Have you woken up at night to the sound of little claws scratching on your ceiling boards or clambering up your pipes? While many people may resort to laying down traps and setting out poisons, these are not always legal or humane ways to resolve the problem. 

The best wildlife removal services can protect your property against damage-causing creatures — including bats, rats, mice, raccoons, alligators, peacocks, squirrels and birds — without resorting to extermination. Choose humane wildlife removal to live in harmony with your environment, while protecting your property. 

How Is Humane Wildlife Removal Different From Regular Pest Control?

You’ll find roach stations, ant sprays, rat traps, poisons and various commercial repellents at most supermarkets. In the U.S., laws regulate poisons and limit chemical types and quantities for each product. Labels clearly indicate how to legally use these products. However, homeowners often get into trouble when they try to poison larger animals like raccoons and bats. Some states protect certain species, only allowing a trained specialist to remove them.  

Humane Removal Laws

Various laws and legislations cover wildlife removal. While you may see a particular animal as bothersome, it could be a protected species. Removing or harming it can land you with a fine or even prison time. Using a relocation service ensures you don’t face legal action, as the removal company will be familiar with relevant laws, including: 

• The Endangered Species Act: This law protects creatures that have limited numbers, such as certain bird, bat and rodent species and even some types of spiders. Removing creatures protected by this act from your property requires a registered professional and a permit to handle the task. 
• The Migratory Bird Treaty Act: This law ensures migratory birds are safe and that you can’t relocate them at certain times of the year. You may not handle, move or destroy their nests if they have eggs or chicks inside. 
• Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act: This law concerns the types of poisons and chemicals homeowners may use to exterminate or repel nuisance animals. 

Principles of Humane Wildlife Removal

Humanely removing an animal from your home is about more than just getting rid of it. It’s a process where the creature and its offspring’s safety, stress and future habitat are deeply important. Once the critters are safely transported, they require rehoming in a sanctuary. You can undertake prevention measures to reduce their future access to your home.

The goal of removal is to keep the animals together as a family unit and prevent the offspring from starving if you catch the parents and leave the nest unprotected. The animals’ future home needs to offer them the means to naturally sustain themselves.

Feral creatures aren’t to blame for choosing to nest in houses. Wildfires and other environmental challenges often drive them into human habitats. Humane removal restores them to a natural area where they can live as intended, keeping everyone safe and happy. 

Methods for Humane Wildlife Removal

There are several methods professionals use to safely capture and relocate creatures or deter them from entering homes. Each animal’s habits and nature determine which technique is best suited for removing or preventing them from occupying human dwellings. 

Live Traps

A live trap is a trap or cage that lets the animal inside, securing it until a removal expert transports the trap and its contents. A baited cage for raccoons and rats is an example of this type of method. The animal isn’t harmed during its capture. The cage has water and food, ensuring the animal is comfortable until the trap is collected.  

Catch and Release

Some animals require physical capture. A snare may work in this case, but the risk of injury is greater if they remain in the snare for prolonged periods. Usually, removers capture aggressive creatures with snares, such as snakes, coyotes and alligators. They then find a location to release them safely back into nature in accordance with local laws.

Exclusion Systems

This safe and kind way to prevent feral nuisances from entering your home usually involves setting up a one-way trap door that lets them out but not back inside. Experts can install this on AC vents, roofs, basement access points or doggy doors. You can fit your pet with a specialized collar that enables them to still enter your home. This method is only effective if there are no nests with young in your home, as baby animals could die in your home’s crawlspaces if their parents are unable to return. 

Repellents and Deterrents

When wild animals start entering your home, a repellent can cause them to find shelter elsewhere. Usually, this takes the form of a spray that releases a scent to drive them out. 

Habitat Modification

Since wild animals don’t necessarily want to live in human homes because they see people as predators, making a house less appealing is a way to convince wild critters to voluntarily relocate. Closing up garbage bins, removing available water sources and securing kitchen cupboards to stop them from reaching food helps discourage them. 

Why You Should Choose Humane Wildlife Removal

It may seem cheaper and easier to exterminate beasts that intrude on your property — even if they aren’t considered endangered species — but humane removal is the better option. When humanely done, experts remove these animals in ways designed to:

• Protect nature and eco-sustainability: Natural ecosystems are fragile, and poisons can kill off beneficial creatures. For instance, if you poison mice, owls may eat the contaminated rodents, which may endanger the owl population. Because there are fewer owls, mice populations in the area may grow even larger, offsetting the ecosystem’s careful balance. 
• Ensure a long-term solution: Professionals will remove the pests and provide preventive measures to keep similar critters from nesting in your home. With expert guidance, you’ll know how to avoid attracting animals by keeping garbage cans closed or placing metal grates over roof access points.
• Save costs in the long run: Since you’ll avoid using costly poisons, you save money in the long run. Traps are reusable, and closing up access points prevents pests from returning, so there’s no need to place poison in your home again. 
• Guarantee the safety of people, wild beasts and pets: Trapping, rather than exterminating, critters prevents harm. Plus, there’s less risk of them becoming aggressive or crawling into areas where you can’t reach them and them potentially dying there.  

Choosing Effective Humane Wildlife Removal Services

When you’ve decided to use a humane removal service, you’ll want to work with the best. Here are a few factors to keep in mind as you choose: 

• Education and adherence to the law: A reputable company will educate you on what the law says about removal and care in your state. 
• Humane methods: Find a business using clean, effective and humane traps over snares when possible. The aim is to keep the animals safe. They should also inspect traps daily to prevent captured critters from being in distress. 
• Knowledge about family units: Laws often prevent relocation during breeding season when young offspring may remain defenseless in nests if adults are captured. The company should focus on keeping the family unit together, removing adults and their offspring. 
• Post-capture care and release protocols: Knowledgeable professionals should cover traps to calm critters when moving them and have a first aid kit to treat any accidental injuries. They should also have a secure area to release captured animals. 

Some of the Best Wildlife Removal Services

Now that you know what to consider when choosing a wildlife removal service, you can make an informed decision and get the best in the trade.  

1. Urban Jungle Wildlife Removal

When dealing with Texas beasties, you can rely on Urban Jungle Wildlife Removal to effectively trap and transport wild animals from your property (relocating them when and where possible). The company is ideally suited to handle any invaders without causing harm. Whether it’s a few hundred bats in your attic or a dead coyote in your underflooring, these experts can help. 

Key Features

• Extensive services: Urban Jungle Wildlife Removal traps and removes the animals and then installs preventive measures so they don’t return. The on-site assessment includes a sound pest management plan, identifying entry points and future tactics to keep the property pest-free. Site cleanup services collect any litter or remains and treat parasites that could threaten your home’s health and safety.
• Highly educated team: All staff are college-educated, hold a degree in biology and have training in wild animal management. 
• Insurance coverage: The company is fully insured, so its staff may enter areas like crawl spaces without violating your home insurance policy guidelines, and you can rest assured they have coverage should anything get damaged. 
• One-year warranties: A year’s warranty in case pesky beasts return after removal provides you with peace of mind. 
• Outstanding ratings: With a 4.9-star Yelp rating and favorable Reddit reviews, this company has a reputation for swift and excellent service. 

2. Critter Evictor

Secure your home and family from disease or damage from wild animals by contacting Critter Evictor in San Antonio, Texas. 

Key Features 

• Quality services: Professionals can evict raccoons, rats, squirrels and other critters from homes and industrial spaces.  
• Excellent ratings: The company has a 4.6-star Yelp rating. 
• Educated staff: The owner and staff are all college-trained and have extensive knowledge about different pests like rats, opossums, mice and raccoons. 
• Secure processes: The team inspects homes for signs of damage, compromised entry points and nests. Safe, non-lethal methods keep animals safe while preventing them from running. Once the team seals entry points, long-term control is easy. The cleanup team also undertakes repairs and ensures you return to a safe and sanitized environment. 

3. Wildside Wildlife Removal and Prevention

Stop creatures from invading your home with Wildside Wildlife Removal and Prevention, a business with a reputation for fair pricing and swift service. The company uses certified technicians and the latest trapping technology to improve trapping and relocation. 

Key Features 

• Helpful services: This company removes bats, rats, mice, birds, squirrels, raccoons, skunks and animal remains. 
• Quality ratings: The company has a 4.5-star Yelp review.
• Trained staff: Fully licensed technicians use the latest tools and techniques to capture animals effectively without harming them. 
• Effective cleanup: When removing remains, biological cleanup methods ensure your home remains clean of odors, waste and biological materials.   

4. Critter Control

When your home is infested with critters, Critter Control is on hand to safely remove animals like squirrels, raccoons, rats and mice. With humane practices that include non-lethal removal and safe relocation, these experts use their decades of experience to ensure homes remain critter-free. 

Key Features

• Effective animal removal: Technicians capture intruders with live cage traps, one-way doors and unique strategies for pesky creatures like shrews and voles. 
• Damage repair: The team repairs damage caused by burrowing and nesting animals, fixing walls and wiring as needed. 
• Wildlife exclusion plans: If you live in an area where wild creatures constantly intrude on homes, the team can create an exclusion plan, fortifying your home with one-way entrances and mesh covers on openings to ensure unwanted animals stay outside. 
• Dead animal removal: Cleanup services include safely disposing of remains. 

Frequently Asked Questions

How Is Wildlife Removal Different From Animal Control?

Government agencies usually run animal control services and specialize in removing domestic nuisances, like stray cats and dogs. However, wildlife removal covers feral creatures like rats, squirrels, raccoons, birds and other pesky beasts. When deer or bears enter your yard, you can reach out to park services for assistance from experienced rangers. 

What Do Wildlife Removal Companies Do With the Animals?

Wildlife removal companies relocate animals to a natural habitat where they can live peacefully and far away from humans. Wildlife laws control what creatures companies can release and which require specialized containment, such as those prone to spreading rabies. 

How Do I Know the Wildlife Won’t Just Return? 

A quality wildlife removal service will implement exclusion methods and may provide you with a guarantee wildlife will not return. Removal teams should periodically check to ensure no critters have broken containment or begun nesting in your home again. Most removal guarantees are valid for one year. 

Safeguarding Wildlife and Your Property

Living in harmony with nature doesn’t mean you have to hang out with bats, worry about unwanted critters invading your home or put up with rats in your ceiling. Contact experienced wildlife removal specialists who will evaluate your unique challenges, discuss options and capture the offending critters with baited traps to prevent causing any harm.