After multiple meetings, public engagement, and feedback from industry professionals, the City of McCall is one hearing away from passing an ordinance that would ban the feeding of wildlife in town.
In summary, the ordinance makes it unlawful for people to intentionally or knowingly feed or attract wildlife other than squirrels and birds within city limits. Any person who is a first-time offender will be guilty of an infraction and receive a $100 fine. If a person violates the law again within a 12-month period, the penalty moves to a misdemeanor.
“Unlawful for any person to intentionally and knowingly feed or attract wildlife (including habituated wildlife) except birds and squirrels, by placing, depositing, distributing, storing, or scattering food, edible material, garbage, feed, or other attractants, with the intent to lure, attract, entice, or feed wildlife on public or private land within the City of McCall,” the ordinance draft reads.
During last week’s city council meeting, McCall Chief of Police Dallas Palmer explained that one of the ordinances the city reviewed was Teton, Wyoming’s. Teton’s ordinance makes it unlawful to unknowingly feed wildlife. Dallas said legal was not comfortable using that language in the McCall ordinance.
“They felt that recklessly was certainly a more appropriate term to utilize,” Palmer said.
Where have we been?
The process to get to this point began in June 2021. The city created an ordinance to ban feeding and voted in favor of it in July, but due to an error, the reading process started over. Then when the vote came around again, council member Mike Maciaszek flipped his vote, and the measure failed.
Following this, there have been education efforts and meetings to put together a new ordinance. This updated ordinance will have a public hearing and be voted on during the city council’s September 28 meeting.
“I think the process overall has been great, in-depth, and has advised great opportunity for your public to comment and voice any of their concerns,” Palmer said. “I think the ordinance just in itself has certainly gone through great review and has had a lot of eyes on has been compared to other ordinances throughout the Northwest. I think that you have a really great ordinance in front of you…We brought it forward because we feel it will help have an effect and give us the opportunity to correct things.”
Since its conception, the wildlife feeding ban has received a lot of attention. Proponents of the ordinance say feeding has caused deer to become traffic hazards, led to property damage, and attracted predators like mountain lions. People who are unsupportive believe the animals can coexist and worry that removing the deer will kill them.
The entire ordinance and information about wildlife feeding is available here.
