Search Results for: wildlife

Classroom Presentations  

Please note—as a result of the COVID-19 public health crisis, we have suspended our in-person Humane Education School Program.

Please visit our Off-Leash Camp @Home video series and our curriculum-linked, online lesson plans to add some animal-themed excitement to your classroom!

We will continue to update our site, as we resume operations.

 

 

 

Get to Know Your Wild Neighbours

If you find a sick or injured wild animal, here are the steps you can take. If you need more help, call the City of Ottawa at 311.

From the squirrel that raids your birdfeeder to the foxes that frisk in the distance, learn about these creatures and their habits to make peaceful coexistence easier. And in some cases, a greater understanding could even transform fear into interest.

Read our Wildlife FAQs

Live trapping may seem like an immediate and easy fix to your wildlife problem; however, it is only a temporary solution. Read our take on why trapping and relocating is a bad idea.

If you can’t find the answer to your wildlife question and it’s not an emergency, contact the Ottawa Humane Society at 613-725-3166 ext. 221, or send us an email.

Nasty, Brutish and Short

Yesterday was National Feral Cat Day. I hope you will take a moment to think about these neglected felines. These cats live a hard life—one that is nasty, brutish and short.

A feral cat, defined by Alley Cat Allies is, “…a cat who has either never had any contact with humans or her contact with humans has diminished over time. She is fearful of people and survives on her own outdoors.”

A feral cat is distinct from a stray cat, even if the cat has been stray for a long period of time, and from a “loosely-owned” or “porch” cat, a cat that is fed by one or more people in a neighbourhood who do not accept full responsibility for the cat’s care. Stray and loosely-owned cats are or were once socialized to humans. They may be wary and skittish around humans if they have not a had recent or extensive human contact, but they are not fearful to the extent that feral cats are.

Feral cats occupy a grey zone in the world of animal welfare. They are not wildlife per se.  They are interlopers in our natural world and can cause considerable destruction in wild bird and mammal populations.  They were introduced through human irresponsibility, and therefore are a human responsibility.

But they are not fully domestic pets either. They cannot just be rounded up and socialized. Kittens up to four months can be socialized, but adults will frequently injure themselves trying to escape when confined. Their panic in prolonged confinement is simply not humane. 

Most progressive humane societies like the OHS practice “TNR” or “Trap, Neuter, Return” to address the needs of feral cats.   Feral cats are removed from a colony, sterilized, vaccinated, and then returned to the colony. If newly introduced cats—new stray cats and the feral’s kittens—are consistently removed, the colony will disappear over time. Studies indicate that simply removing all the members of a colony does not work. Nature, as they say, abhors a vacuum and other cats simply come to occupy the vacant colony, generally because of its proximity to shelter, food and water. The effectiveness of TNR was proven with the gradual elimination of the Parliament Hill Colony by some amazingly committed volunteers and the OHS a few years ago.

Like so many issues in animal welfare, controversies rage, and numbers of animals often exceed our resources to help. There are likely dozens of colonies in the Ottawa area, possibly many more. In fact, one of these controversies is how many feral cats there actually are in a given community. The OHS helps a handful of colony “caretakers” with surgical and other medical services, and we are very proud of our role in humanely eliminating the Parliament Hill colony, but our efforts are likely the proverbial drop in the bucket.  Our best hope is education and promoting the kind of responsibility that would stop feral cats from coming into existence in the first place, through spaying and neutering cats and not letting them roam. The OHS’s own Mobile Spay Neuter Program is expected to make a significant reduction in the numbers of feral cats, but this takes time.

Bruce Roney
President and CEO

Pet First Aid – Level 1

 October 17, 2019
10:00 pm - 12:00 am Pet First Aid – Level 1

Ottawa Humane Society, Ottawa ON

Pet First Aid – Level 1

 January 16, 2020
10:00 pm - 12:00 am Pet First Aid – Level 1

Ottawa Humane Society, Ottawa ON

Nasty, Brutish and Short
A feral cat, defined by Alley Cat Allies is, “…a cat who has either never had any contact with humans or her contact with humans has diminished over time. She is fearful of people and survives on her own outdoors.”

In Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes described the life of humans without government as “Nasty, brutish, and short.”  It is also an apt description of the lives of feral cats.  

A feral cat is distinct from a stray cat, even if the cat has been stray for a long period of time, and from a “loosely-owned” or “porch” cat, a cat that is fed by one or more people in a neighbourhood who do not accept full responsibility for the cat’s care.  Stray and loosely-owned cats are or were once socialized to humans.  They may be wary and skittish around humans if they have not a had recent or extensive human contact, but they are not fearful to the extent that feral cats are.

Feral cats occupy a grey zone in the world of animal welfare.  They are not wildlife per se.  They are interlopers in our natural world and can cause considerable destruction in wild bird and mammal populations.  They were introduced through human irresponsibility, and therefore are a human responsibility.

But they are not fully domestic pets either.  They cannot just be rounded up and socialized.  Kittens up to four months can be socialized, but adults will frequently injure themselves trying to escape when confined. Their panic in prolonged confinement is simply not humane. 

Most progressive humane societies like the OHS practice “TNR” or “Trap, Neuter, Return” to address the needs of feral cats.   Feral cats are removed from a colony, sterilized, vaccinated, and then returned to the colony.  If newly introduced cats—new stray cats and the feral’s kittens—are consistently removed, the colony will disappear over time.   Studies indicate that simply removing all the members of a colony does not work.  Nature, as they say, abhors a vacuum and other cats simply come to occupy the vacant colony, generally because of its proximity to shelter, food and water.  The effectiveness of TNR was proven with the gradual elimination of the Parliament Hill Colony by some amazingly committed volunteers and the OHS a few years ago.

Like so many issues in animal welfare, controversies rage, and numbers of animals often exceed our resources to help.   There are likely dozens of colonies in the Ottawa area, possibly many more. In fact, one of these controversies is how many feral cats there actually are in a given community. The OHS helps a handful of colony “caretakers” with surgical and other medical services, and we are very proud of our role in humanely eliminating the Parliament Hill colony, but our efforts are likely the proverbial drop in the bucket.  Our best hope is education and promoting the kind of responsibility that would stop feral cats from coming into existence in the first place, through spaying and neutering cats and not letting them roam.  And this takes time.

Bruce Roney
President & CEO

Originally published in September, 2014

2019 Media Releases

View 2018 press releases

Bilingualism and Beyond

We reached 4,606 children and youth in French last year

One of the happiest days in my work life was in 2014 when the OHS was finally in a financial position to hire a Humane Education Coordinator to deliver our education services in French. It was the fulfilment of a promise I had made to a supporter years before, and I was delighted.

Since then, the OHS has made very significant strides in our ability to provide French services.  Each year, we translate more and more of our materials as a part of our translation plan. And last year alone, we reached an amazing 4,606 children and young people in French with our programming — representing 25% of all those we reached last year.

I am contacted from time to time from supporters who believe that everything we do and everything we produce at the OHS should be done in English and French. We have always, of course, ensured that clients with immediate needs, such as those relinquishing or claiming a pet, or those contacting us with urgent questions, can be served in French.  But while I am sympathetic to those wanting the OHS to be 100% bilingual, I know that the resources that would have to be redeployed to translation from care and programming would be ruinous, as the cost of this is enormous and the ultimate cost in animal lives unacceptable. So, we have found compromises and have adopted a less comprehensive, but I think reasonable, approach to growing our bilingual capability.

When the board came to develop our current strategic plan three years ago, it recognized that, given the diverse make-up of our community, communicating in English and French alone was not sufficient. Ottawa is no longer simply a French-English community. It is far more diverse than that. The plan recognizes that the OHS needs to better reflect the linguistic and cultural make-up of the community we serve. And so we consulted with groups in Ottawa who are serving Newcomers to Canada and from this are developing programs and partnerships to help them to navigate Canada’s pet culture and unique wildlife, ultimately to the benefit of animals and the Newcomers.

And I am as happy about this next phase of our evolution and the development of animal welfare in our community as I was in 2014 when the OHS finally broke our bilingualism barrier.

Bruce Roney
Executive Director

Emergencies

If an animal’s life is in immediate distress as a result of cruelty or neglect, please contact the police at 911. For non-urgent calls about animal neglect or cruelty, please contact the Ottawa Police Service at 613-236-1222 ext. 7300.

If you find a sick or injured stray animal with no owner in sight, or a wild animal, call the City of Ottawa at 311.

For non-urgent wildlife issues, click here.

Emergency clinics in Ottawa

Once an animal is rescued, it is brought to the Ottawa Humane Society or a veterinary clinic (outside of regular OHS hours) for an exam and to be stabilized. If the animal has extensive injuries and is in immediate distress, and where the owner cannot be located within a reasonable amount of time, the animal may be humanely euthanized to prevent further suffering. All decisions on treatment and euthanasia are made in consultation with a veterinarian.

The OHS makes every attempt to find the owner — but please do your part by ensuring that your animal companions are identified with a microchip, collar and tag. If the animal’s owner is located, he or she is required to reimburse the OHS for all expenses incurred in caring for their pet.

If you have been bitten or scratched by a stray animal, please seek immediate medical attention and contact the City of Ottawa at 311.

Another Industry’s Time Has Come

Everyone who cares about animals was disappointed to see the charges against Marineland dropped last week. Later, we were alarmed to hear about yet another round of complaints about Papanack Zoo stemming from shocking undercover footage of the conditions there.

Papanack is closer to home. In fact, it is just outside of the jurisdiction of the OHS in an area long-served by the OSPCA. Of course, many of the zoo’s visitors are from Ottawa, and we have received many dozen complaints about it over my 17 years at the OHS; all were passed on to the OSPCA when received.

Across the country most complaints about these profit-making operations are based on the kind of limited protections available to animals under current legislation, such as access to food, water, shelter, etc. But here’s the thing: these issues are beside the point. Let’s move beyond whether animals in zoos and aquaria are cared for to a minimally acceptable standard and agree that their time is over. Like their travelling cousins, the circuses, the time of zoos and aquaria has passed. We know better now. Animals need more than food and water. They need to be with their own species. They need to live in social groups. They need to express natural behaviours.

That is why we are supporting the call from our national partner, the Canadian Federation of Humane Societies, for the formation of a federal/provincial task force to study the high number of animal deaths in Canada’s zoos, aquaria and other captive wildlife facilities and to determine a new animal protection framework for the industry. We hope that this process will result in real change. And, I hope, one day the end to these inherently inhumane businesses.

Bruce Roney
Executive Director