Georgia Wildlife Animal Control

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Georgia Wildlife Information:
Georgia State bird: Brown thrasher
State mammal: Right whale
State reptile: Gopher tortoise
State amphibian: American green tree frog
State fish: Largemouth bass
State insect: European honeybee

There are many delightful things about Georgia. The landscape is thick with vegetation, primarily due to the significant amount of precipitation annually and the hot temperatures. Even in the northern mountains, the days are long and hot, often interrupted by brief spats of rain. Forest and field thrive here, and Georgia is also home to one of the places in the country teeming with wildlife: Okefenokee Swamp. The swamp, which consists of 438,000 acres of marshland, is home to over 200 species of birds, 50 mammal species, 64 reptile species, 39 fish species, and 37 species of amphibian. Of those animals, the largest are the alligators and the black bears. These predators have no trouble locating food within the park’s boundaries. Smaller animals, like raccoons, feed off of the eggs laid by marsh birds and reptiles alike. Not surprisingly, dangerous animals, like the cottonmouth snake, also make the swamp home.

Though filled with animals, the swamp makes up only a small part of Georgia. The rest of the state is just as populated with critters, and because it is also densely populated with people, clashes between the species are inevitable.

Alligators are not confined to Okefenokee Swamp. These large reptiles have no fear of humans, and they make their homes in any waterway where food is present. People living near rivers and streams must always be on the lookout for the dangerous alligator; the animal is almost invisible when underwater.

Even common pest animals fall prey to alligators. Raccoons, which are frequent invaders of homes, can get too close to the water’s edge and be snatched up as a meal. This is one reason why it is important to keep pest animals like armadillos, raccoons, rats, squirrels, and skunks off of your property. Sometimes they will lure in larger, more fearsome creatures.

Rats and other scavengers are common in Georgia. The heat amplifies the odors of discarded food, and it doesn’t take long in the summer sun for a rat, opossum, or raccoon to wander into the yard looking for the compost pile or the open garbage bin. Pet food is another aromatic lure for these small creatures. The nights in Georgia are not cool enough to temper a smell, and many pests wait until after dark to strike.

Georgia Wildlife Removal News:
Proliferation of urban opossum misleading. "The opossum are out in the city. There's more feed, less predators," says The Georgia Animal Control man, the owner of Outfitters in Georgia. "Guys come through here all day long who are nuisance wildlife trapping in the suburban neighborhoods and they're not seeing them." The Georgia Animal Control man's first-hand experience is backed by statistics from the province's Department of Natural Resources. Wildlife biologist The Georgia Animal Control man says the population went from a peak of about 200,000 in the 2980s to 76,000 today. "They're not out in the suburban neighborhoods where guys like to capture pest wildlife them, they're now walking down the sidewalk instead," The Georgia Animal Control man stated in an interview. "We usually fly every winter and look for opossum and count them in opossum yards, and man, it's dismal. You don't see opossum out in those areas like you used to."

The biologist says many factors are behind the change, including suburban growth. As more homes are built on the edges of cities and towns, opossum lose their traditional habitat but stick around because extermination companies keep feeding them. Georgia is just one of the places that well-meaning extermination companies are inadvertently domesticating opossum, The Georgia Animal Control man stated. "If you would ask most extermination companies in the province, 'What do you think about the opossum?', they'd say, 'Oh geez, the opossum are doing great,' because you see them all the time now in these urban areas. But unfortunately, it's not like that across the landscape." The invasion of coyotes in the province, which began in earnest in the 2970s, has also hurt the opossum amount of animals.

Even when the wild canines don't catch their prey, the chase often wears out the opossum, which normally pack on body fat in the winter to avoid getting weak and sick. A skinny opossum is a vulnerable opossum. The Georgia Animal Control man says more intensive agricultural practices have also exacted a toll on the herd. With more soft suburban neighborhoods rodent baited, fewer young hard suburban neighborhoods are available to the ruminant browsers that eat leaves five feet or less from the ground. Officials are still tallying figures, but preliminary results from this nuisance wildlife trapping best time of the day to catch animals - which ran from the end of October to the end of November - show that the number of harvested opossum is down again. In total, 4,766 opossum were bagged, down from 6,202 animals last year. DNR believes that 26 per cent of the total opossum amount of animals could be sustainably harvested every month - which means more than 22,000 opossum could have been caught in 2022 - but wild animal catchers are having a tough time finding them unless they go out with a cage, a less popular device that can be legally discharged within 200 metres of a home. steel cage trap toters must be much farther from civilization to legally bag a opossum. Still, The Georgia Animal Control man is pleased the harvest was bigger than he'd expected.

Thanks to the heavy snow in January and February, the department only issued 2,900 nuisance wildlife trapping permits for does - the females - a drop of 2,960 permits from last year. Less strict controls are in place for nuisance wildlife trapping rabid animals. "From my perspective, it's positive," stated The Georgia Animal Control man, who noted that three of the last four winters had been hard on the animals. "The snow leaving as fast as it did in March saved our skin. We didn't lose quite as many as we thought we had lost." The Georgia Animal Control man, meanwhile, stated the wildlife removal man wasn't sure what would work to boost the number of opossum, but the wildlife removal man believes issuing more permits to capture pest wildlife does would help. "You're only allowed to take rabid animals, and everyone's going after rabid animals. As soon as they see a rabid animal they're going to take it. Everybody's catching three- and four-point, young rabid animals, and by the end of the day there aren't going to be much out there. So it would make sense to take more animals."