Syracuse.com - See complete transcript from 'Urban Wildlife' panel discussion hosted by the Syracuse Media Group

[HuntingNY-News]

In solving the deer problem in the city of Syracuse, the city is most likely going to have to foot the majority of the bill. In addition, it'll probably take a multi-faceted approach that will have to be continued indefinitely, the panelists said. It won't be a 'one shot' deal.

A panel of local experts on the subject of "Urban Wildlife" agreed on several points Thursday when it came to the large numbers of deer currently living in the city of Syracuse -- and how to deal with them.

The city is most likely going to have to foot the majority of the bill. In addition, it'll take a multi-faceted approach that will have to be continued indefinitely, the panelists said. A big problem, they stressed, will be getting a consensus in the community about what measures will be taken.

The panel consisted of Steve Joule, wildlife manager for Region 7 of the state Department of Environmental Conservation; Brian Underwood, a SUNY ESF/U.S. Geological Survey wildlife biologist with a background of more than 30 years of studying deer, particularly those in urban/suburban settings, and Al LaFrance, of Al's Critter Solutions, a local animal nuisance control business. The hour-long, discussion was held at the Syracuse Media Group's new offices on Warren Street in downtown Syracuse.

"If I was a deer, I'd like to live in Syracuse," Joule said. "You have enough to eat. You have scattered protected areas. You have ordinances that protect you further (leash laws, discharge of firearm restrictions). On top of that, people put out a lovely buffet. They line the streets with a lovely buffet so you can come out at night and feed on that and walk back to the nice park or woods that you came from."

Underwood added, "Syracuse has just become just wonderful wildlife habitat. And to expect that wildlife are going to stay on the other side of the boundary, is unreasonable."

Other deer-related topics included what has worked and hasn't worked elsewhere, things humans have done to make Syracuse a deer "utopia" and things humans can do to help with deer problems around their homes, including the use of fences and chemical deterrents.

In regard to other wildlife in the city, all three panelists agreed there needs to be more education to teach a growing percentage of the population that is ignorant about wildlife and what we as humans are unknowingly doing to encourage their spread in our urban and suburban communities.

"If I wanted to procreate my nuisance wildlife business, I would buy everyone in the city of Syracuse a birdfeeder and 25 pounds of bird seed," LaFrance said. "I wouldn't have to run around. I'd just do nothing but check birdfeeders because I'm going to catch all the squirrels, raccoons, rabbits and deer that come to them."

Below are questions from the more than a dozen readers who attended the discussion, and answers given by the panelists:

Q: I'm a bowhunter. I read something about the 500-foot rule (which requires that arrows can't be shot with 500 feet of an occupied building without the permission of the building owner), that they were going to change that. Is that in motion.

(Joule) That's a state law, and that would take a legislative act to change that. It's nNot anything that's controlled by one agency, certainly not the DEC. There's been a lot of discussion about how that would help, or at least be one more tool in the tool chest for managing deer in suburban and urban environments. But I've not seen any movement.

Q: That doesn't seem right because of a velocity of gun is much more powerful than a bow.

(Joule) Certainly, a bow is not going to have the same trajectory in most cases than any kind of firearm. And typically, a deer hunter will be in an elevated position shooting down, so you have the ground as a backstop. The rationale for keeping it, I can't really say. It's just that it would take an awful lot of support to change something that already exists. I don't believe that support has been voiced enough to change it. It would be another tool, that would make it in some communities, not all, ... but in some communities that would give them one more option, where right now there are very few.

Q: I'd like to start with broad question. I've worked in universities for 45 years and I don't want to hold you responsible for why we can't solve these problems. What's the real problem? Everyone knows we have a problem, but nobody has a solution.

(Joule) The reason nobody has a solution is because there's no easy answer. You can manage deer to a certain extent in one location and not at all in another location that isn't too far away. In rural areas, obviously it's a lot more easier. You have more options. Hunting has maintaining the deer population in rural areas for over a century now. As we change the landscape, as we change the land's use and increase our own population and restrict wildlife populations and the type of tools we have to manage them, it becomes more and more difficult. Why one tool may be less effective in one area than another. There are social restraints, there are economic restraints. There are a whole bunch of issues. You really need an integrated plan. You can't have just one potential solution, because that isn't going to work.

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Q: Is there anybody in the country that has a solution to this? It's 2013.

(Joule) here are dozens of examples, just in the northeast, where they're working. Dr. Underwood is at the forefront of that research right now. I don't know if anyone can say, "Yep, we got a solution."

(Underwood). The problem is this just didn't happen over night. I've been in Syracuse for over 20 years and I've watched the deer population slowly creep out of the areas in the south part of Rt. 481 into those communities. I've seen deer in St. Mary's Cemetery. I used to bird there as a young graduated student. See deer here and keep track of that. What's happened is, though, is that this is a very slow process that's driven by the landscape. All those wonderful things that people plant in their yards, and all those buffer strips, and all of those municipal lands that have been abandoned...all of a sudden just become unbelievable wildlife habitat. So from deer all the way down to little brown birds, the habitat has improved and it's improved dramatically. It's literally the expression, "If you build it they will come." And that's exactly what we're seeing as all of these communities that were established in the forties and fifties that planted tree that were that high. Those trees are now 40 to 50 feet tall now. They're at a density that resembles some of native forests. They've become just wonderful wildlife habitat. And to expect that wildlife are going to stay on the other side of the boundary, is unreasonable. An unreasonable expectation.

Q: I live on the east side of the city. And I have seen as many as nine (deer) in a family come down off the hill and into my backyard. I cannot even have a garden. Any plants, they eat them. They so bold now they come on my front lawn, up on my front porch. So, I just don't understand. There's nothing you can do?

A: (Underwood) I wouldn't say there's nothing you could do. There's a lot of thing you can do. There's probably not one single thing that's going to work. It's not a one-sided driven solution. The thing has to be everybody from the homeowner to the management agency working together implementing a multi-faceted solution that's going to real address the problem correctly. There are things you can do for deer. Unfortunately, they eat plants to live. They have to. Otherwise, they did. Short of building a fence and excluding them, there aren't many things that are terribly effective without actually implementing some sort of population management solution.

Q: Who do you call if you see a dead deer. Is a phone number, a hotline you can call?

A: (A man in the audience) The county highway department has a system by which they take that call. Send somebody out. They have contractors who pick them up.

(Joule) The only stipulation with that is, depending on the jurisdiction, if it's in the road, it would fall to whatever municipality or jurisdiction covers that roadway. Otherwise, they're not going to go into somebody's yard and drag (out) a deer. Typically, it's going to be some municipal highway department that's responsible for collecting, not just deer but whatever other animals are in the road.

(LaFrance) We get calls all the time, from the nuisance end of it .. a deer was hit by a car and it drops in yard.Hunting season we'll often get an animal that's wounded and drops. The procedure we have to follow is: One, we have to call conservation and the local environmental conservation officers, we have a working relationship with them. Normally, wither we get a verbal OK to go pick it up or there's choices. We either put it to the curb for the municipality to pick up or take it to the landfill. The problem we'r e faced with is the landfills do not want carcasses, be it deer or any other landfill that we do. Onondaga County, if they know you're bringing a dead deer in, they will not take it to the landfill. If we bring skunks or woodchucks. They will not take them. Our hands are tied as to what we can do. In one instance, we had one member who owned some property , who dug a pit and was burying them. He was told by a conservation officer that he did that, he was operating an unapproved landfills site. Can't do that. Most of us (nuisance animal control experts) take them . We have a chest freezer and the chest freezer gets full, we take them to Madison County and Madison County will take them... If you have a permit and permission from Madison County.

(Man in audience) I went through this. Madison County accepts carcasses. They have a permit from the DEC to operate a landfill that specifically says they can take carcasses. .. but not from outside their county. Same goes from Cortland. Seneca Meadows doesn't want to hear about it because their employees are offended by the carcasses. The only option I know of. Onondaga County does not have a landfill. It has an incinerator. The incinerator plants permit with the DEC does not specify that they can take carcasses and they will not take them. And so the only option I know of is that you can get a hauler permit from Oswego County and now you have to drive all the way to Fulton to take them to their incinerator plant.

(Another man from Audience). I work partime from OCCRA. They have had a facility out there in Jamesville at their storage grounds that they were bringing deer. And it was my understanding a number of years ago that they would pick up a deer and compost them, or do something at the county storage facility in Jamesville. Is that not working?

(LaFrance) To my knowledge, they're not composting at Jamesville where if your drive down.. different state on the highways, see the big compost piles, woodchips and things like that in lime, where the state will pick them up, mulch them and compost them there. To the best of my knowledge, I don't think the Jamesville facility will take them.

The woman said she has deer in backyard. What do you tell her? What's the first thing she should do? Call the mayor's office or what?

(Joule) If you're looking at it from a site specific standpoint. There are options, but those options may or may not work for any one individual. If it's a matter of securing or a few plants for a small area, fending is absolutely the best option, except for the fact it may be expense to install and maintain. You'd need at least one that was 6 to 8 ft. (Underwood) A small fence might work around around an individual plant, but not around your yard.

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Q: What about an electric fence?

(Underwood). It can be effective. It has to be installed properly. You'd have to look at your individual town ordinances. I have a lot of experience with electric fences, like anything else, all animals have to be trained to an electric fence. If you have livestock and an electric fence, you have to train animals. Just can't turn them loose. There's a period where they have to learn about what the electric fence is..and often that first learning experience is "Bang, I got it on the nose. I jumped over the fence and I've just learned now to jump over the fence so it doesn't hurt me any more." That would be a complete failure.

Q: I live next to the woods. And this is where I get all these animals.

(Underwood) Yes, that's where they live during the day and come out at night to forage and feed. You asked the question: Who do you call and how do you fix the problem? Fixing the problem will be harder than lodging the complaint. Fixing the problem will involve probably more than one solution.If there aren't very many deer and the pressure is high...namely that you're not the only one growing a certain type of green food in your neighborhood... you could probably use things like deterrents. Commercially available sprays that have the things in red hot peppers that you can spray on your plant and that will work for a little while, but like everything else you have to keep mixing it up and confusing them. Deer are like wild animal when it comes to food are conditioned. They learn very quickly when it comes to their stomach.

I have used a liquid (deterrent) and it hasn't worked.

(Underwood) Try something different.

(Joule) Some repellents are more effective than others. Typically, it's going to be the odor-based repellents.. they have a sulfur, rotten egg type smell to them. They've been shown to be more effective. Depending on how much of an area you have to protect. It could be expensive. It could depend on the density of the deer population. In some cases, if you're well-fed, you'll use whatever is around that's most choice to you. If you're not well-fed, you're going to chose anything, anything that's available. It's not going to matter to the deer if it smells like rotten eggs. If the density is such that there's no vegetation for them to feed on. It will also depend on the weather. If it rains, it needs to be reapplied, even if you've applied it several days ago. It can be a very expensive proposition, depending on the area you wish to cover. That's certainly not a long-term solution. It's a very site-specific, short-term solution, if it's a solution at all. If the deer density is high, the deer have just adapted to repellents like that.

Somebody told me to get The Hinder. Hear of that? I can't find it anyplace.

(LaFrance) All the products are pretty much the same. If you apply them today and get a week of rain, you've got to reapply it. You' ve got the same thing when it comes to goose and everything else. These products are subject to the weather. I get complaints weekly, if not daily, on deer. The Bradford Hills area, Nottingham, St. Mary's Cemetery, Hoag Lane and Hot Lane in Dewitt, in Fayetteville, Green Lakes Park. I have people telling me they can't even go for a walk because the ticks are so bad. I went on a call yesterday, the man's been in the house five weeks, his kids are coming in almost daily with ticks. They're in an area, where normal hunting means is not an option, because it's heavy residential. But there options as far as control within a residential area. The problem being you'll get five that want them gone, this man over here likes them at the bird feeder. So the five say "let's get rid of them" and we get written permission to go their property to do this. But the other guy, a homeowner within 500 feet says, "No, I don 't want this done." His vote overrides the five. Here's what we do with deer and other wildlife species. We back up the other way to see if we can do going 500 feet the other way.

It has to be in total agreement with like a homeowners association. It's something that takes some time to work out. Pretty much meticulous. We've deer control and the airport before and for different municipalities. But it has to be something 100 percent in agreement with everyone, and 100 percent legal. You can't go in with a high-powered rifle into a residential area. But there are other tools you can use for it. The big problem is getting the consensus of everyone in the area to agree on a common solution. Whether it's broadspan chemical use, or lethal means with a bow and arrow, crossbow, shotgun or whatever. That's where we have the greatest problem is getting a uniform agreement as to the method of control.

(Joule) That's why an intergrated plan is absolutely necessary.

Q: If a municipality decides to do deer control, you don't need the consent of the residents. Right?

(Joule) Yes, you do. It's private property.

Q: Rochester, don't they do deer control?

(Joule) they have a hunting program and they also had a culling program to iniate that. They did the culling on primarily on municipal property.

Q: You said you'd need a fence of least 8 feet high to keep deer out. The city of Syracuse doesn't allow fences more than six feet. It would seem like the first step would be to change that ordinance.

Right, and that's up the community. That's why community involvement is really where it needs to start. There needs to be a very concerted effort in the community before it ever gets to outside the community and you start looking for outside help. There are options, some better than others.. some more cost effective. But not everyone is going to agree on the "right" option. Irondequoit is a good example of where It has worked. There are lots of examples of where people put the cart before the horse and had a management.. Cayuga Heights is a perfect example..

Q: Who pays for these plans. Is the DEC's responsibility? Or, if the city of Syracuse is going to have some multi-facted plan, will it be the city that will have to pay for whatever is done.

(Joule) I can tell you if you're looking cash from the DEC, you're looking in the wrong direction. Cayuga Heights they put together a plan they knew was going to be rather expensive. That's why it's really incumbent on a community to make sure they have a good plan. I mean a plan for open space so they don't get to point where deer are causing problems. Because it's going to be a lot cheaper to prevent those problems than to try and solve them later on. In order to solve their problem, they knew they were going to have to put in a special tax for all the residents in that community and basically the community members paid for implementation of that plan. You're talking about $150,000 a year to an affluent community. The cost doesn't change regardless of what community you're in. So, how you generate the revenue to pay for something like that, it's something that a lot of communities have to look at and say, "Well, we don't have much of a problem now. We can solve that later on. If it gets to the point where you have to look at a plan like Cayuga Heights, something has gone terribly wrong. You really need to plan so it doesn't get there.

Q: So, is it safe to say, if someone want something done in the city of Syracuse, it's going to the city that's going to pay for it?

(Joule) They're certainly going to have to foot the majority of the bill. Irondequoit received some funding through the legislature... for an experimental contraception aspect of the plan. But that was only for a few years, and it wasn't to continue the program. You have to keep in mind, this isn't a quick fix or a one-time fix. Once you start, you don't stop. You need to manage deer in perpetuity. You're not just going to get rid of the deer, knock it (the herd) back to an acceptable population level and then sit back and say, "Great, we're done." This is an on-going thing that has to continue, otherwise you're right back where you started.

Q: You talked about improved urban habitat, but I've been reading that if you look at the forest floor, that its decimated by the deer. That's there's no more saplings, and the little critters and flowers are gone. Is that true?

(Underwood). Absolutely. You're talking about a species that eats plants from about 7 feet, down to the forest floor. They also do very well on manicured lawns, people's vegetable gardens and things like that. All of those things are true. It's a package deal. You get deer in your backyard, you're going to get those kind of impacts.

Q: By my concern is that the forest isn't renewing itself.

(Underwood) It could be a concern. Many of my clients are federal land agencies who have mandates to perpetuate natural forests and those kind of things. These are really important concerns to them. Those are necessarily the same concerns you'll find in the city of Syracuse. My point is that all those values you have to go down your checklist and determine what is most important to you. I would say for a natural wildlife refuge, those kind of ecological questions are probably more important that they would be in someone's neighborhood. But all those impacts absolutely occur and they might be important to you.

Q: Down in Cortland you have the waterworks. It's about 20 acres and it's fenced in. The deer are trapped in there because of the fencing. You go down there and look everything is (missing) at browse height. Those deer are fed by the public. Go down there any day and see people giving the deer apples, Cheerios and everything else. I asked one of the head guys if I could come down there and bow hunt. He said he's love to, it would help clear the deer out. But if I did and somebody finds out, I could lose my job. These guys ' hands are tied.

(Underwood) The deer issue is multi-faceted. There are biological concerns, ecological concerns that have to do with forest succession, and there are public interface to all this. That's what makes managing deer so controversial. It has all of these different facets. And all of these equally deserve a lot of time and attention to solve them correctly. That's what makes the problem so intractable.

Q: The deer in my neighborhood, which is Bradford Heights, the deer all seem to have triplets. What's the significance of that?

(Joule) They're living well. Very well. I've said it before, if I was a deer, I'd like to live in Syracuse. You have enough to eat. You have scattered protected areas. You have ordinances that protect you further (leash laws, discharge of firearm restrictions). On top of that, people put out a lovely buffet. They line the streets with a lovely buffet so you can come out at night and feed on that.. and then just casually walk back, because you know you're not under any pressure. No one is threatening you. Just walk back to the nice park you came from.

(Underwood) Well said. The triplets is a nutritional thing. There are plenty of predators in and around the city of Syracuse. All you have to do is look. Some of them have four tires and grills, but there are also plenty of four-legged predators out there. The deer have plenty to eat out there. That's why you see a high percentage of triplets and twins. As the habitat deteriorates over a period of time and the population continues to grow, you'll see fewer triplets, and a lot more twins and singletons out there. It's really a nutritional thing as they deplete the habitat.

Q: Does it reach a peak ? What's the long-run scenario?

(Underwood). You really don't want an answer to that question. It's 200-plus deer per square mile. It's extraordinary.

Q: Where's that? What's the impact on traffic?

(Underwood) Which place would you like me to list first? It's a hard place to answer. It depends on where you put the road. Depends on where deer are. Lot of factors that go into that. I know plenty of places, small national parks through the northeastern U.S. that are dealing with this problem and have dealt with 200 deer per square mile on these little postage-stamp park locations. The entire park operations is impacted by the abundance of deer in the park environment. Every park operation, from maintenance to interpretation - all are impacted by the number of deer out there. They spend an inordinate amount of their budget just dealing with the impacts of that many deer. That's when you know that you really have a problem.

Q: What's the estimate of the deer population now in Onondaga County?

(Joule) When you're talking about deer density at the county scale, ..especially in areas where there are non-huntable sections of that unit, it's going to vary. For the most part, you're looking at at least 30 deer per square mile. And in some areas, it's going to be twice that.

Q: At the university area it must be higher.

(Joule) Yes, certainly.

(Underwood) I have a student out right now doing deer censusing in the east-side communities (of the county). We've been out there since April. We'll probably have a good estimate of abudance by September. She's coming out of the field in the next week or so and we'll work up the numbers and have a pretty good estimate of how many deer are actually in that Route 81, 481 and 690 loop.

Q: Talking about how bold they are. My property, unfortunately is being blocked off where Route 81 is being repaired. I have property on that corner and they allow me to go in and out and do what I have to do. Cut the grass, etc. Talk about boldness. I'm cutting the grass just last week and had my camera. That deer looked at me and said, "Who are you? Then he turned and told me what to kiss with his back end and just kept on going down.I didn't know if it was going to come at me or what.

(Underwood) That's pretty common behavior.

(LaFrance) What we hear most often is that we have such a deer density because we took their habitat. We have too many houses and we have no place to live. Go back and do research and look back in the 50s, there was not a deer herd here. It didn't matter with the houses. The housing developments and tracts in Liverpool and Salina, all these municipalities were here. But deer weren't. What we've done now.. there's a lot you can do as far as deer. Plant shrubs that are not deer friendly. Plant plants that are not deer food. Do simple things. Sometimes something as simple as pinwheel is all it takes. Something that flashes and moves that will get the deer to move. What we've done when you're planting your yard and doing landscapes, and those of you in a development situation ... if you're going to put ponds in, you're going to have a goose problem - guaranteed. If you add little wooded areas, you're going to have deer and goose problems. We've created a utopia. The deer came because we sent them an invitation. We've planted our backyards with everything they want to eat. We've put in fruit trees, we put in berries. We put in bird feeders. They'll come in and feed on a bird feeder all winter. We've done all these things - avoid them. Take the bird feeders away. Take the apples out of your yard and keep your area more open. The more open it is, the less likely you are to have the deer frequenting it.

Q: Do you recommend cutting brush and trees up to a 6-foot level? My backyard is brushy. I thought I'd be nice. I wouldn't have to see the neighbor's house. One of my ideas is to bushwack my entire back yard. Leave just the trees and cut everything else down.

(Someone from the audience) The surround area could still be good for deer habitat and doing one yard probably won't have much impact.

(Underwood) That would be my thinking, too. It might help you initially, but they'll eventually figure that out. And at night time, of course, all bets are off. During the day is when they seek the shelter. They lay down, they bed down in dense cover where they can see. At night time, it's all about habitat.

(Someone from the audience) They also bed down in the open so they can see the coyotes coming.

Q: I live at the dead end of a street. They seem to be more at my house, than at the neighbor's.

(Underwood) I know. That's the worst place you can possibly be. They're coming right out of the woods there. A fence is probably going to be your best bet at the moment. But it's probably not going to be a long-term solution. A rangy dog helps.

Q: What did you guys think about one guy's proposal to have dogs chasing deer out of suburban areas?

(Underwood) It solves the immediate nuisance problem, but it doesn't solve the problem of having that many deer. You're just moving the problem to someone else's property. Sometimes that's OK if property owner is ambivalent, but in general they're going to be your neighbors and they're not going to be very happy if you do something like that.

Q: Is that legal (to use dogs in that fashion)?

(Underwood) They do it with geese all the time on municipal and corporate properties in New Jersey. Dogs are trained to chase the geese off yards. It causes problems. It solves the immediate problem, the nuisance issue, but it creates a larger, even bigger problem.

Q: PBS did a special on white tails, and it was in Cayuga Heights. And then had a German Shepherd silhoute thing, and the deer got used to that incredibly quick.

(Underwood) Deer are incredibly adaptable, and they love to swim in our wake, in the wake of human beings. That's probably why they've been successful for all this time. It's no surprise, they learn quickly...and get conditioned about things like food, and garbage that's left out. They key into that stuff very quickly, like raccoons and possums and foxes and all of those other critters that live in our neighborhood that we don't care as much about, remarkably. They just don't have that impact that deer have. Until that level of impact gets up into our radar, we don't seem to care as much.

Q: Do you know if that extended hunting season in the Cayuga Heights area had any effect?

(Joule) It won't have an effect, if at all, for several years.

(From the audience) It's not only Cayuga Heights, it's Ithaca, it's Virgil, a whole big area. Al and I do a lot of bat work.. we're having problems getting access to hunt down there.

(Joule) That shouldn't come as any surprise. The problem exists for that reason to begin with. There's an over -abundance of deer because of the lack of access. The idea is that for those landowners who are having problems, and year after year apply for damage permits or get extra tags to reduce the population, in the past, they've been constrained by the number of permits any one person can use. The idea is to give those landowners who have access to areas within the focus area, the opportunity and means to reduce the population. It's not a recreational opportunity, per say. It's not intended to be a recreational opportunity. It's intended to eleviate the problems that are existing around and within the focus area. That doesn't happen overnight, and it certainly isn't going to happen in those areas where access hasn't improved.

Q: How far does a deer range?

(Underwood) It's like asking how far is a rope. It depends on lots of things. It depends on the amount of resources of where they're hanging out at that particular moment. In general, in urban areas, their home ranges are very small. Sometimes I would say 200 acres would be large home range. Large. Sometimes 50 acres is as small as they range out. I've seen deer in very, very small places. It depends on how much is available to them, and how far they have to go to get that. So, in urban areas, they do not have to go very far to get those needs dealt with.

Q: So deer hunting in Pompey is not going to affect the deer in the city at all.

(Underwood) Highly unlikely.

(LaFrance) It could also have a reverse effect. The fringe areas around the city that do allow hunting, if there's a lot of hunting pressure can drive the deer from there. Deer learn very quickly. They learn when first shot is fired to leave Jamesville and move into DeWitt. They learn to go from the outskirts of Fayetteville, into the village of Fayetteville, until the season is over. You still have the same deer problem, because once the season is over and the woods quiet down and animals will move back out and disperse again.

AP/ Mike Lynch 

Q: I used to work for the city. We would actually go pick up (dead) deer. There was one person who went out and did skunks and all that. I went out four years ago and saw something that looked like some sort of small pig. It had the pig nose. I don't know what you call it. What is it?

(Underwood) Gray fur? Yep, that's an opossum. That's very common critter.

Q: What should I do with the woodchuck that's digging a whole by my foundation?

(LaFrance) It depends on your feelings about the woodchuck. Live trap them. The problem with live trapping is that we (nuisance control specialists) under the auspices and rules of the DEC as to what we can do with wildlife. If we live trap it, then we have to release some place. If he's dug holes in your yard and we take him a mile down the road, he's to dig a hole in their yard. Most of the animals such as that, we have two options. If you have 10 acres of land, or you have property outside the city, we can take him with your permission to your land and turn him loose. I can not, as most homeowners do.. if you're a homeowner and you trap your woodchuck, you can do whatever you want because nobody's going to fine you, or give you a ticket. You can take him to Oakwoods Cemetery and turn him loose. If I take him and I'm caught doing that, I could get fined. I would jeopardize my license by doing that. We have strict guidelines about what we can do. We can euthanize or we can release with permission on your property. You just can't take him out to state land and let him loose. Everyone in Fayetteville, Manlius and DeWitt uses Green Lakes State Park as a dumping ground. I have rules and regulations that I have to follow when I'm trapping. I have to have my name and address on a cage. You do not. You're supposed to, but nobody does. Once you leave your driveway, you're in violation of a whole handful of DEC laws, because if you catch a woodchuck on your land, you can dispose him on your land. You cannot take him legally down the road and turn him loose in the neighborhood cemetery or park. Now you're transporting wildlife without a license, trapping without a license, in possession of wildlife out of season, and you don't have your cage (trap) properly tagged. You have four or five violations that if a conservation officer pulls you over, he can write you up for it.

Q: Before I trap without a license, I have to get him into the trap I bought. Right now there seems to be so much stuff in my yard, he won't go into my trap.

(LaFrance) If you want to know about the food of choice would be? Set the trap so that he has no choice that he has to go in it when he comes out of his burrow. Then it doesn't matter what you put in there. You can go out and buy fresh asparagus.

Q: How many people do you think trap illegally?

(LaFrance) If I had a dollar for every animal that was trapped in Onondaga County illegally by homeowners, I could probably take the next couple of years off. Just in course of one season.

(Man from audience) This is the problem. And I want to commend David for having this forum. Everyone wants a solution, but there's no one solution. It seems like education is the way to go. We have institutions like Cornell and Cooperative Extension, we have the state fair. We have an educational television station. If people could learn if they're doing harm, or solving the problem. That would help a little bit.

(LaFrance). If people learn how to solve the problem. There's a soft spot, though, that every person has. If we touch that soft spot, it's taboo. It doesn't matter if the soft spot goes against the law, or is within the law, if we touch that soft spot...I deal with foxes and coyotes a lot. There's all types of threats. You can have an actual threat or a perceived threat. The perceived threat to that young lady there is just as real as the threat is to your dog is in her mind. The difference is how she perceived what we're going to do. Kill em. Because he just killed my cat. Or kill him because .. we're talking about deer. They're terrible. You should see the deer in our yard. On the other hand, you get "You should see the little fawn that's in our yard. He's got spots. He's curled up under a bush." He's OK because he's a small fawn. When he grows up, he becomes a problem. In the meantime, if a coyote comes through that yard and kills that young fawn, the coyote has to die. The coyote is doing what we're supposed to be doing and he's part of the solution to the problem but this coyote has to die because he killed something in front of you. If you don't see it, it's OK. As far as a fox and coyote, I tell most people if the fox is not posing a threat when he's raising a litter underneath your deck and he's not imposing a threat to your pets or your children, enjoy him. Watch him. When the fox loses his fear of you. When he starts to become a challenge to your children, or if there's a safety concern, it's time to do something. When you say, what can we do. I can't take him and trap him and take him out to Pompey and let him loose. Before you know it, he's back in the city of Syracuse because that's where he lives. I can take him to Old Forge and let him loose, and he'll say "What the hell am I doing here? You brought me from where I had chipmunks and rabbits and bird feeders in every yard, and brought me to a place where there's nothing to eat by pine cones. I don't want to be here. I want to go home. So, what is fair for that coyote? Dump him in the middle of nowhere land where he has no food, he's going to try and get home and end of fighting with every other coyote pack that he has to pass through their territory and now this is how diseases are spread. He'll have to fight to get back. He was healthy when we caught him. It's a tough choice of what to do with these. Do we destroy them and put them down? People think we enjoy this. There's no enjoyment in it whatsoever. It's part of a job. Something we have to do. Every situation is different. If the fox or coyote is not imposing a threat to you, enjoy them. If he's after your dog, you have two choices. Keep your dog inside. Put him out on leash. You don't have to put Fido out in your backyard if you know a coyote is going to come and snatch him. Just because a coyote is there today. I can take him out. But if it was good habitat for that coyote, there's golng to be another coyote that will move right in there. So your dog is no safer after that coyote is gone than before. Adapt. Put a fence up. It may not keep the deer out, but it'll keep the coyotes out.

There's different things you can do. You have to understand one thing. There's things that have to die for other things to live. But we have to co-exist and it's a planet. And all these other animals out there have just as much right to be here as we do. Learn to adapt.

Address the problems, maybe put up a fence. Nobody wants to look out there window, though and see a 10-foot fence. Plant your shrubs, the proper plants. And birdfeeders. They're fantastic. If I want to procreate my nuisance wildlife business, I would buy everyone in the city of Syracuse a birdfeeder and 25 pounds of bird seed. I wouldn't have to run around and do nothing but check birdfeeders because I'm going to catch all the squirrels, rabbit..deer come to them. When you put bird feeder out there, it's OK to watch the birds, but when the coyote comes to get the squirrel which you invited with your bird feeder..or the sharp-shinned hawk. He comes in takes the doves. In order for that sharp-shinned hawk to live he has eat, and the doves are the slowest birds at the feeder.

(Joule) A lot of the species, we can abate with behavior modification. It's typically a very temporary modification. It doesn't have to be year-round.A lot of the coyotes and foxes, they're going to pose most of their problems during their breeding season. When they're defending their territories so they can raise their young, they're going to be very aggressive. They're going to need a place for protection, a food source, they're going to come around and really, in many cases, it's a perceived threat, rather than an actual threat. It'll still be the same. On the other hand, that will go away and they'll go back to a more secluded area. So, we can do things to deter them from coming around, and that doesn't work, we can do things to make them leave. We can also do things so that they're not going to want to come back. We have to modify our own behavior. We can't be feeding wild animals outside. We can't be feeding the pets outside. Birds don't need our help. They don't need those feeders.

So if you're having a nuisance problem, where you're attracting raccoons or whatever to your house, the solution is pretty easy. It takes a little bit of effort on our part to remove ourselves from the equation about what's causing the problem. Outside of that, other things we can do that's more management intensive. The first thing we have to do iis store your garbage correctly. It may be an inconvenience and maybe you only take it out the day it's being collected. Don't leave your grill in state where it's going to attract raccoons or in some areas bears.

Outside of that, that's when we get to the more intensive management.

What happens when someone gets bit by a wild animal?

(La France) It's a very big deal. The worst problem I see from the nuisance wildlife control side of things, is everyone worries about bats. Bats have rabbies. Raccoons. They're out in the daytime so they must have rabies. See a skunk. No they don't. In the spring and early summer when they have a litter, mom goes out for walk, to relieve herself..does not mean she's rabid. Watch for behavior of animal. If its erratic or aggressive, that's an animal to stay away from.

The one thing you have to learn, in my opinion, there are more people that are exposed to feral cats and diseases from feral cats than there are from raccoons, squirrels and skunks. We don't teach our children that. My own daughter went in a park picked up a feral kitten and it bit the living crap out of her and took off. She had to undergo rabies shots.

Everyone in here ever see a "wall beaver." Get those complaints all the time. You mean ground hogs. We have a public today that has grown so far away from the environment that we live in that they don't know a beaver from a woodchuck. We have a giant rat in our birdfeeder. What is it? It's an opossum. For the older folks, wildlife was a part of things growing up.

Not so anymore. Our kids today are computer-oriented and very few have the opportunity because we're more centrally located in the cities and less in the rural areas that they don't the expose to see all these things.

(Underwood) There's a real need for some general education answering the nuisance kind of questions. How to behavior around animals, how to manage your property.. other side, there are some real dangerous issues, and deer are included in that in respect to Lyme disease and collisions with vehicles. Those are real health and safety issues...apart from "There's a deer that's misbehaving in my backyard."

(Joule) One of the biggest casualties of budget cuts and our economic situation now is that the first thing to go in a lot cases is our education and outreach and our ability to be pro-active. As an agency, we're must more reactive than we should be.

There are fires to put out every day. You have to put out those fires then, while pushing off those items that are more pro-active.. those things can wait. That's the philosophy but in the long run we end up paying for it a lot more. And we pay for it when the public isn't aware of these things and that's why they get worse.

View the full article on The Syracuse Outdoors Blog