When the squirrel population gets too large, a disease usually comes along and wipes most of them out, Mike said. He said he’s been a frequent visitor to the beach for years, and he often eats his lunch on the bluff-top picnic tables, where he sees people feeding the squirrels despite the signs advising them not to.Īnyone ticketed for feeding the squirrels can be fined $250 for the first offense and $1,000 for each additional offense, under the state code, but tickets are rare. “They are never, ever going to fix it,” said one man, a Carlsbad resident, who asked to be identified only by his first name, Mike. However, down at the nearby beach, where people bring food, there’s an overpopulation of squirrels, and they are as much of a nuisance as they are elsewhere along the coast. Food and trash are not allowed inside the reserve, so there are only a few squirrels there, living the natural life on a limited supply of food. The Torrey Pines State Natural Reserve is a good example, Smith said. If left alone, its population is moderate and it avoids humans. They were there long before state parks were created. The main culprit is the California ground squirrel, which is native to the region. Also, he said, a good publicity campaign, with signs, leaflets and word of mouth, helps get people to stop feeding the squirrels. People need to control their garbage and their food so the squirrels can’t reach it. That means combining a number of methods to limit the rodents’ access to food and getting the public to cooperate. “You really need an integrated program” to keep the population down, Smith said. It’s hard to trap so many squirrels the few that survive breed rapidly, and there’s the problem of where to release the trapped animals. Trapping doesn’t work for similar reasons, he said. That limits the effectiveness of the poison because no other squirrels can eat the bait until it does its job on the one big bully defending the bait station.Īlso, the animals are so prolific that the ones that survive breed so rapidly that they quickly fill the population gap. “The problem (with anticoagulant bait) is that one squirrel hangs out and defends the bait station,” Smith said. One of the most frequently used poisons was a blood anticoagulant, which was slow-acting and only effective on a squirrel that ate it four or five times. The poisoned squirrels were sometimes eaten by dogs, hawks, bobcats or other animals, which passed the poison up the food chain, sometimes killing another animal. However, that had a number of drawbacks, including the negative reactions from squirrel lovers. In years past, the state and some cities have used toxic bait to lower the squirrel population. Their burrows and tunnels can riddle the dry hillsides, sometimes hastening erosion of the fragile bluffs. Squirrels can carry fleas and some nasty diseases, including the plague in a few rare cases. “Sometimes, they bite people, and steal their Doritos.” They quickly grow dependent on handouts, lose their fear of humans and boldly approach them, their picnic areas and coolers looking for food. And invasive plants such as ice plant also can be food for them. Trash also provides many a meal for the animals, whether dropped accidentally, neglected on a table, or left in an easily accessible container. “There is the culture of providing extra food for them, and that’s what makes the population grow so much,” he said.
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