Feeding wild animals - good, bad, indifferent?

[pincushion]

Leave food out for foxes in your garden, says ‘irresponsible’ RSPCA - Telegraph

You might have seen reports of this incident in the UK when a baby was attacked by one of our urban foxes. I don't particularly have a view on feeding foxes other than perhaps that leaving food on the ground probably tends to encourage rats into the area so mostly I think it is a bad idea, apart from encouraging the foxes to multiply. I have nothing against foxes as animals and don't see them as vermin or pests.

What do others think about possibly feeding the wildlife in their countries? I am sure we have it rather tame here in the UK with few animals seen as threats to us so things will be very different.

:huh: :huh:

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Here is the U.S., it's illegal to feed wildlife in many locations because animals can become dependent on the food source and/or lose their fear of humans and become a nuisance or downright dangerous.

 

[maxie]

Dont have that many wild animals here in Ireland apart from vermin only thing i feed is birds .

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Dont have that many wild animals here in Ireland...

Not even in the pubs?

 

[Golden]

We try to be strict about not leaving food scraps outside to avoid mice and other rodents - over here even a short lived rodent population = snakes, and unfortunately they tend to be venomous.

 

[maxie]

Dont have that many wild animals here in Ireland...

Not even in the pubs?

Yeah we have our share of them i used to be one also in my younger days

 

[Layback Bear]

I don't feed wild animals I feed on them when I can.
This is a option after the tasty meal.
http://www.windyridgetrapper.com/in...nia-fox-raccoon-beaver-muskrat-grading-grades

 

[boohbah]

one evening ,the night before refuse collection i had a sack outside in the back yard,
when i went out for a cigarette i could here it rustling there was something moving inside it,
so being brave i got a long stick and proceeded to poke and whack the sack for a while 'til it stopped moving.
i left it as i didnt want to see what was in it.
a while later i go out for another cigarette only to see a hedgehog trying to get up the short steps from the bin area.
it seemed ok so i put a bucket over it tipped it up with the hedgehog inside and carried it down the country lane adjacent to our house.
set it free and apologised to mr hedgehog only to find him trying it again the following night.
the bin sacks no longer go out until the pick up day now.
and mr hedgehog hasnt been back.

 

[Fantail]

Can't realy blame a wild critter for responding to a buffet left out no matter if it was intentional or garbage.
I see people feeding seagulls & pigions in parking lots alot, end result is swarms of welfare birds and germ ridden crap everywhere.
On lots of private property people use automated feeders attached to grain drums for wild life. In warmer climates this tends to attract wild boar, not the intended animal. And then you have a concentrated area of germ ridden feces where other animals feed and tend to spread cwd and other disorders. In colder climates where wildlife digestive tracts slow down by natures design & tend to adjust for available food sources, you have people feeding wildlife with grains and greens such as hay (stem) where something such as a horse or cow would do ok with but actualy cause digestive problems and more harm then good to other critters such as deer.

 

[pincushion]

And one point of view ....

Simon Jenkins: Let

:shock: :shock:

 

[Layback Bear]

I do wonder who would leave a 5 week old child unattended in such a way a fox could bite it.

 

[pincushion]

I do wonder who would leave a 5 week old child unattended in such a way a fox could bite it.

I think it is a bit harsh to judge parents this way when it all about the apparent risks involved and fox attacks are pretty rare. There are far more attacks by pet dogs and harm done by children doing things and going places they shouldn't. Parents cannot monitor a child through each 24 hour day. I remember getting lost on a beach once when I was a toddler and ending up in the 'lost property' centre and I had a very caring mother.

It seems we will have to address this issue of feeding wild animals more seriously here in the UK as we seem to be introducing more species back into the wild - Red Kites, Beavers, Wolves? etc. The concensus seems to be that feeding wild animals does more harm than good.

:huh:

 

[Layback Bear]

You can address what ever. I wouldn't leave a 5 week old puppy unattended. I do feed the critters around my home.

 

[M1GU31]

I don't feed any wild animals, hell not even dogs passing by unless they are my dogs but they live in my yard so no problem. This only attracts them and they become a nuisance and won't leave. Ever since I got my dogs less animals come by my house anymore. Use to get snakes in the yard but ever since I got dogs they never come anymore.

 

[Imperfect1]

Wild animals living close to our human habitat continue to create unsolvable problems all over the world. In the Los Angeles, California area, for example, (an area that is interspersed with many hilly, forested areas) it has become impossible to let your dogs and cats (and, of course, small children) play outside unattended, without tremendous risk of them being killed by roaming coyotes, foxes, bob cats, etc. I've had a pet cat dragged off by a fox in my back yard, and several years later in a different house, I had a coyote in my back yard stalking my small dog. Although I was able to get the dog into the house safely, the dog was so shell-shocked and terrorized by the threat of the coyote, that he was never the same again! It was very sad.

After that incident occurred, one of my neighbors started leaving food out for the coyotes, in the hope that if the coyotes were fed, they would leave our small animals and children alone --- but clearly that wasn't the answer to the problem, because as others have said, leaving food out for the wild animals causes so many additional problems, that it probably is worse (for the humans) than doing nothing.

What to do? I really don't know. With people having spread out into the animals' natural territory --- there really isn't a good solution. I think the most we can do is to keep our own property free from any unnecessary "food" that might attract animals, and to be extremely vigilent about protecting our children, our pets, and ourselves, from animal attacks.

 

[pincushion]

One of the problems we have at the moment seems to be a surfeit of conflicting advice, with a few wildlife programmes on TV apparently encouraging the putting out of food for such creatures as badgers, pine martens and perhaps foxes amongst others, just to view them. I think we certainly need to look at what happens in other countries to see the affects of feeding wild animals. It is a long time since we had any dangerous creatures here, centuries at least, with only one snake species causing some problems but rarely a death. Wolves vanished centuries ago and the wild boar, which apparently has been reintroduced, is perhaps more dangerous than foxes. There have been a few exotic animals escaping into the wild and reported sightings for decades of escaped 'big cats' now living wild but none have been found so far.

Here comes trouble: the return of the wild boar to Britain | Environment | The Observer

:shock: :huh:


Yippee! 500 posts!

ps. Doesn't take much to make me happy!

 

[BugMeister]

- my hawthorn is always draped with food for the birds -they visit constantly, during the day

- they also know that the mayflower's thorns protect them from the neighbourhood cats..

- it's lovely to hear birdsong, we should cherish them..

 

[jadinolf]

I must confess that I have fed the local ground squirrels and chipmunks.

Probably not a good idea.