Wildlife Education

🐾 Understanding Wildlife Behavior: A Path to Humane Solutions

Wildlife is driven entirely by instincts centered on securing four basic needs: food, water, shelter, and reproduction. When wildlife interacts with your home, they are not being malicious; they are simply trying to survive by accessing the easiest available resources. For instance, an unsecured attic provides the perfect dry, safe shelter, while unsecured garbage offers an effortless meal. Understanding this motivation is the key to preventing conflicts. By recognizing that their presence is merely a response to an accessible resource, we can shift our approach from reacting to an intrusion to proactively securing our property.

The critical factor in wildlife intrusion situations is often habituation, which occurs when wildlife regularly encounters human properties and resources without consequence, leading to a loss of natural fear. This is why addressing the environment around your home is the most effective and humane solution. We don't try to change the animal's deep-seated biological programming; instead, we implement strategies like exclusion (physically blocking entry points) and habitat modification (removing attractants like open food and water sources). By removing the incentive and securing the structure, we encourage the animal to naturally and safely move on to a more suitable wild habitat, ensuring a permanent and compassionate resolution for both parties.

Raccoons

The natural instincts that allow raccoons to thrive—their intelligence, strong climbing ability, and dexterity—are precisely what cause significant and costly conflicts with human property. Seeking safe, dry shelter for resting or raising young (denning), raccoons will exploit or actively create entry points into homes. They use their strong paws and sharp claws to tear apart roof shingles, soffit vents, fascia boards, or uncapped chimneys to gain access to attics and wall voids, which mimic a hollow tree. Once inside, they cause extensive damage by crushing and shredding insulation to build nests, chewing electrical wiring (creating a fire hazard), and ripping apart HVAC ductwork. Furthermore, raccoons are habitual, often using a single, communal spot, known as a latrine, to deposit large amounts of feces and urine, which not only causes structural damage from saturation but also poses a serious health risk due to parasites like Raccoon Roundworm.

Mitigation techniques: We deploy techniques like raccoon one-way doors and use deterrents to remove the raccoon from the area (eviction). Then prevent them from returning by sealing entry points or installing electric fences around open areas (exclusion). During baby-season (Spring), these techniques can differ, as we try to ensure that the mom raccoon is able to grab her babies and leave, before sealing any entry points.

Squirrels

The most frequent conflicts involving squirrels are directly related to their powerful instinct to forage and their need to cache food or find a secure den site. Squirrels must constantly sharpen their incisors, which leads to destructive gnawing behavior on wooden structures, plastic vents, and even soft metals to access interior spaces. They commonly enter attics, wall voids, and crawl spaces through small openings, vents, or by chewing through roof eaves, fascia, and siding. Once inside, they cause significant damage by hoarding nuts and debris, chewing on electrical wiring—a major fire hazard—and tearing up and saturating insulation to create soft, deep nests. This behavior is intensified during the spring and fall when they are either preparing to give birth or preparing for the winter by creating multiple food caches and secure dens.

Mitigation techniques: For squirrel eviction, we can use squirrel one-way doors and deterrents to encourage them to leave (in the Spring, with their babies). After which we will seal any entry points.

Skunks

Skunks are generally shy, slow-moving mammals, and most human conflicts stem from their strong instinct to forage for insects, grubs, and larvae and their need for accessible shelter. Seeking these food sources, skunks utilize their long claws to dig small, conical holes across lawns and gardens, causing aesthetic damage as they search for food just beneath the soil surface. However, the most significant conflicts arise when they seek secure, dark, and secluded den sites for resting during the day or for winter hibernation. They frequently burrow under structures like porches, decks, sheds, foundations, and concrete slabs, creating tunnels that can compromise structural integrity over time. While the primary issue is the digging and den creation, a skunk's defense mechanism—the deployment of a foul-smelling musk—becomes an immediate and overwhelming problem when they feel threatened, often spraying pets or releasing the odor directly beneath a building, where the scent can permeate the entire structure.

Mitigation techniques: Similar to squirrels, we use one-way doors and deterrents to evict skunks, then seal entry points after they have left. Skunks can be tricky, we don't want them to spray our technicians or the space, so we have to be extra careful when performing any eviction protocol.

Bats

Bat conflicts almost exclusively center on their need for roosting sites—a secure place to rest during the day. In nature, bats utilize caves, rock crevices, or tree hollows, but in suburban areas, they readily exploit the voids in structures, most notably attics, wall spaces, and under eaves or roof tiles. Unlike rodents, bats do not typically chew to gain access; instead, they exploit incredibly small structural gaps, sometimes as tiny as 1/2 inch, which they can squeeze through. This often leads to large maternity colonies establishing themselves in attics during the spring and summer. The primary conflict and damage come from the accumulation of guano (bat droppings) and urine, which pile up on insulation, ceiling materials, and sometimes wall cavities. Guano not only causes strong odors, stains, and structural damage from saturation, but it can also pose a serious health risk due to the potential presence of fungal spores that cause Histoplasmosis when inhaled.

Mitigation techniques: Bats both enter the property and hang in exposed areas. We can install one-way doors to evict them, then seal any entry points to exclude them from coming back. Hanging entry-points are a little trickier - we can seal up locations like eaves to prevent bats from "hanging around"!

Coyotes

Coyotes are highly adaptable, opportunistic predators that have successfully colonized urban and suburban environments. Their primary conflict with human property stems from two major behaviors: foraging for accessible food and establishing territorial dens. While coyotes typically prey on rodents, rabbits, and deer, they are quick to exploit unsecured attractants, including pet food left outdoors, fallen fruit, and even small domestic pets left unattended, viewing them as easy prey. Their highly territorial nature means that once they establish a den for resting or raising pups (often under dense brush, sheds, or thick vegetation), they will aggressively defend the area. This leads to increased sightings, fear for pet safety, and occasional conflicts with humans, particularly when their natural fear diminishes due to habituation from easy food sources. The most crucial factor in mitigating conflict is eliminating all unsecured food sources and removing dense ground cover or debris that offers potential den sites.

Mitigation techniques: Coyotes are large predators that we can't always exclude. Instead, we try to scare them away from the property using low-voltage electric fences and heavy deterrents to trick them into thinking another animal has taken over their territory. This will naturally encourage them to vacate the property.

Opossums

The opossum is North America's only marsupial, characterized by its slow movement and nocturnal, scavenger-based lifestyle, which leads it into conflict with human environments. Their primary issue is their pursuit of easy, accessible food and water, making them frequent visitors to unsecured garbage cans, compost piles, fruit trees, and pet food left outdoors. They are not adept climbers like raccoons but are excellent at exploiting pre-existing openings or seeking out low-lying, secure shelter for resting during the day. This leads them to den under decks, sheds, foundations, and woodpiles, where they create temporary nests that cause clutter and potential unsanitary conditions. While generally docile and non-aggressive, their presence can alarm homeowners and, like many other scavengers, their constant search for food and shelter places them in direct proximity to residential areas, necessitating the securement of all external food sources to prevent their residency.

Mitigation techniques: We can use techniques like deterrents or one-way doors to evict opossums, and then seal entry points to exclude them from coming back.