Research project looking at how wildlife interacts with waste at Assiniboine Park Zoo

A new research project is examining how urban wildlife interacts with the waste bins at the Assiniboine Park Zoo.

Lynnae Martin, a University of Manitoba master’s student, is leading the initiative, which is being funded and supported by the Assiniboine Park Conservancy.

Martin has set up her experiment to see which urban wildlife is coming to the zoo’s garbage and recycling bins to eat the garbage during the day and night.

Stephen Petersen, the conservancy’s director of conservation and research, said they are trying to understand their impact on the wildlife at the zoo and park.

“We notice that trash gets spread around, but we don’t think it’s visitors,” he said in an interview with CTV Morning Live on Tuesday.

“We wanted to understand why it’s happening.”

Petersen said Martin’s research will look at which animals are visiting the bins, with the ultimate goal of making sure the wildlife can’t access this food source.

He added that some of the wildlife at the zoo includes squirrels and crows during the day and raccoons at night.

“So there’s daytime and nighttime users of that good source,” Petersen said.

He said the issue with the wildlife eating this garbage is it is not a good food source for the animals.

“They risk being entangled in packaging and wrappers,” Petersen explained.

Other risks are that supplemental food resources can lead to higher populations than a habitat can support and that animals that learn to associate humans with food can become aggressive.

“We do get instances where, especially squirrels, get a little bit aggressive,” Petersen said.

“So they associate people with food and so they can be pretty bold. If you’re not expecting a ground squirrel to come up into your kid’s tram or stroller, it can be quite traumatic for people.”

Some ways visitors can help with this issue are reducing the amount of food waste they leave at the zoo, and reducing the amount of strong-smelling foods they throw away.

- With files from CTV’s Ainsley McPhail.