Raccoons, expanding beyond North America, are taking over the world one trash can at a time

Karen Pinchin is a Nova Scotia-based journalist and author of Kings of Their Own Ocean: Tuna, Obsession, and the Future of Our Seas.

In December, 2019, a raccoon rambled across the bucolic cobbled streets of Erfurt, Germany, in broad daylight. It stepped unsteadily on small grey paws, its distinctive banded tail bobbing as curious passersby gawped and took photos, delighted by the spectacle. Earlier that day, the creature had encountered a nearby Christmas market and, reportedly, imbibed from the abandoned cups of mulled wine that littered the ground. When firefighters arrived to capture the creature, it hissed and lunged before they successfully plonked it into a crate. A police spokesman joked that an alcohol breath test hadn’t been done on the raccoon before they handed it over to a local hunter. To the outrage of many in the town, he simply shot it.

Across the world, these types of scenes are increasingly playing out as raccoons, a species native to North America, breed and feed and raise their young alongside the detritus of human activity. In recent decades, raccoons have expanded beyond their original turf in the United States and Southern Ontario to take up residence in other parts of Canada, as well as in Western Europe, Central Asia and Japan, where they are considered an invasive species. In Belgium, for example, forest rangers field frequent complaints about raccoons, which threaten local wildlife such as tawny owls and black storks. In Japan, they’ve damaged 80 per cent of the country’s temples and destroy millions of dollars in crops every year. And only two decades after two raccoons either escaped or were released into the wild in Mallorca, they have already spread across a quarter of the Spanish island. With raccoons expected to continue expanding their territory, people around the world are set to encounter a dilemma all too familiar to Canadians – how to co-exist with these cute, crafty and often troublesome creatures.

“Raccoons are like the Swiss army knife of animals,” says York University animal behaviourist Suzanne MacDonald, who has studied raccoons since 2011. “As long as they can find a water source, they can live just about anywhere.” That success comes from a combination of their adaptability – they can swim, climb and eat almost anything, including slugs and carrion – but also relates to how their brains are wired. Raccoons display traits of “neophilia,” says Dr. MacDonald, which means they are compelled to explore and experiment with new elements in their surroundings. And creating new elements, it turns out, is a human specialty.

Even still, the global success of raccoons is particularly astonishing considering that around 100 years ago, hunters and trappers had eliminated them from some parts of North America entirely. Between 1840 and 1860, at least 13 million raccoon pelts were exported to England to make fur coats, hats and stoles.

The raccoon-fur craze led to a handful of European entrepreneurs starting commercial breeding operations to produce the pelts. In 1934, German fur farmer Rolf Haag released two pairs of raccoons into the wild for “the pure joy of being able to enrich our fauna,” and in 1945, two dozen of the wily creatures escaped a fur farm after it was apparently hit by an Allied bomb. In France, American airmen brought raccoons on deployment with them as mascots in the 1960s, but soon after released them into the wild.

The history of the species stretches back 20 million years, when raccoons emerged alongside five other so-called procyonids, including coatis and ringtails, in Central America and North America’s southern reaches. In 1858, raccoons were misidentified by Swedish biologist Carl Linnaeus as Ursus lotor – “washer bear” – but they share closer common ancestry with weasels, wolverines and badgers. And while the creature’s tendency to dunk food into rivers and ponds can make it seem as if it is “washing,” more recently, experts have determined that moisture helps enhance sensation on their paws’ sensitive nerve endings, which allows them to examine and understand objects more closely.

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Many Indigenous cultures have long recognized the raccoon’s dextrous capabilities. Its English name, in fact, derives from arakun or arakunem, or “it scratches with its hands,” from the Powhatan Confederacy in what is now Virginia, writes Daniel Heath Justice, author of Raccoon and a professor of Indigenous studies and English at the University of British Columbia. In 1612, the English explorer John Smith – known for his famous but largely debunked tale of being rescued by a young Powhatan woman dubbed Pocahontas – reported “a beast they call Aroughcun, much like a badger.” Its Anishinaabe name, esiban, or “it picks up things,” can be found across Cree, Abenaki and Lenape cultures. In English, a gathered group of raccoons can be called a “gaze,” “nursery,” or “mask” – terms that nod to the creatures’ mysterious nature.

In many Indigenous stories, says Mr. Justice, the raccoon often takes the form of a lesser trickster or category-defying shape-shifter. In his book, he recounts a Cherokee tale from before there was fire, when a series of animals tried to bring a spark back to the people. When Raccoon peered inside the blazing, hollow tree, the fire flared up and smoke stained the fur around his eyes black. Undeterred, he tried to get the fire with his tail, but it too was stained.

“That, for me, is a nice story that speaks to the reality of raccoons’ experiences,” says Mr. Justice. “They don’t always succeed at what they do, but they still are going to give it a try.”

Because a female raccoon bears, on average, five pups a year, and those babies can survive on their own once they’re only four months old, even a handful can spread quickly. Generally, young females will stay with their mothers as males scout new territories. In Germany, hunting records reflect that exponential growth: In 1995, hunters there reported killing 3,000 raccoons. Two decades later, that number hit 100,000 raccoons shot or trapped in a single year.

The pet-to-menace raccoon pipeline has been acute in Japan. There, in 1977, an animated show based on a children’s book called Rascal the Raccoon (Araiguma Rasukaru) premiered on television. With a roly-poly body and black furry cheeks, the adorable Rascal inspired Japanese children to demand their own baby raccoons, so pet stores began importing as many as 1,500 raccoons a month. In 2005, the government listed the creature as an “invasive alien species,” but it was already too late: too many recalcitrant pet raccoons had either escaped or been released into the wild.

And sure, a tousle of raccoon pups is adorable, with their bright eyes, downy fur and human-like hands. But their cute exteriors belie the crafty and sometimes vicious adults they’ll eventually become, which makes the species the ultimate environmental Trojan horse. “Raccoons that are imported as pets to other continents, and then are released when they become too difficult to handle – which is always – will be able to adapt to these new environments with ease,” says Ms. MacDonald. “And they will devastate the native species, which are completely unprepared for a voracious omnivore with grasping hands and a penchant for chaos.”

In the face of our changing climate, there is a very real chance that raccoons could spread almost across the entire globe, says Dr. MacDonald, “as a very cute but destructive invasive species.” In 2022, a northern Alberta wildlife photographer was surprised to discover a black-and-white image of a hunchbacked raccoon on a camera he set up to record wildlife. Historically, the creatures only lived in the province’s southernmost regions, but warming winter temperatures and increased year-round rainfall, both linked to the climate crisis, mean that’s no longer the case.

In 2016, one study used computer modelling to predict the species’ future range and concluded that 61 per cent of our planet is currently “suitable for the raccoon invasion.” Another, published by a French researcher a few years later, found climate change will transform land north of the raccoon’s current range to “favourable” habitat by 2050.

“They’re really cute animals, they’re so clever, that you can’t help but be fascinated by raccoons,” University of Alberta biologist Colleen Cassady St. Clair said in response to the Alberta sighting. “But by the time citizens have realized they really don’t want them living among them, it’s too late.”

By 2050, modeling shows that raccoons could

expand well beyond their current habitat range

Current raccoon occurrences

Favourable areas for raccoon habitat

Unfavourable areas for raccoon habitat

the globe and mail, source: Current and future climatic regions favourable for a globally introduced wild carnivore, the raccoon Procyon lotor by V. Louppe, B. Leroy, A. Herrel and G. Veron, Scientific Reports, June 2019.

By 2050, modeling shows that raccoons could

expand well beyond their current habitat range

Current raccoon occurrences

Favourable areas for raccoon habitat

Unfavourable areas for raccoon habitat

the globe and mail, source: Current and future climatic regions favourable for a globally introduced wild carnivore, the raccoon Procyon lotor by V. Louppe, B. Leroy, A. Herrel and G. Veron, Scientific Reports, June 2019.

By 2050, modeling shows that raccoons could expand well beyond their current habitat range

Current raccoon occurrences

Favourable areas for raccoon habitat

Unfavourable areas for raccoon habitat

the globe and mail, source: Current and future climatic regions favourable for a globally introduced wild carnivore, the raccoon Procyon lotor by V. Louppe, B. Leroy, A. Herrel and G. Veron, Scientific Reports, June 2019.

Canadian city dwellers are likely familiar with the common problems caused by raccoons, who dig up backyard grass in search of grubs, trample fruit trees, and build stinky homes in chimneys, sheds and garages.

When encroaching onto a new environment, raccoons voraciously gravitate toward the tastiest and most energy-dense foods they can find. Because they eat both plants and other animals, they swiftly start to outcompete local wildlife for food or even eat those creatures themselves – including frogs, turtles, bird eggs and even baby rabbits.

When the City of Toronto spent $31-million launching a new, supposedly “trash panda”-proof compost bin, raccoons quickly figured out how to break in, including simply opening them with their nimble paws. Their anatomy, says Mr. Justice, provides yet another reason why they’ve found such success in urban areas. Despite looking quite heavy, he says, their fat is very “squishable” and their spines are flexible, which helps them move into and out of small spaces with ease. “You couldn’t find many more larger mammals who could do what they can do, other than primates,” he says.

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However, raccoons can be more than just an annoyance. Their waste carries diseases that can be fatal to humans and other animals, including canine distemper, leptospirosis and raccoon roundworm.

While only Canada’s eastern raccoon population is generally believed to carry rabies, cases have been discovered as far west as Saskatchewan. But once again, this origin story has a familiar ring: Before 1977, the deadly virus had only been found in Florida’s raccoons. But that year, 3,500 animals, some infected with the virus, were trapped, relocated and released as game around private fishing clubs in Virginia. After that, it was only a matter of time before the disease spread across North America.

Yet again, human hands pushed a proverbial snowball over the mountain’s edge, only to lament the resulting avalanche.

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That this global raccoon invasion is entirely humans’ own fault is uncomfortable to consider. For the past century, as we have messed with raccoons – keeping them as pets, raising them for scientific research or slaughter on fur farms, and importing them as game for hunters – the species has adapted and learned how to mess with us right back. And as we collectively continue to pump emissions into the atmosphere, which is rapidly heating our planet and changing rainfall patterns, raccoons will continue to thrive and claim new territory, even as other species succumb to rapid climactic changes.

A century ago, according to University of British Columbia behavioural ecologist Sarah Benson-Amram, some researchers tried using raccoons for scientific trials as a “model system,” like mice or rats, to test procedures and medicines not yet approved for humans. Once introduced to a lab, however, the creatures proved more trouble than they were worth. “They kept breaking out of their cages, getting into the ductwork and doing all sorts of crazy stuff,” she says.

That hard-to-control brazenness certainly plays a role in why raccoons can drive us up the wall. “When raccoons look at us, they aren’t looking at us as superiors, they’re looking at us as a potential danger, certainly, but also potential sources of food, shelter or entertainment,” says Mr. Justice. “That’s not a position that a great many humans in the urbanized industrialized West are familiar with.” To anyone who has faced down a bold masked face raiding a chicken coop, taking over an attic or chugging sugar-water out of a hummingbird feeder, that moment of encountering nature on what is supposed to be “our” turf likely hits disconcertingly close to home.

Two summers ago, while sleeping in a tent in Nova Scotia’s Kejimkujik National Park, I awoke to an ear-splitting crash. Grasping in the darkness for my seven-year-old son, heart in my throat, my hands searched our sleeping bag terrain until I found his arm. Eyes wide open, listening, not breathing, I heard trees creaking, wind blowing, then a smaller thud.

Oh no, I thought. The food.

I unzipped the tent and burst out in slippers and a headlamp. Its narrow beam skittered across the orange, glowing eyes of four raccoons in a Renaissance tableau of shredded hot dog buns and eviscerated energy bars. Beside our hard plastic cooler, I identified the source of the crash. It was a giant kettlebell of a rock, the heaviest I could lift the night before, that the raccoons had somehow pushed off the cooler to the ground.

Then the scene broke apart. Chattering and scrambling, the group dashed for the woods, one raccoon dragging the crinkling foil of a potato chip bag as I yelled and waved my arms. Four fluffy, striped tails vanished into the night, leaving me to survey the mess. I cursed the creatures’ intrusion, but also couldn’t help but marvel at the immense weight they had somehow moved.

The debate of how raccoons should be “handled” in our communities is something UBC’s Dr. Benson-Amram and her doctoral student Hannah Griebling frequently encounter in their work studying raccoon cognition, particularly in urban environments. When it comes to a “conflict animal,” communities and individuals generally have two choices, says Dr. Benson-Amram: to kill it, or to opt for non-lethal methods such as trap-and-release or reducing food and water access.

As a teenager, I often spent fall weekends helping my grandfather on our family’s apple orchard in Streetsville, Ont. On his farm, Victor Pinchin considered raccoons, skunks and other wildlife such as deer as pests, fit only for shooting or drowning, and we never asked too many questions about where the creatures he trapped ended up. I vividly remember the public outcry when, during the same era, a Toronto traffic camera captured video of a man drowning a raccoon in a live trap in Lake Ontario, and thinking that the death threats that man received could have just as easily been directed at my otherwise gentle, soft-spoken Grampy.

Across Canada’s profound urban-rural divide, feelings and laws on how to manage raccoons remain deeply split and widely variable. The only nationally consistent rule is that it’s illegal to keep raccoons as pets. In most provinces, it’s legal to shoot or trap raccoons in season with a valid hunting licence or, in Ontario, if an animal is damaging your property. Even so, a person killing an animal must “avoid unnecessary suffering.” New Brunswick still allows raccoons to be hunted with the aid of hounds, while in Quebec they are a protected species and so can only be trapped and relocated.

The human urge to take the path of least resistance, opting to kill a nuisance animal instead of coming up with a more creative solution, seems to me like an outdated way of thinking. (Sorry Grampy.) Instead of preventively avoiding conflict – being more diligent about managing the garbage we produce; making sure chicken cages and fish ponds are well-secured; preventing leaf piles or rotting sheds from becoming cozy, inviting habitat – ending an animal’s life strikes me as the least imaginative way to deal with raccoon-induced discomfort. And killing one raccoon won’t make all the other raccoons go away; it just opens another raccoon-sized ecological niche.

Recently, my husband and I noticed a large rat using our backyard shed as a waypoint, a rest break on its daily rat route. Instead of killing it, we secured our birdseed and cleaned up a junk pile, and to this day that rat has remained a daily visitor. We’ve collectively learned how to co-exist, which seems braver than the alternative: to face shining eyes in the darkness, appreciating the ingenuity and persistence it takes for a wild animal to survive in our anthropogenic spaces. (And if you’re ever discomfited during a raccoon encounter, Dr. MacDonald suggested giving it a name, which makes them less scary. “Oh, that’s just Pete,” she says.)

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Curiously, what makes the raccoon so infuriating could lie in how the animal is alike to humans, not in its differences. Across residential backyards in Vancouver, Dr. Benson-Amram’s lab has set up puzzle boxes baited with food – in the past they’ve lured raccoons with cat and dog food, but also prunes, sardines and marshmallows – to test how the procyonids solve problems. Their intelligence and adaptability could originate, they’ve found, from ways in which raccoons’ brains echo our own. In another experiment, when examining the brains of “solvers,” Dr. Benson-Amram found more connective glia cells, which facilitate brain function, in the hippocampus region. Albert Einstein’s brain, in comparison, has a high glia-to-neuron ratio. That, she says, could be a clue to the raccoon’s unique cognition.

Whenever an urban raccoon, like the one in Germany, makes national news, York’s Suzanne MacDonald is often asked to weigh in, and for this she has identified a crucial difference between us and them. “Raccoons don’t think about the consequences of their actions,” she says. “Why did the raccoon climb a construction crane? Because it was there. They don’t think about the fact that they are going to be stranded hundreds of feet up in the air until they get to the top and look down.”

It’s here, in our human ability to bring foresight to our future choices, to learn lessons and apply them in how we move forward in the world, that presents an opportunity for this to be more than just a story about crafty raccoons. We humans are not separate from nature: we are nature. And as Mr. Justice says, if we really care about nature – and ourselves, by extension – it’s going to be inconvenient sometimes.

“Once raccoons are on their way, they’re on their way, and so you have to learn how to deal with them,” says Mr. Justice. “We don’t have to see their intelligence and their curiosity as threats – we can actually see them as beautiful wonders of a natural world that is besieged. There’s something glorious about creatures who don’t need us, and don’t fear us. Isn’t that a beautiful thing?”

Like rats, raccoons are in our communities to stay, so we’d best try to live alongside them gracefully. From raccoon-proofing our homes and yards the best we can, to trapping and relocating particularly troublesome animals, we can – and should – learn how to live alongside them, foibles and all. This hard-earned wisdom is a lesson we can offer to people all around the world, who are just learning to live with raccoons for the first time.

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