[FEL-L] Wildlife sightings in urban areas becoming more prevalent

[BigCatSimba at aol.com]

Wildlife sightings in urban areas becoming more prevalent
 
By Jimmy Watson
_jimwatson at gannett.com_ (mailto:jimwatson at gannett.com) 


Steve Hebert, biologist manager for the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and 
Fisheries, recently received a call about a cougar patroling an area along 
East Kings Highway in Shreveport, warily watching youngsters playing soccer.

Caddo Parish Animal Control officers were dispatched and discovered that the 
cougar was actually a bobcat, who wasn't the least bit interested in joining 
the soccer game.


The bobcat disappeared over the Red River levee and hasn't been seen again. 
But the wild animal's proximity to an urban area is a growing phenomenon in 
northwest Louisiana as more and more former wildlife habitat is laid bare for 
residential and commercial development.

"It's just a basic fact that if you clear out wildlife habitat, the wildlife 
will show up somewhere else," Hebert said. "There have been a lot of wildlife 
sightings in north Bossier City this summer due to the natural habitat 
becoming more segmented."

Whether it's coyotes, foxes, snakes, alligators, beavers, deer or raccoons, 
LDWF officials welcome calls from the public seeking information about the 
animals. They'll assist homeowners in implementing ways to improve yard 
maintenance that may be attracting wildlife.

"If a yard gets shabby, the wildlife will move in," Hebert said.

But the department rarely makes house calls.

"We refer most of the callers to licensed nuisance wildlife control operators 
and let them handle it," Hebert said. "If there's a safety issue, we'll send 
an agent or one of our biologists out, but we don't go into people's homes to 
help them get a pest out."

Harold Renfro, a certified animal control officer who handles nuisance calls 
for Caddo Animal Control, has handled a number of public complaints since 
contracting with the parish six weeks ago.

"I recently responded to a problem with a beaver on Cross Lake near the I-220 
bridge," Renfro said. "It was chewing up (the homeowner's) steps and deck ... 
it looked like a shark had taken a bite out of it. We were able to trap the 
beaver and remove it."

Renfroe spends a lot of his time educating the public on wildlife topics. He 
was in Lake Charles recently, speaking to city and parish officials about a 
coyote problem that has city residents concerned — 21 attacks on pets by 
coyotes. Renfroe told them how to successfully trap the animals.

Due in large part to heavy rains earlier this summer, Bossier City residents 
endured several visits by alligators in densely populated subdivisions. A 
10-foot gator was harvested just a few feet from the back yard of Katherine 
McClanahan.

"We have an iron fence along a bayou in the back of our yard, so I wasn't 
worried about my own children," McClanahan said. "But as a citizen, it scared me 
because we might have been days away from a terrible tragedy with one of the 
neighborhood children who play within feet of where he was seen."

And relocating alligators, along with other wildlife, continues to be a 
problem for the LDWF.

"We won't put our people at risk in trying to catch and release an animal and 
we've found that if you move an animal from one place to another, it just 
becomes a problem for someone else," Hebert said. "There are fewer and fewer 
areas to relocate alligators. A classic example occurred in the 1980s when we 
caught and released an 8-foot gator three times."

Sid Crump, a former member of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and 
a current member of Robinson's Rescue, said that he enjoyed watching a family 
of red foxes near the 18th tee on Querbes Golf Course in Shreveport until the 
animals were removed this summer by a nuisance wildlife control operator.

"We need to learn to co-exist with wildlife because we've encroached upon 
them," Crump said. "If they become a nuisance, then they need to be removed in a 
humane fashion. They should be treated with respect and the LDWF certainly 
does that."

NFL quarterback Michael Vick's recent arrest on animal cruelty charges has 
thrust the treatment of animals, both domestic and wild, into the national 
spotlight. That hasn't affected the job of LDWF agents and biologists, however.

"As an agency, we're sympathetic to all beliefs, but we also have a job to 
do," Hebert said. "And we evaluate our calls on a case-by-case basis. We don't 
always want to put down an animal, but sometimes it comes down to economic 
realities. We're running out of places to put them."
 
_http://www.shreveporttimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070903/NEWS01/709
030307_ 
(http://www.shreveporttimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070903/NEWS01/709030307) 




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