These articles make it sound like raccoons are really stupid. I am very surprised at that. I thought that basically most animals have a built it survival mechanism to help them survive. I can understand the reasoning with squirrels because like the article said, they have a food stash and if they loose that by relocating, they basically have no food unless they find some trees that still have some acorns on them. I guess it depends on the animal. I have seen an occasional raccoon on my property but they have not dug up or messed with any of my plants. Now, skunks will dig holes in my lawn looking for grubs or worms but I really don't care if they do or not. Growing grass is not a priority of mine. Have these animals been banded to actually see if they die within 2 weeks or is someone camping in the woods watching them for 2 weeks to see if they do die???

Frilly, just want to make it clear I understand you are just presenting the available info, and the current trends in
dealing with troublesome animals. I am most certainly not attacking the messenger, but not so sure the message that seems to be "politically correct" is much better than the alternative.
I am bewildered by the study that finds a wild animal can not live for longer than two weeks in a new location? Especially one as smart and resourceful as a raccoon. Not capable of finding water? Maybe if a raccoon is released in the desert!
Can't find food? Here the oaks trees, pine trees etc. that are available would make a squirrel have to be a total idiot not to be able to find food most of the year. Plus I have caught gray squirrels stealing all the eggs out of bird nests and even eating the baby birds, so I guess I don't have that much pity for them to start with.
To me it seems that the advice being given by the groups saying not to trap and transport animals is being given without much thought to what the outcome of that advice would actually be. But, I don't have any studies about that, I am just wondering if they do?
So if everyone in the neighborhood follows the instructions to secure the trash cans, make it impossible for the wild animals to eat pet food, boards up the available denning sites, etc. is there a study showing just how many wild animals would starve to death? I think the result would be much more devastating on the animals in an area like that, than would be lost by a few transported animals. If the animals are not capable of living longer than two weeks in the wild, then without all the easy sources of food and shelter supplied to them by people, it seems they would also not be able to survive without it.
I am still surprised "maybe because of my own ignorance" that a trapped animal must be released on site(what would be the purpose of trapping it) or it must be killed! That seems to be a fairly prevalent law for many animals. I must admit that shooting an animal is much easier that trying to trap it and relocate it, but I don't think that would be the animal's choice no matter what the studies indicate.

I just thought of something else to add to this discussion. I wonder now if all of the wildlife rehabilatators are spending all their time trying to rehabilitate injured animals and releasing them back into the wilds are just wasting their time if these animals will only die anyway. We have several of these facilities here in Michigan that do this. In fact one time we took a fox cub that my husband found to one of these facilities. It sure would be a waste of time and money if this were true.

Well, here in my town I have spoken with some animal rehabilitators (I have taken them a few trapped animals), and was told that unless they were injured they could not take them. But, they did recommend areas for some that could be released, areas that had a good source of water and food, and that were not already overcrowded with other animals. When I talked to these people there is no doubt they had much more knowledge than I did about the animals and about the laws concerning the animals. That is where I learned about being only able to release an animal on the same site or kill it, it was not allowed to be relocated.
So I feel sure the rehabilitators have better odds of their released animals surviving than individuals not trained in such matters.

I think what many don't know is that I live on an island. We are separated from the mainland by a large intercoastal waterway. The island is probably 80 mi long, maybe more. The waterway is 200 ft across at places and it is deep. About .5 mile south of us the island ends in an inlet that is .8 miles across. Vicious waves and strong currents are even a hazard for boats. We have high arched bridges to the mainland so critters have no way to leave. The river is a natural habitat for racoon, alligators, possom, and spawning fish. There is a lot for critters to eat and no natural enemies. The city no longer traps--they spent too much money on it so they quit. So homeowners have to pay unless, like us, they have a friend with traps. Its not a matter of human moving into animal habitat, its a forced habitat that probably started decades ago when some idiot brought over one of those cute little racoons and let it loose. I don't know.

many grown animals will be rehabbed after an injury and returned to the same area. Many of the baby wildlife are rehabbed and then kept domestically w permits or donated zoos or animal sanctuaries because they have not had an animal parent to teach them the skills they need. I would venture to say that many rehabbed babies are low chance of survival, people just try anyway. Raccoons are very smart but so are humans. Can you imagine just waking up one day in say.. xyz town in china. ? You have no idea where or how to find food, don't know anyone and are unfamiliar with everything have no resources. It is very stressful on them physically and too boot the animals have predators that are hunting them-coyotes, foxes, ect. They cannot take that kind of stress. They don't know where to hide, most animals are territorial, some live in groups (raccoons do) and are not accepted by the 'locals' who try to kill them or run them off.

My choice was to relocate, or kill the animal, by relocating at my work, which is 250 acres - mostly woods and on a lake, I gave them the better chance to survive. Otherwise I would have had to drown them, then dispose of them.

I am not sure there is any good answer. I tried exterminators, and not only did they not figure out where the critters were getting inside my house, but I had to,pay them to do the same thing, trap and then relocate, or kill the animal. I did not ask how the exterminators handled the ones that were caught.

Prior to having squirrels in my ceiling, I had bats. I was fully aware that I could only remove the bats once their babies were able to be on their own. ( I think the squirrels chased the bats out) and was also unwilling to remove the squirrels if there was any chance they had a nest of babies in the ceiling. I did a lot of research as to how and when the best times to try to capture the animals would be.

Again, there is no good answer.

I will admit the dogs managed to kill about the same number of squirrels as I caught. Not sure what the most humane answer was. I did have a lot of people tell me to shoot them with pellet guns. Not sure that is any better choice.

Nuisance animals aren't accepted at local zoos, for good reason. They are common and they are pests. We've paid a trapper $500 for the week. He left after 3 days, leaving his traps here. We had 3 critters in the trap with no answer on the phone. Not the way to go--he went out of town. Our intent isn't to torture pests. Our friend is an animal lover and really tries to release them in an environment identical to this one. As Jan said, there just isn't a good alternative.

About 3 yr ago, when our neighbor wasn't a full time resident, racoon got into her attic and did $6,000 damage to a/c and electrical ducting. The trapper ended up with mom and 6 little racoons that were as cute as can be. No. No compassion, no emotion. Cute? Yes. A nuisance? Yes. Destructive? Yes. Get rid of them!

Shooting w pellet guns is very bad. A pellet gun often times is not enough to kill it. It only leaves big nasty infected sores on them. They are in a lot of pain and die a slow death that way. Our neighbor had a stray tom cat that was hanging around, trying to sneak up and eat his dog's feed. I fed the cat when it showed up at my house off and on. I noticed that the cat had patches of fur falling out and sore looking places, I suspected some kind of skin parasite or mange or? I told my kids not to pet it. Well one day someone told me that that neighbor had been shooting the cat w a pellet gun,bb gun? of some kind trying to scare it off from it's dog feed. That poor cat was around here for MONTHS with these open oozing sores. I felt so bad for it, but had no idea what it was for so long. After that, I guess it didn't matter because I couldn't catch it anyway. I felt really bad for him. He came over here and slept on our porch. He was only trying to find something to eat because he was hungry. I would have not had a problem at all if the neighbor had just outright killed it, but the pellet gun thing was so cruel and uncalled for.

The neighbor probably was afraid to discharge a firearm in the area( if he even had one), and might have even thought shooting the cat with a BB gun would be kind and just move him along. A good pellet gun these days would have ended the problem quickly, some of them are now powerful enough to compete against regular firearms and even take down fairly large game. Pellet guns these days are certainly not toys any more.

My husband has a good pellet gun and it certainly is not a toy.

well, yes I guess it does depend on the type of pellet gun. I guess my point there really is that using a pellet gun to 'scare' it off, but not intending to kill it, really is more cruel than just killing it. They don't have access to health care ya know and they get infected and it is painful. I was just so irritated that he did that.

Maybe it was a bb gun and not a pellet gun. We had a cat once that someone shot with a bb gun and we were not too happy about that. We found out only because our cat had to go to the vet (I don't remember the reason for the vet trip) and they xrayed him and found a bb in him. We would not have know it was there, no systems whatsoever of having been shot.

Racoons and squirrels look so cute from over here.

Luckily possums do not occur on these southern Moreton Bay Islands. It is bad enough sharing my daylilies with monstrous, vicious parrots.

When I first came to Canada from the UK I thought raccoons were cute too (although getting my first ever whiff of skunk was the more memorable ) But after raccoons stole our sweet corn, destroyed the ceiling in the barn, pooped all over the hay, quite probably gave my horse leptospirosis causing her to have impaired vision and wear an eye protective mask for the rest of her life, dug up and ate turtle eggs, rip up the garbage so that we have to put it in protective custody while its waiting for pick-up, ripped the seat on my bicycle, killed my hens, carry rabies etc. etc. I sort of went off them.

Gleni said:Racoons and squirrels look so cute from over here.

Luckily possums do not occur on these southern Moreton Bay Islands. It is bad enough sharing my daylilies with monstrous, vicious parrots.

They ARE cute! Unfortunately racoons (especially) and squirrels can be destructive. Possums, on the other hand, aren't particularly cute but aren't particularly destructive, have some really beneficial aspects in part of their dietary habits, don't contract rabies because their body temperature is too low for it to incubate. I like them around. I haven't seen one around now for 4-5 years and they used to be plentiful. That's worrisome to me. I would be very surprised if a possum damaged daylilies in any way. They might chow down on some tomatoes and fruit.

I've never seen a possum but apparently they are moving north and are now spreading in Ontario. A friend north of Toronto told me she'd seen one there. I didn't know this before but apparently they can transmit a parasite to horses that can, in bad cases, be fatal.