything, whether it bites me, stings me, stinks me, or just looks plain fugley. I keep the list of threatened animals and plants close, and keep them in mind when gardening, landscaping, or otherwise altering my environment. And I recoginize an opportunist when I co-habit with one, and I leave him to do his own thing, which is thriving in any and every habitat in spite of or because of my encroachment onto his land.
Yeah, I’ve been a real meany and said some really harsh things that I must apologize to Musicat for- but I stand by my original point. If an animal is seen by many as a nuisance- that means it is both plentiful and successful and does not need to be encouraged to take over habitat from those creatures which struggle to survive in the face of all that we have destroyed. Feeding the coons isn’t helping them- it is setting them up to fail.
Wildlife rehabilitators are to return recovered individuals to their location of origin or to other “appropriate natural environment”. What this means is not further defined, so it becomes a matter of policy for the rehabilitator. Sometimes it is the location of origin that is the cause of the problem. We recently rehabbed a bald eagle found poisoned at a landfill. Seemed quite inappropriate to return it to that same place! ‘Orphaned raccoons’ are a similar problem, since orphaning by abandonment seems directly proportional to heightened population densities. For all such animals we attempt to locate natural environments in which the addition of (some number) of individuals will not negatively impact carrying capacity or other biological realities. We have the cooperation of many Federal, State and local land managers as well as private property owners for our releases. We have never had a ‘Permitting Authority’ or anyone else challenge our decisions, which we believe is due to our biologically-based policies.
Trapped nuisance animals on the other hand may only be released onto private lands with the written permission of the landowner. They may not be released onto any land under public ownership (Federal, State, or local). Florida believes that relocating nuisance animals merely relocates the nuisance, in addition to probable biological problems such as disease dispersion and carrying capacity issues. For genuine nuisances, the preferred option is euthanasia.
Many ‘nuisance wildlife trappers’ (persons operating under permit authority to perform and charge for such services) will tell their customers that the animals are released, because that is what the customer wants to hear. In point of fact though, few go to the trouble and the expense of actually performing such releases. Note, I said “few” not “none”-- I’m aware of certain exceptions to the rule.
Auntbeast, I agree with you in principle (“We should be more mindful of creating habitats/sanctuaries where we can. It is our fault so many animals are losing their habitats.”) if not in full detail. Backyard habitats are quite valuable for certain species. It remains important though to prevent such from becoming merely purveyors of other problems. Encouraging and sustaining populations of certain species that diminish in their usual contact with people (e.g., seed eating birds, or gopher tortoises) is far different from the artificial magnification of opportunistic and fecund animals like raccoons.
I know! I always plant extra dill and parsley just for them. I also allow milkweed to grow tall for the monarchs- I have some amazing pics from this Spring that I will work on next time I am indoors due to foul weather. So much beauty here in the Appalachians. Neighboring farms are currently having some trouble with black bears, and coyotes occasionally snatch a sheep or calf, but by and large my little habitat is doing as it ought and Nature is mostly indifferent to both my aid and my interference.
And raccoons aren’t much of a nuisance for me, other than having the nightly crawfish snack on my meditation bench. But when one of the little bandits leaves the carapace of one of my electric blue crawdads behind, I get a little ticked. Merciless little shits with no sense of aesthetics.
There is currently a big push in Pinellas County to have one’s dogs vaccinated against the Leptospirosis thing and it is all due to raccoons. We have a favorite dog park where we take our little guy; raccoon spoor abounds, as do their cute little paw prints. We’ve certainly had our pup vaccinated.
My wife is employed at the local VA; their property abuts a small mangrove preserve on a bay. Raccoons there are plentiful but their natural food supply is sadly depleted. I’ve seen severely underweight raccoons foraging garbage cans during the daylight hours and I’ve seen them approach people and refuse to be driven away. Frankly, they frighten me. Raccoons are vicious fighters and they do carry rabies.
All joking about how cute they are aside, feeding them is a dangerous activity and I encourage folks to leave them alone.
I read some time ago of 'coons being vaccinated by bait laced with vaccine dropped into the forest from an aircraft. Perhaps similar bait could be distributed in your area.
Fine, as long as you understand that your so-called “aid” is part of your interference. Ecosystems are too big and complex for us to “help” or “manage”. We humans can to some extent deliberately reduce our impacts on wilderness areas, but there’s no way we can cancel out or “compensate” for them.
If you enjoy providing an artificial food supply for wild animals (as opposed to simply letting native plants and critters thrive unchecked on parts of your property), that’s technically your right (as long as there are no local ordinances against feeding wildlife). But you are not actually giving them “aid” by offering them easy eats; you’re just interfering further with their ecosystem.
I always plant extra dill and parsley just for them. I also allow milkweed to grow tall for the monarchs- I have some amazing pics from this Spring that I will work on next time I am indoors due to foul weather. So much beauty here in the Appalachians. Neighboring farms are currently having some trouble with black bears, and coyotes occasionally snatch a sheep or calf, but by and large my little habitat is doing as it ought and Nature is mostly indifferent to both my aid and my interference.