Moorpark Acorn
December 7, 2024
Residents suffered horrible losses of homes and property during the recent Mountain fire, but luckily no lives were lost. Also, all 44 dogs and 35 cats evacuated from fire areas and left for safekeeping at the Ventura County Animal Shelter have been reunited with their owners.
Although some pets are still missing, six of the seven stray pets recovered from burned areas have been returned to their evacuated families, according to Randy Friedman, Ventura County Animal Control’s public information officer. The one not reclaimed was a badly burned cat. Animal shelter staff provided extensive treatment and named the cat Phoenix. In the meantime—great news: Phoenix has been adopted.
“This crisis came at a really tough time for us. Our shelter was already overcapacity, and we had to find a way to accommodate the influx,” said Friedman, noting residents in rural areas also dropped off horses, ducks and chickens for safekeeping while they found shelter.
Although all of those animals are gone from the shelter, Friedman noted the shelter is still at 120% of capacity, with about 25 new animals arriving every day.
If you have been considering adding a pet to your family, preview the animals online at vcas.us/dogs and vcas.us/cats. Bunnies, chickens and turtles can be adopted, too. Go to vcas.us/adopt to learn about the adoption process.
In contrast to the pets who have been reunited with families and returned to their evacuated homes or brought to new homes, many thousands of wild animals have lost their home range, and burned wild land will take years to recover. In the meantime, the web of life on these lands, from plants and insects to birds and bobcats, will strain to cope with new circumstances.
Burned land can sometimes cause animals to venture into cities. In particular, mice and rats driven from burned landscapes can become problematic in adjacent urban areas. One way people can help animals is to switch away from toxic substances and to instead implement mechanical and exclusion methods of rodent control.
If homeowners near burn areas react to rodent problems by using poison, they risk posing new dangers to wildlife. In particular, anticoagulant poisons kill mice and rats through internal bleeding, but poisoned pests take a long time to die, and in the meantime, they often become food for wildlife, ranging from mountain lions to birds of prey, which can spread the poison up the food chain. Anticoagulants are now banned from residential use, but many people may have old stock on hand.
If you still have this type of poison, you can safely dispose of it through your local household hazardous waste program. Contact your city or county waste management department for an appointment.
Instead of poison, a better method of pest control is called “exclusion,” and it avoids infestations in the first place. Exclusion methods include sealing off potential home entry points with wire mesh, trimming trees that overhang roofs, removing dense growth capable of sheltering rats, keeping pet food secured and cleaning up pet droppings promptly.
Mechanical methods of pest control range from simple snap traps to newer traps that use electric shocks to kill pests. Some people mistake plastic bait traps for a mechanical trap, but generally, the large, plastic boxes with holes for rodents to crawl into are bait stations. The rodents do not die inside. Instead, they leave after consuming poison, potentially becoming prey for animals not targeted for poison. If your mechanical traps are not catching rodents, rather than switching to poison, consider optimizing the traps. Set traps in pairs along a wall with the trip pads pointing in opposite directions, and use bait that’s proven to be effective. Peanut butter often works well, and home improvement stores sell customized bait. Also, since mice nibbles do not always trigger traps meant for rats, use both sized traps if you are not sure which type of infestation is in your home.
PoisonFreeMalibu.org and Poison- FreeAgoura.org provide data about the effects of poisoning on wildlife and alternatives for rodent control.
As part of its Breaking the Poison Chain campaign, the Santa Monica Mountains Fund provides explanations of nontoxic methods of rodent control (go to samofund.org/takethepledge).
David Goldstein is a Ventura County Public Works Agency Environmental Resource Analyst. Contact him at (805) 658-4312.
https://www.mpacorn.com/articles/from-pets-to-pests-fire-upended-animals-lives/
