Wildlife policy: The little weak point of a Progressive Green City
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Renowned for its three rivers, its abundance of parks and green spaces, lush hillsides and trails... Not so well-known for the approximately 2000-3000 wild animals trapped and killed by City Animal Control every year, and the many others “relocated” with a low probability of survival.
For longer than anyone seems to remember, the City of Pittsburgh Animal Control has offered a “free” trap loan and pick-up service for residents who wish to remove wildlife from their property. Free, that is, for the trap-borrowers, not for other city residents, who fund the service with their tax dollars.
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Renowned for its three rivers, its abundance of parks and green spaces, lush hillsides and trails... Not so well-known for the approximately 2000-3000 wild animals trapped and killed by City Animal Control every year, and the many others “relocated” with a low probability of survival.
For longer than anyone seems to remember, the City of Pittsburgh Animal Control has offered a “free” trap loan and pick-up service for residents who wish to remove wildlife from their property. Free, that is, for the trap-borrowers, not for other city residents, who fund the service with their tax dollars.
With the exception of a few months in 2015 when a former animal control supervisor unsuccessfully tried to change things around, residents have not been required to provide justification for wanting a trap. They just file a request, pay a refundable deposit and the City delivers the trap on-site and picks it up once the animal is trapped. In the majority of cases, requests concern low-risk situations that could be resolved by the homeowner or a neighbor (trash cans and tomato plants are often involved), or no-risk situations where the homeowner simply objects to the occasional sighting of a wild animal.
There are currently approximately 400 trapping sites in the City of Pittsburgh for a population of 305,800 / 136,200 households, in other words most residents co-exist well with local wildlife. Despite this, the city continues to pander to a minority of residents, many of whom are “frequent flyers” and use the service repeatedly. Shockingly, approximately 75% of the Animal Control department’s time is spent on this task, according to a former AC Supervisor. The system is totally inefficient too, as evidenced by trapping numbers having remained stable, sometimes even increasing over the span of years. Not surprising, since trapping is the most ineffective approach to managing a wildlife population.
And did we mention that Pittsburgh is the only city in the country to offer such an extensive trap-and-kill service?
This sounds all wrong, how did we get here?
With Pittsburgh’s green environment, it’s inevitable that native wildlife will share our city with us. It would be impossible to trap out every single wild animal in the city, and most people wouldn’t want that. However, if we provide wildlife with a continuous buffet (food litter, pet food outside, overflowing garbage cans, plastic garbage bags left out for collection overnight, unfenced vegetable plot) and free accommodation (abandoned homes, those cozy spaces under garden sheds and porches), we increase the carrying capacity - the number of animals that can comfortably live in an area - for wildlife, meaning they produce larger litters with a higher survival rate.
And because no sustained effort has been made to educate residents on how to reduce the potential for conflict with local wildlife, that conflict – or perception of conflict – continues. This is especially the case with the recent boom in urban agriculture.