OTHER WILDLIFE/HUMAN CONFLICTS

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1997:

Pledging to pay $150,000 for
spring-and-fall air drops of raccoon
rabies vaccination pellets over northern
Vermont to keep the disease out of
Quebec, the Quebec government came
through last spring, but at deadline was
reportedly struggling to find the money
to follow through with the fall drop.
U.S. federal funding was also uncertain.
Two vaccination pellet drops proceeded
as scheduled in Ohio, however,
to contain the westward spread of the
disease. Begun in 1976 by hunters who
translocated rabid raccoons from
Florida to West Virginia, the midAtlantic
raccoon rabies pandemic has
now spread to 16 states, but appears to
have been halted in mid-Ohio by a May
1997 application of vaccination pellets
along a 10-mile-wide, 695-square-mile
barrier, running from Mosquito Lake
to Wellsville. The September drops
reinforced the earlier drop, covering
1,200 square miles from Lake Erie to
the Ohio River.

The Colorado game damage
reimbursement program, begun in
1951 to compensate ranchers for livestock
and crop losses caused by animals
who might be hunted for sport if
not killed as nuisances, now pays out
more than $500,000 a year–– much of
it to homeowners. “State wildlife officials
have paid more than $250,000 this
year for bear damage alone, quadruple
the amount paid in 1980,” B r u c e
F i n l e y of the Denver Post reported at
mid-year. “Mountain lion damage payments
have doubled since 1990, reaching
$119,000 for the second year in a
row.”
A new Connecticut law, in
effect since August 15, requires nuisance
wildlife trappers to follow
American Veterinary Medical
A s s o c i a t i o n guidelines for humane
euthanasia in dispatching animals.
In 1991, says Illinois
Department of Natural Resources
biologist Bob Bluett, state nuisance
wildlife trappers killed only a third of
the animals they trapped, and relocated
two-thirds. That was when trapped fur
prices were at a low ebb. With fur
prices and nuisance wildlife calls up,
and relocation sites scarce, statelicensed
nuisance trappers now relocate
only one third and kill two-thirds.
At Banff National Park in
A l b e r t a, park wildlife attack avoidance
specialist Hal Morrison in July
began asking staff to wear tourist-like
garments when out to roust problem
bears, after observing that some bears
quickly learn to distinguish wardens,
who never treat them, from campers,
who often do.