Best practices for nuisance wildlife control operators in New York State

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Ch 5: Step four: Prevent future problems

Learning objectives for step four

1. List a dozen tips you could share with your customers to help them reduce the amount of food and shelter available to nuisance wildlife.
    
2. Before you exclude an animal from an area, you should think about seven issues. Describe them.
    
3. You've been hired to bat-proof a house. Name three products you could use to seal small holes.
    
4. Explain the safety issue you need to consider when modifying vents.
    
5. Raccoons can remove a certain kind of chimney cover. Which one? Describe the type of chimney cover you'd choose to keep a raccoon out of a chimney.
    
6. Name two devices used to keep pigeons off ledges.

Most nuisance wildlife control work is in response to a problem that has already happened. Is there a way to turn that around, to actually prevent problems? Or at least, to prevent them from happening over and over and over again? Absolutely, and this is emerging as a more important part of nuisance wildlife control.

There are two major approaches to preventing wildlife conflicts: habitat modification and exclusion. We'll also discuss one strategy that's common in agricultural pest management, which we believe may become an important service offered by some NWCOs: monitoring.

Next section (habitat modification)