More raccoons, less habitat increase risk of attacks

Threats, disease could trigger run-ins

Fuzzy, cute, but tough as nails, a raccoon that feels threatened can rage red in tooth and claw — as a 74-year Lakeland woman found out earlier this month.
    The woman tried to shoo a family of five raccoons away from her patio. But mama raccoon chose fight over flight, and her kits joined in mauling Gretchen Whitted on Oct. 3 as she fell, severely biting her neck, legs and torso.
    Such raccoon run-ins remain rare, but the mothering instinct increases the risk of a violent encounter as do illnesses such as distemper, which is reportedly in a surge in Florida and on the Space Coast.
    Experts say the disease could take a bite out of the raccoon population that has exploded during the past half century. “It’s reasonable to assume the raccoon population in Florida has easily doubled, maybe tripled in the last 50 or 60 years,” said William Kern, associate professor of urban entomology at University of Florida. “We have a lot more raccoons than we have alligators, 5 million maybe,” he said. “Now the only thing that’s really controlling them are diseases and automobiles.”
    Distemper outbreaks, generally a result of crowding, could cut local raccoon numbers by up to 40
percent, Kern said.
    In Brevard County, raccoons have been implicated in distemper that swept through animal shelters
recently, killing more than 50 dogs. Officials want to avoid carrying raccoons and other wildlife in the
same trucks that transport dogs and cats to shelters.
    A budget cut announced this month will limit Brevard Animal Services and Enforcement response to
“nuisance” wildlife calls and send more residents to trappers to solve animal issues. This also will
help with the transport issue for domestic animals.

Distemper spreads

     The raccoon is “more prevalent in suburbia than (it) ever was in the wild,” said Reggie Monce, a
trapper with Animal Management of Brevard. “He even knows when your trash goes out.”
They’re smart, adaptive but disease-prone.
     Raccoons contract canine distemper, a viral disease, when they have direct contact with body fluids
or droppings of an infected animal. Foxes, skunks, coyotes and unvaccinated dogs also get it. 

Relocation rules

The main problem that causes run-ins with humans, animal control officials say, is that people feed
them or leave out cat food for feral cats. Unsecured garbage also draws them into or close to homes.
It’s a misdemeanor to feed raccoons, punishable by up to 60 days in jail and a $500 fine.
And last year, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission decided to no longer allow
trappers to relocate raccoons under any circumstances. They can release them on the site, but not
far away. Otherwise, the raccoons face the grim reaper.
     “If you trap a raccoon in your backyard, you can’t take it two miles down the road and let it go,” said
Bob Brown, a spokesman with Brevard Animal Control. “You have to euthanize it.”
      That rule was one of the reasons the county decided to stop trapping most nuisance raccoons.
“We’re the dog catchers. We’re companion-animal control. We’re not really in the wildlife business,”
Brown said. “We’re killing wildlife, which is not what we’re supposed to be doing.”
Brown estimates 15 percent or more of calls to animal control are requests for nuisance wildlife
trapping.
     He pins the raccoon revival in Brevard on the westward expansion of Viera.
    “Every time they built a new subdivision and plowed down the woods, they just displaced all of the
wildlife that lived in those woods,” he said.
Controlled burns and wildfires also can drive raccoons and other wildlife into urban areas.

Competition

     Raccoons, scientific name Procyon lotor, keep some small animals, such as rats and mice, in check.
But UF’s Kern couldn’t readily come up with many more redeeming values.
     They’re more of a mammal competitor, he says, vying for the same tomatoes and other garden
goodies we like. At least with those, and other plants, their droppings help to spread the seeds.
“They live with us. In many cases they compete with us for food and resources,” Kern said. “I guess
it’s almost a moral question: Are you willing to tolerate competition?”
     Brown says keeping trees cut back from roofs, keeping garbage secure and refraining from feeding
any animals outdoors, wild or domestic, should help keep the competition away:

“Don’t get yourself on the menu. That way you won’t end up with an uninvited guest.”