Ch 5: Step four: Prevent future problems
Habitat modification
Animals look for food, water, and shelter. When practical, modifying the environment
to reduce the amount of available food, water, or shelter will make the site
less attractive to an animal.
Appendices B and C include a series of tip sheets for the animals that are most
likely to cause nuisance problems in New York. Each account describes some of
the basic biology you need to know to work with this species, and then lists
control techniques for that animal.
The following two lists offer some general tips for modifying the habitat
to make it less vulnerable to wildlife damage.
Remove artificial food sources
- If anyone is feeding the nuisance animals, persuade them to stop. It may
even be illegal. Why? Because an easy food supply can attract a crowd. The
wildlife might become dependent on the food source and learn to associate
people with food, which could lead to other problems. Also, unnatural crowding
is a set-up for the spread of wildlife diseases. The 2003 ban on deer feeding,
for example, was put in place to try to prevent the spread of chronic wasting
disease to New York State. Report illegal feeding of wildlife to DEC Bureau
of Wildlife or law enforcement staff.
- "Animal-proof" the trash. In general, this means you can either
keep garbage cans and dumpsters in protected locations, or use strong containers
with secure lids. Obviously, a container that's strong enough to keep out
mice may not even slow down a bear, so match your approach to the species.
Attaching cans to posts will make them harder to tip over.
- Clean garbage cans, chutes, and dumpsters often. Check for cracks and
holes.
If you find any, repair them.
- Don't leave trash out all night for a morning pick-up. Many of the nuisance
species who rummage through trash are nocturnal. If you can, put the trash
out right before it's due to be collected.
- Enclose compost piles in a framed box using hardware cloth, or in a sturdy
container. Don't compost meat products or cooked food.
- Feed birds during the fall and winter and gradually stop by April. Use
sturdy poles for bird feeders. Keep the area underneath the feeder clean.
Or use natural landscaping to provide good bird habitat instead. (See the
National Wildlife Federation's backyard wildlife habitat program for information.)
- Feed pets indoors. Any food left outdoors should be removed at night. Bring
the food bowls indoors.
- Clean up spills of food, bird seed, grain, garbage. Promptly.
- Remove and properly dispose of livestock carcasses immediately.
- Store food, bird seed, pet food, and grains in strong containers. Keep
stored items off the floor and away from walls.
- Near buildings, rake up and remove fruits and nuts that fall off trees.
- Keep livestock feeding areas and grain storage areas as clean and secure
as possible.
- Remove dog, cat, and horse droppings daily. (Feces are food to other animals.)
- Eliminate pools of standing water.
- Keep livestock in protected areas, especially when they're ready to have
young.
- Switch to landscape plants that the nuisance animal doesn't find as tasty.
Limit their shelter
- Maintain a foot-wide gravel border around the foundation that's free of
plants (best) or at least keep foundation plantings well-trimmed. Don't stack
anything against the foundation.
- Remove brush piles, junk piles, and clutter. Keep woodpiles away from buildings.
- Keep a clean border around any vulnerable area (building, garden, field,
orchard). Mow the grass often. Trim shrubs.
- Mow openings through large patches of thick ground cover. Some animals
don't like to cross areas where they can be easily seen. Canada geese, however,
would make good use of such openings, so don't use this technique if geese
are, or could become, a problem in the area.
- Trim or thin trees to reduce their appeal as roosts.
- Cut trees that brush up against the building and limbs that overhang the
roof.
- Wrap guards around trees to keep animals from climbing them. (Best done
in late fall, when the wild animals have finished nesting in the tree. Keep
the wrap loose so it doesn't girdle the tree.) This will only prove effective
if the tree is insulated enough that animals cannot climb a nearby object and
leap into the tree.
- Plus all the exclusion techniques to keep animals out of buildings, gardens,
livestock areas, or any other vulnerable location.
Next section (exclusion)
