December 10, 2020 By Katie Roundtree

As temperatures in Florida start to drop in the fall, people and animals will be outside more often in the daylight hours, creating the potential for contact and conflicts.  Throughout the years, The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission receives many complaints regarding wildlife causing damage to private property or creating a public safety issue.  Many complaints are the result of communities where intentional feeding of wildlife is tolerated or where domestic animals are fed outdoors.

Whenever such conflicts arise, wildlife loses.  While the species involved in each of these cases may be different, the issue is always the same.  Concerned and well-intentioned individuals start feeding wildlife, often without regard for the quantity or types of feed being offered.  Wild animals have a complicated diet with specific needs. If people feed them “treats”, they may not get the correct balance of nutrients to keep them healthy. All wild creatures have evolved over the millennia with an instinct to locate and eat a diet best suited to their own digestive systems.  Thus, they have a specific niche in the wild community where they feed and live in balance with all other species.  This balance is interfered with when well-intentioned people feed what they think is a healthy diet to wildlife.

This practice also inevitably leads to unnatural concentrations of animals, both wild and domestic, looking for a handout.  Wild animals are thus conditioned to associate humans with a feeding opportunity and the results are predictable – animals become a nuisance to property owners.  Artificially high concentrations of wildlife found at feeding stations also increase the transmission of diseases that normally occur in low concentrations.

Feeding wildlife is generally discouraged and, in some cases, illegal. In Florida, it is illegal to feed gopher tortoises, sandhill cranes, bears, raccoons, foxes, manatees and alligators. Intentionally placing food or garbage, allowing the placement of food or garbage, or offering food or garbage in such a manner that it attracts black bears, foxes, raccoons, gopher tortoises or sandhill cranes and thereby creates a public nuisance is prohibited.

Because people establish an emotional connection with wildlife that they feed, these situations often prove difficult to resolve, because they involve changing peoples’ attitudes and behaviors.  Fortunately, educating individuals how to responsibly attract wildlife often resolves the problem.  Communities can pursue a variety of approaches to effect a remedy.  In communities with a home owner’s association, residents may apply remedies available to them through the association.

The FWC’s advice to anyone who enjoys wildlife is to KEEP IT WILD! For those who enjoy viewing wildlife, the safest and most effective way to attract animals is to provide good wildlife habitat.  This is best accomplished through the use of native vegetation.  The FWC has publications on line with information on developing your own backyard wildlife refuge.  For those without Internet service, copies or more information about planting a backyard refuge may be obtained by calling or writing your nearest FWC regional office. (Source: www.myFWC.com)