Peruse social media and you’d think Clark County’s urban neighborhoods are experiencing an invasion from the wild.
“COYOTE! … At Sorensen park.”
“Caught on camera. Raccoons wandering on my back deck in the middle of the night.”
“Did anyone see the two deer walking down S Street a few minutes ago? Amazing!!!”
Todd Jacobsen of the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife said the agency isn’t receiving any more reports than usual in this part of the state. But he has noticed an uptick in wildlife sightings posted on social media in the past couple of years.
Coyotes, raccoons and deer have always frequented the more cityfied parts of the county, and the department doesn’t generally concern itself with those common species. The agency does, however, respond to sightings of animals considered to be dangerous, like cougars and bears.
“Sometimes I get a third- or fourth-hand report: ‘I saw this on social media.’ At that point it’s very difficult to investigate,” he said. “We don’t sit and monitor Facebook and Nextdoor.”
Jacobsen’s title of “wildlife conflict specialist” for Clark, Skamania and Klickitat counties may evoke images of him huddling with animals to help them resolve arguments, but in fact, he responds where wildlife and human activity collide.
For example, if something wild kills livestock, he investigates. “I do a full necropsy. I treat it as a crime scene,” he said.
It’s fine to post wildlife sightings online, but “if it’s an emergency dangerous wildlife issue, call 911,” Jacobsen said. “Anywhere in Washington state is good cougar and bear habitat. If someone sees a cougar in the woods, we don’t need that reported, but if it’s near residences or near suburban or urban areas, it helps me know where education and outreach needs to occur.”
Bear sightings are frequent in May and June, and again as they forage for food to prepare for their winter hibernation. Cougars are usually spotted June through October, he said.
Don’t look to WDFW to respond to complaints about nuisances like raccoons, although the regional office in Ridgefield is happy to offer advice on coexisting with those species.
“Preventative nonlethal measures are best,” Jacobsen said. “There are so many raccoons that trapping is not a long-term solution.”
Coyotes may attack pet cats and dogs, but they aren’t considered dangerous to humans and fall into the nuisance category too, Jacobsen said. They have adapted to live in cities, and often survive by eating garbage and mice.
“Coyotes are good at using little pockets of habitat,” he said. “Anywhere there’s green on a map, I’ve had sightings.”
The agency won’t respond if a deer eats your garden, either, although it does pay attention to where deer travel. That’s because “cougars go where deer are,” Jacobsen said.
In the winter, people often worry the deer will go hungry and feed them, which is bad for two reasons.
First, it can kill the deer.
“Deer are ruminants and have specific gut microbes that help them break down plant material,” Jacobsen said. “Their gut microbes change throughout the year.”
So in winter, deer are just fine nibbling on twigs. If people feed them foods high in starch and sugar like apples and corn, it causes rumen acidosis, a potentially fatal condition.
Second, feeding deer can also end up being dangerous for humans.
“When folks supply supplemental feed to deer, it makes them more tame, and then leads to cougar preying on deer in people’s yards,” Jacobsen said.
Feeding wild animals may be a bad idea, but there’s nothing wrong with observing them.
Ming Parng moved to a house near the Salmon Creek Trail about a year ago and has seen raccoons, a coyote and many deer.
“I enjoy them,” said Parng, a retiree who teaches photography. “I just leave them as natural. I don’t feed them. I don’t scare them away. But sometimes the dog will.”
He was delighted when a buck he spotted last year returned to his yard again this November, so he posted photos on Nextdoor.
“Just like meeting an old friend,” he wrote.
His post received 340 “likes.”
