A northern Alberta city has taken a unique approach to managing a distinctly odiferous animal.
The City of Cold Lake has hired a full-time skunk trapper and is offering free skunk removal services to residents.
Mayor Craig Copeland said the program is all about keeping homes and businesses odour-free in the city of 15,000 people, 300 kilometres northeast of Edmonton.
“We’re a community that’s living sort of on the fringe of the bush,” Copeland said. “Skunks here can be a problem.”
Skunks thrive in urban environments. Their striped tails are a common sight in communities across Alberta. Although they are docile foragers who largely keep to themselves, they pose a particular challenge due to the pungent perfume they spray when threatened.
Larger cities such as Calgary and Edmonton don’t offer skunk removal services, and officials in Cold Lake believe they may be the first Alberta community to do it.
Copeland said many municipalities leave residents to manage the pests on their own but Cold Lake council decided the city should instead handle the “nasty business” of trapping skunks.
Getting sprayed by a skunk is an experience most people are eager to avoid. Contracting out the service ensures residents can keep their distance, he said.
“Pepé Le Pew is a little bit of a different animal to deal with,” he said. “It’s a stinky situation.”
The program, which began in June 2023, has been renewed just in time for when Alberta’s striped skunk population wakes from a winter spent sleeping underground and begins its breeding season.
“If you don’t deal with them, they’re going to make more skunks,” Copeland said.
The ‘skunk guy’
The Cold Lake service is a capture and release program. Residents struggling with any of the unwelcome visitors can simply call in a request for help.
Once the city’s contractor, or “skunk guy,” gets a call, he is allotted five consecutive days to stage a careful capture, Copeland said.
Any skunks trapped by the contractor are relocated into the forest on the outskirts of the city where they are less likely to cause a stink.
The program launched last spring and, after a recent review by city council, the service has been renewed for another year.
The contractor gets $250 for each relocated skunk, and $130 if trapping efforts were unsuccessful.
In 2023, there were 33 requests for the service. Fourteen skunks were removed from 14 different locations. There were 19 unsuccessful attempts at capture.
In all, the program cost around $6,000. Andrew Jabs, a planning manager for the City of Cold Lake who helped develop the program, said it was money well spent.
He said the program has proved a success and he expects it grow this spring.
“Lending a little support from a professional to make sure you don’t get sprayed or you don’t make a big mess of your property or your neighbours’ property, I think it goes a long way.”
A solitary stinker
Sage Raymond, an ecologist and University of Alberta graduate researcher who studies urban wildlife, said skunks are well-suited for relocation programs.
Unlike other wild animals that may struggle to thrive after being moved, skunks are better equipped to adjust. They have few natural predators, eat almost anything, and are very solitary creatures.
“They don’t really have friends,” she said. “They have their young in the spring and they’ll mate in the spring as well. But other than that, they don’t really have strong social connections.”
Raymond said more communities are exploring non-lethal control options for controlling urban pests, but any management program should also include public education about how to coexist with skunks.
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Albertans should know that skunks will only create a stink if they feel truly threatened, Raymond said.
They have small reserves of spray and using it will leave them defenceless for days.
“The chemicals that they produce, they’re really stinky,” she said. “But the chemicals are really expensive for them to produce and so they would prefer not to use it if they have other options.”
She urges Albertans to educate themselves on these often unwelcome neighbours.
Spotting a skunk or getting a whiff of their telltale stench can put some people on edge, but skunks have developed ways to coexist with us so we should do the same for them, Raymond said.
“Urban-adapted species have developed strategies to live around humans and skunks are definitely on that list,” she said.
“Skunks are a species that does really well around people, at least from the skunk’s perspective.”
