TIL. I was confused because I thought raccoons were an American thing. It turns out the Nazis imported them for furs, and some escaped. Now Germany has a bunch of Raccoons.

Correlation map with AfD votes next?

I thought that this number seemed not so big, but that my perception might be skewed due to the chosen scale and an inability to imagine an process how big the depicted areas are, so I looked up the development of raccoon population in Germany (I read the german Wikipedia).

So, first of all, one of the major relevant incidents was pure greed. A poultry breeder released a couple of raccoons into the wild so that they would populate the area and pelt prices could go down because expensive imports would become unnecessary. I hate humans, especially the rich ones.

Second, according to a publication from 2011, at that time the population of raccoons in Germany size was estimated to be around half a million individuals and that each year, 300k animals would have to be killed if the population sized was to be reduced with a lasting effect. Although, that might not be enough, as research shows, after a 2007 distemper epidemic killed 80% of the female raccoon population in Müritz National Park, the year after more raccoons were counted than before the outbreak.

Third, we need the wolf back. As shown by the example before, raccoon populations are extremely resilient and also in north american raccoon populations hunting shows to be not only not a major cause of death, it was insignificant. In Germany, the lack of natural predators like the wolf is benefitting the expansion of some invasive species like raccoons, american minks or raccoon dogs (who are not raccoons) and also has an influence of growing populations of native species into overpopulations. Hunting and roadkill incidents alone shows to be not effective enough (at least in areas that are not destroyed habitats due to human expansion).

Europe brings rats to invade de sewers, America counterattacks by sending trash pandas

The black spaces on the 2020 map kinda look like a rabbit. Geez, you’d think they’d invade in a pattern that resembles a raccoon. SMH

I love the unit, R/ha.

We can do better than 0.1 R/ha though? What’s the R/ha of other countries?

I’m puzzled by how a hectare can be determined to have 0.1 raccoons in it, like is it part of a 10 hectare region with a single 'coon or is the animal migratory and spends a tenth of its time in that particular hectare?

Anyhow raccoons are great when they’re screaming bloody murder at each other at night, and also when they amble up to you curiously during the day. Sorry they are competing with Germany’s, what, native badger population? What is the raccoon niche equivalent over there

The fuckers reached Belgium by 2023… Those pests are everywhere and wrecking havoc both in suburbs and rural areas.

Müllpandablitz

So I live in one of the barely-still-gray areas from 2020. I.e. we’re obviously colonized by now. And the neighbors now refuse to clean up the garage because they might disturb the gworing family of raccoons living within. And we obviously can’t force them to do anything.

It’s always fascinating to learn of the little differences. Lack of peanut butter. And, apparently, a lack of trash pandas patrolling your trash bins, until now.

The racoon wars are no joke. Lost my brother to the raccoons in a op gone bad.

Fuckers do a better job than Russia.