Aversive Conditioning and Nuisance Wildlife

Shenandoah National Park recently introduced two new Nuisance Wildlife Aversive Conditioning Bio-techs,  Leigh Stansfield (Lead Tech) and Jena Donnell, who support a new Nuisance Wildlife program.

Leigh has solid experience working several seasons with nuisance bear management at Yosemite and Sequoia-Kings Canyon. She has also worked at several other western parks in various natural resource roles, bringing a lot of experience and knowledge to the program. Jena Donnell was an SCA Resource Intern last year at Shenandoah National Park. She assisted with several nuisance bear capture/relocation and hazing operations throughout the summer of 2007.

What is “aversive conditioning?”
Aversive conditioning is simply creating a very negative experience for the offending animal, hoping that the negative experience will outweigh the positive rewards offered by the nuisance activity.¹

Responsibilies

In addition to aversive conditioning, Leigh and Jena will:

• Track nuisance wildlife incidents and patterns
• Take nuisance wildlife reports
• Perform visitor and employee education
• Deal with food storage and wildlife feeding issues
• Deal with overflowing trash issues in developed areas
• Deploy bear traps if needed
• Assist with capture/relocation operations

Leigh and Jena will transcribe nuisance wildlife calls from the Nuisance Wildlife Hotline (540.999.3490, option #3) and enter the data into a park-wide database. They will also conduct Chronic Wasting Disease surveillance and opportunistic sampling of road-killed deer.

Leigh and Jena will perform aversive conditioning on nuisance black bear and beggar deer, primarily. Most of their work will occur in developed areas or along Skyline Drive. They will use the most light-handed technique possible to achieve the desired response (fear of humans) in the nuisance animal. Aversive conditioning works by establishing dominance over the nuisance animal. This works best when it is employed when an animal is in an early lingering mode or has just started to get conditioned to human food.

Nuisance Wildlife Reporting

This year, when you see early nuisance or lingering behavior in bear or deer, please use the . Fill it out and report the information to the Aversive Conditioning Biotechs at the Nuisance Wildlife Hotline (540.999.3490, option #3). If you don’t have the time to fill out the form, call and use the questions to report via the hotline.

For more information, you can contact:

Rolf Gubler
Biologist
Shenandoah National Park
3655 US Hwy 211 East
Luray, VA 22835
(540) 999-3291 (w)
(540) 999-3693 (fax)

¹Aversion Conditioning, Black Bear Conservation Committee, Baton Rouge, LA. 2006