Animal shelters and other local animal organizations often field calls from citizens who have questions about wild animals or about resolving conflicts with them. Whether it’s a raccoon making herself at home in the chimney or rabbits having daily feasts in the vegetable garden, problems with neighborhood wildlife often lead to frustration and, in some cases, inhumane or inappropriate attempts to resolve them.

To prevent such occurrences, The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) Wild Neighbors™ program seeks to raise public awareness and understanding about urban wildlife and to promote humane resolution of human-wildlife conflicts. The program features a variety of educational resources for citizens and for the local animal groups to which citizens often turn for advice.

Our professional training programs include the country’s oldest urban wildlife seminar series, inaugurated in 1987, which has been offered in more than 20 states and 40 cities as daylong programs: Wild Neighbors™: Humane Solutions to Conflicts with Wildlife.