According to the City government of Eden Prairie, the city has 4500 acres of open space and wetland, which include 17 lakes and more than 100 water ponds. This abundant natural habitat has served as both a blessing and a curse for the residents of the city. The residents of Eden Prairie have to live with constant visits from wild animals in their neighborhoods. These animals, like coyotes, raccoons, and snakes, can be a nuisance by causing damage to property and a danger to the residents. This paper is focused on developing a plan to address the wildlife concern in the city, which will ensure both the wildlife in question and the residents are protected from a potential human-wildlife conflict.
Plans of Action for the Wildlife Concern
The goals for this plan are to ensure that the human settlement areas are protected from the encroachment by wild animals. The strategy will involve the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR) and the Animal Control Unit of Eden Prairie surveying to establish the trouble areas for the wild animals and also the nature of animals that are a concern.
After the trouble areas have been selected, the team shall analyze the type of animals that are sighted in the trouble areas. We will establish location suited protocols for the different regions of the city. Among the proposed actions that the residents are advised are such as:
- Installment of Strobe Lights. The installing of automatic lights that are fitted with motion sensors to light when there is movement near the home would help scare off nocturnal animals that might be intruding on the house at night.
- Electric fences would also be beneficial, especially when it comes to slightly larger animals. It is advised that the current is minimum current to zap the animals as a means to scare away the animals but not to kill them.
- This strategy is useful for crawling and small animals that might not be warded off by fences due to their physical size.
The strategies mentioned above are the physical separation of the conflicting species and resources in question through enclosing.
- Personal measures. The residents are also advised to store their garbage securely, feed their pets indoors, and avoid feeding the wild animals all these are factors that attract the wild animals to the home. People are also warned against planting vegetation that attracts browsing wildlife and instead plant the kind of vegetation that does not attract the animals. Physical and conditioned taste aversion techniques like the spraying of lithium chloride and other chemicals along the compound will help in causing discomfort and aversion of the wild animals (Dickman, 2010).
- Educational awareness is another tool of action that will be put in place mainly on the treatment of the wildlife that encroaches into homes. This will go hand in hand with informing the residents on the importance of ecological conservation, techniques to reduce conflict with the wild animals, and contact information for animal control in case of attacks. This information will also cover the issue of deer in Eden Prairie and risk factors such as speed driving.
- The city government of Eden Prairie has to establish alternative buffer resources such as artificial food sources for the wild animals, especially during times of drought, to ensure the animals are not forced to look for food sourced in the human settlement areas.
- Lethal control of wildlife. Wild animals whose numbers are rising beyond the control of the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources and are proving to be conflict-causing species would need to be killed. Such a method of population control was employed in 2012, where the deer management program had a part of the professional wildlife Management Company of sharpshooters kill roughly 100 deer (Getschow, 2015).
- Non-lethal control. Another form of action that can be taken is the use of contraception or sterilization to control the numbers of animals around Eden Prairie. Non-lethal action can also involve translocation or relocation of these animals into different areas.
Data Collection Methods
Information will be sourced from the Animal Control Unit on the spots where they have received of wildlife encroachment. Based on this, I will visit homes where the animals have been reported to attack to get information on the trouble animals and their patterns. I will also employ Geographical Information Systems (GIS) data recorded by the wildlife researchers to pinpoint the potential areas where conflict occurs to direct more effort towards those areas. This information would be collected within a month. Then subsequent animal behavior tracking will be spread out in three months with regular visits to the hotspot areas in Eden Prairie for the human-wildlife conflict.
Mapping would be a necessary tool to indicate the effectiveness of the instituted protocols. Also, I will ask the Department of Animal Control to keep a log of calls from the hotspot areas after the conflict-prevention actions have been established, this will involve separate data to indicate recurring conflict regions and the said animals in question.
Another success indicator would involve questioning the residents on the regularity of wildlife sightings around their homes and their general feeling towards protecting wildlife.