Tips for Houseproofing Your Land from Wildlife

After a second coyote attack in ten days at sun City Palm Desert, Riverside County Animal Services is posting a "tip sheet" on how to beter deal with wildlife infringing on suburban areas.     

Last week, Palm Desert Patch and Animal Samaritans gave tips on .

Here's the household tips from Riverside Couty Animal Services:

COPING WITH URBAN WILDLIFE

Due to the loss fo thier own habitat, many native animals have adapted quite well to living in our neighborhoods.  Once in a while problems can arise when our furred and feathered neighbors come a little close.  Below are some sugestions that may help alleviate these situations.

• Wild animals are in yor area for three reasons:  food, water and shelter. Eliminate these and the wildlife will relocate themselves.
• If you feed wild birds, put out only small amounts of seed.  Bird seed is also tasy to squirels and rabbits who are in turn tasty to coyotes and thus the chain begins.
• Do not leave pet food outdoors at nights.  Skunks, opossums and accoons love dog and cat food.
• Do not leave pets outdoors at night if you live in a coyote area.  Coyotes don't understand that these are your beloved pets.  The see free, easy to catch food and they will keep coming back for more.  
• Protect your pets from predation.  Build stronger enclosures and fences. Generally coyotes will not scale a fence higher than six feet.  Installing extenders which angle outward and running two or three strands of wire along the extenders will ensure that animals won't pass over the top.
• Burying wire or cement blocks around the bottom of a fence will discourage digging.
• Clear brush, woodpiles and dense groundcover where rodents may be living.  By discouraging the rodent population, you will eliminate the food source for coyotes and snakes.
• Keep garbage cans tightly lidded and secured ot keep them indoors until trash pickup day.
• In teh fall when there is no dangers of trapping nursing babies inside, install vent covers on external kitchen and bathroomvents; check your roof, crawl spaces and under decks or patios; secure any openings with latticework or hardware cloth.
• Trim tree limbs away from the roof.
• Trim vegetation to prevent it covering foundation walls.  Allow two feet between the vegetation and the building.
• Moth balls and rags soaked in ammonia placed strategically (underdecks, crawl spaces, in attics, etc.) may deter species.  Make sure the animal is away when you put the moth balls or ammonia rags in the area (i.e. at night for nocturnal animals).
• Flashing lights, radios, reflector disks and plastic or blow-up grat horned owls may deter many animals from turning your home into theirs.
• Trapping and relocating or killing "nuisance" wildlife will not solve the problem.  Wild animals are territorial and like species will simply take over the area vacated by the relocated or dead animal.