Q&A

Question one

Are there more rabbits in Montclair than in the past?

We are lucky to live in a town where wildlife lives alongside us. A cottontail grazing at the edge of a lawn at dusk, or a young rabbit tucked under a shrub, is one of the small pleasures of a leafy, green neighbourhood — and for a lot of residents, especially children, it’s a first encounter with wild animals going about their lives right outside the door.

Based on our research, here is what we surmise: probably yes, there are more rabbit sightings this year — and a few things are stacking up at once, some of them real increases and some of it simply that we’re noticing rabbits more.

The main driver is that cottontails are boom-and-bust animals, and recent conditions have favored the boom. A female can have several litters a season, but in a typical year only about 15 to 20 percent of the young survive to adulthood. That makes the population extremely sensitive to anything that nudges survival upward. Mild winters, an earlier spring, and less prolonged yard flooding all help, because cold and wet are what kill young rabbits in their first vulnerable weeks. String together a couple of good breeding seasons and you get a very visible jump — helped along by the gardens, plantings, and lawns that give suburban rabbits plenty to eat.

A good share of it is also just observation. More people are home and outdoors and paying attention, and rabbits actually tend to settle near houses, where the presence of people keeps larger predators at a distance. So some of “there are rabbits everywhere this year” is the same rabbits being seen and talked about more.

Fewer predators may play a smaller, supporting role. Rabbits are core prey for foxes, hawks, and owls — and those are the same animals hit hardest by secondary rodenticide poisoning, where a predator is poisoned by eating rodents that have swallowed rat bait (see question 3 to learn more). Suburban New Jersey’s raptors carry these residues at very high rates, and foxes elsewhere in the region and country test positive at similarly high levels; foxes have also taken a hit from recurring outbreaks of sarcoptic mange, on top of losses to cars. When predators thin out, some pressure comes off the prey. It’s a plausible piece of the picture rather than a proven one.

Besides enjoying the sightings, there are things you can do to address any nuisance. As Nancy Lawson, the expert in designing gardens for coexistence, says, “Coexisting with these shy plant eaters is easier than you think”. Learn more in her guide, Gardening with Rabbits. Many of the approaches we cover on our Your Yard page apply to rabbits as well.

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Question three

Does rodent poison kill foxes, owls, and hawks — and what can we do about it?

Yes. The usual route is anticoagulant rodenticide — ordinary rat and mouse poison — working its way up the food chain.

These poisons stop blood from clotting, and second-generation versions are potent enough to kill a rodent after a single feeding. But poisoned rodents don’t die right away. They often linger for several days, weakened and slow, which makes them unusually easy prey. When a hawk, owl, or fox catches one, the poison passes into the predator too. That is secondary poisoning — and because these compounds persist in the liver for weeks to months, every contaminated meal adds to the last.

This is not hypothetical, and it is not somewhere else. A study of New Jersey birds of prey found residues of one or more second-generation anticoagulant rodenticides in 81 percent of the red-tailed hawks and 82 percent of the great horned owls tested, and concluded that these compounds pose a significant risk of poisoning to predatory birds in the state. Foxes, bobcats, and other predators that depend on rodents face the same exposure.

Source: Stansley, Cummings, Vudathala, and Murphy, “Anticoagulant Rodenticides in Red-Tailed Hawks (Buteo jamaicensis) and Great Horned Owls (Bubo virginianus) from New Jersey, USA, 2008–2010,” Bulletin of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology 92(1): 6–9 (2014).

The evidence has grown compelling enough that states are starting to act. In June 2026, Maine restricted the most dangerous class of these poisons — second-generation anticoagulant rodenticides — so that they can no longer be sold to or used by the general public; only licensed applicators may buy and apply them. California went further in 2024 with its Poison-Free Wildlife Act, limiting homeowners to a few less-persistent alternatives, and New Hampshire is now moving toward similar restrictions of its own.

The animals themselves

It’s worth saying plainly who we’re talking about. Most of the rodents in a Montclair yard are native white-footed mice — small, nocturnal, and mostly invisible to us. They cache and scatter seeds and the spores of soil fungi that tree roots depend on, which makes them quiet participants in how a forest regenerates. They are also the base of the food web this whole page is about: the screech owl, the red-tailed hawk, and the fox are all here because the mice are.

They live short, fast lives — usually under a year in the wild — and they are attentive parents, with females raising several litters in a season and often nesting communally. Rats and house mice, which are the ones people usually encounter indoors, are not native to North America, but they are strikingly social and intelligent animals, and they suffer the same slow internal bleeding when they eat anticoagulant bait.

None of that means you have to share your kitchen. It means the goal is to keep rodents out of the spaces where they cause problems, not to kill everything with fur in the neighborhood — and that the methods matter, because a poisoned mouse becomes a poisoned owl.

It’s also fair to name the harder part. White-footed mice are the principal reservoir for the bacterium that causes Lyme disease in our region — larval ticks pick it up by feeding on infected mice, so mice really are part of the chain that puts infected nymphs in our yards. That’s a legitimate concern in Essex County, and it deserves a straight answer rather than a dodge.

The straight answer is that poisoning mice does not solve it. Rodenticides don’t touch the ticks themselves, they kill the foxes, hawks, and owls that keep mouse numbers down naturally, and a yard emptied of mice is repopulated from surrounding properties, because a suburban yard is a patch of continuous habitat rather than an island. What does work targets the ticks directly: tick tubes, which offer mice treated nesting material so they carry a tick-killing agent back to the nest and leave the mouse unharmed; keeping leaf litter and woodpiles away from the areas where people sit and children play; and the personal precautions that prevent the great majority of cases. Our ticks page goes through this in detail. The conflict is real, and it can be addressed without cruelty.

What residents can do

Avoid anticoagulant rat poisons and glue traps entirely. Anticoagulant rodenticides of any kind pose a major risk to wildlife — birds of prey such as eagles, owls, and hawks, and predators like foxes, coyotes, and fishers — and they can harm pets and even people. They’re commonly used across the pest control industry, so if you hire a pest control company, make it clear you do not want these products applied on your property.

These are the anticoagulant poisons to watch for on labels:

• Brodifacoum
• Bromadiolone
• Difenacoum
• Difethialone
• Chlorophacinone
• Diphacinone
• Warfarin

Also say no to glue traps. They cause horrific, prolonged suffering for any bird or animal unlucky enough to get stuck.

Instead, follow a simple protocol: Block, Don’t Attract, Deter, and — only if needed — Remove, using humane, non-toxic methods

• Block. Sealing entry points is one of the most effective things you can do. As you inspect your home inside and out, look for signs of rodent activity — droppings, gnaw marks, shredded material, or a musty smell. Indoors, check for cracks and holes in walls, ceilings, the roof, attic, basement, and crawlspace, plus the garage and any sheds. Pay close attention to windows, closets, doors, corners, fireplaces, and kitchen cabinets, and to gaps around sinks and appliance pipes — behind the stove, under sinks, and where the washing machine connects — as well as any point where electrical wires and cables enter the wall. Outdoors, walk the perimeter and look closely wherever utilities connect to the house. Make sure vents (plumbing, dryer, crawlspace) are screened, and check whether any exterior doors have gaps underneath.
• Don’t attract. Remove the food sources that draw rodents in the first place. Common culprits are birdseed spills, uncovered compost, and pet food left out. Garbage is a major attractant — use rodent-proof bins (metal or thick plastic) with secure lids, and clean them regularly. Keep your grill clean. If you have a bird feeder, take it down at night, clean up spilled seed daily, and consider whether you need one at all.

Deter remaining

• Use peppermint (packets of fresh mint, cotton balls soaked in essential oil, or a spray) and/or cayenne pepper in areas where you’ve seen or suspect rodent activity and along door thresholds/building foundation. Do this regularly.
• There are also ready-made rodent repellents that you can buy and use in a similar way. (Products include Rataway, Fresh Cab Botanical Repellent, Pro-Pell Rodent Repellent, and Rodent Mace.)
• If you have a garden, consider adding plants to it that rodents dislike such as basil, thyme, garlic, and onions. (You can plant peppermint too but always plant it in a pot since it spreads rapidly.)
• Products are available that use ultrasonic sound waves at frequencies disliked by rodents (e.g., the product MouseBlocker) to keep them away.
• Strobe lights can also be used to create an unwelcoming environment for rodents (e.g., the product Evictor 10K).
• If all else fails, CO₂-powered traps kill rodents quickly and reset automatically without leaving any toxin behind, and electronic traps deliver an instant, lethal shock.

Encourage natural predators

A single screech owl can eat hundreds of mice and other rodents a year, and a poison-free yard is one they can safely hunt in.

Attracting screech owls. The simplest step is a nest box. Screech owls readily use one with an eight-inch-square floor and a three-inch entrance hole set about ten inches above the floor, mounted roughly ten feet up on a straight tree trunk, a post, or the side of a building. Face the entrance east or south rather than north, ideally near the edge of trees with open lawn nearby for hunting. Add a couple of inches of wood chips or dry leaves inside, since owls bring no nesting material of their own, and put the box up by late winter, ahead of the breeding season. Screech owls adapt well to suburban yards.

Attracting other birds of prey. Most hawks and larger owls won’t use a box — you welcome them instead by keeping the habitat inviting: leave tall trees and dead snags for perching and nesting, plant natives that support the insects and small mammals they feed on, offer a water source, and above all keep the whole property poison-free. Two outstanding rodent hunters, the American kestrel and the barn owl, will use nest boxes if you have open, field-like space nearby.

Do they eat other birds? To a degree, yes. Screech owls take mostly insects and rodents but will catch a small bird occasionally, and a few hawks specialize in hunting birds, feeder visitors included. But long-term feeder-watch research has found no evidence that backyard raptors reduce the songbird populations they hunt — predators tend to take the sick, the weak, and the most plentiful prey, which keeps those populations healthy. A yard with hawks and owls in it is a sign of a thriving ecosystem, not a threatened one. What genuinely destroys these predators is rodent poison, not natural predation.

Read more in the Red Fox page.

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Question five

If “are there too many deer” is not the right question, what is?

The more useful questions are: what specific problems are people actually experiencing, and what would reduce them?

In suburban settings, concerns about deer come down mostly to garden browsing and animal-car incidents — which happen to be very small in Montclair, at 0.087% of total crashes over three years. See our Safe Streets page and our letter to the editor. Both are localized and situation-specific, which means both can be addressed using specific solutions:

• Animal-related car accidents on a particular road segment? The fix is road design, traffic calming, speed enforcement, dynamic warning signs, and vegetation management at those specific spots. Exactly what Montclair’s Complete Streets Department is set up to do to slow cars down on our roads for everyone, wildlife included. Learn more on our safer streets page.
• Deer eating a garden? The fix is coexistence-based deterrence at that garden. Match the solution to the exact underlying issue in your yard. More on protecting your yard.
• Antlers rubbing young trees in the fall? Wrap the trunks with rub protection until the trees mature. Then remove the protection and the trees can thrive.

The same logic of scale applies to our public woodland. Montclair is 6.3 square miles of dense suburb with roughly 175 acres of township parks — mostly ballfields, playgrounds, and pools, where browse isn’t the issue. Our small, fragmented browse-sensitive forested areas, Bonsal and Carey’s Woods, come to 20 to 30 acres. Fence properly the acres that need it, or create a perimeter fence. Drew University did precisely that in Madison, fencing 22 acres and winning a Governor’s Environmental Excellence Award — almost exactly the scale we’re talking about. Other local examples — Laurelwood Arboretum (30 acres) and Cora Hartshorn Preserve (17 acres) — are other preserves benefiting from the same proven fenced, visitor-friendly approach.

Stronger evidence for site-based solutions

Not every area needs the same solution. The advantage of addressing problems where they occur is that the results can actually be seen and measured:

• Fencing — immediate, visible results.
• Strategic planting — measurable outcomes.
• Road interventions — proven safety improvements.

Each of these is more controllable and more predictable than a population discussion, and each can be evaluated on the spot where the concern was raised.

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Question nine

What about feeding birds and squirrels or other wildlife in my yard? Ducks and geese in the ponds?

These are different situations, and worth separating.

Bird feeders

The most defensible of the three. They genuinely help during hard winter stretches, and most people find them a pleasure. But they concentrate birds at one surface, which spreads disease — so clean feeders every week or two, rake up spilled seed underneath, and take the feeder down for a couple of weeks if you see a sick bird. It is also worth checking what the seed is coated with, since some seed is treated with pesticides. Our songbirds page covers this in detail.

Squirrels, raccoons, and other mammals

Please don’t. Food left out teaches wild animals to approach people and houses, which usually ends badly for the animal. It also draws rodents and creates conflicts with neighbors that get resolved with traps and poison.

Ducks and geese

Please don’t, and especially not bread. It has almost no nutritional value, and ducklings raised on it can develop a permanent wing deformity that leaves them unable to fly. Our ducks page explains what is happening and what to offer instead if you want to.

The general principle: feeding that supplements is usually fine; feeding that a wild animal comes to depend on is not.

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Question eleven

Do I have to change my garden to accommodate wildlife?

No. But there is a version of this that is less about accommodating wildlife and more about gardening in the conditions you actually have.

Deer, rabbits, squirrels, and chipmunks are usually the reason people ask this. Using deer as an example, a garden built mainly from plants deer love — hostas, tulips, daylilies, yews — is a garden that will be browsed on certain streets, year after year, whatever else you do. You can spend every season replacing them, or you can shift the palette and approach and stop losing the argument. That is not accommodating deer so much as declining to keep planting a salad bar and being surprised.

Gardens and landscapes have always adapted. We stopped planting elms after Dutch elm disease. Montclair took down roughly a thousand ash trees in response to the emerald ash borer. We have adjusted to hotter summers, longer droughts, and shifting hardiness zones. Adapting to the wildlife around us is the same kind of adjustment — not a sacrifice, just gardening in the conditions you actually have.

Plenty of Montclair front gardens are lush, unfenced, and flourishing — our gallery is full of them, and our gardening for coexistence page walks through how they do it.

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