Germany Has a Big Raccoon Problem—and It’s America’s Fault

Kassel, Germany, has a raccoon problem. They’re overrun. Raccoons on rooftops, raccoons stealing bananas; raccoons, seemingly as organized as the Ocean’s 11 crew, banding together to conduct food raids in public parks.

Imported from North America by fur farmers in the 1930s, raccoons broke free and thrived. Today, according to a report from The Guardian, Germany’s raccoon population hovers around 1.5 million. Kassel is acting as a kind of epicenter for the raccoon scourge.

Unsurprisingly, residents have a love-hate relationship with them. They are adorable until they start stealing from you or rummaging through your trash, leaving a mess that you have to deal with.

In the United States, raccoon numbers are kept low due to the presence of several natural predators. We can count on wolves, cougars, bobcats, and coyotes to keep raccoons in check. Raccoons in Europe, on the other hand, have no natural predators. With no other animals to compete with for food, raccoons have naturally spread across Europe, with sightings reported in France, Denmark, and Italy.

According to Marten Winter of the German Center for Integrative Biodiversity Research, raccoons are the exact kind of mischievous thieving assholes that Europe does not need. There are omnivores, so they eat everything from birds to amphibians to eggs to nuts to fish. If it’s edible, they’ll eat it, and probably even if it isn’t. They don’t care.

Germany is Overrun with Raccoons

Try as some residents might, there is no adapting to a massive influx of raccoons. Go ahead, lock your trash bin; they’re going to figure out how to get in there eventually. They are persistent and have frighteningly humanlike hands that are dexterous enough to work out the mechanics of a trash can lid. Feels like it’s only a matter of time before they figure out how to use a lock-picking set.

It’s all enough for the EU to officially declare raccoons as an invasive species, with sweeping culling initiatives put in place to dwindle their numbers. In 2024 alone, almost 200,000 raccoons were killed in Germany, some of which were used to make sausage. That’s not a joke. A German chef is proudly using raccoon meat to make sausages and meatballs. That’ll teach’em.

There have been calls to increase invasive species crackdowns by instituting programs like those in Australia and New Zealand, countries that have spent enormous amounts of money to scale back the number of furry invaders like rats and feral goats that were wreaking havoc on local biodiversity.

For as much chaos and mayhem as the raccoon scourge has inflicted as it’s spread across Europe, there will always be residents like a man who spoke to the Guardian, a man named Lars, who says, “They are a symbol for us here, a badge of honour. Sometimes, we are proud of them. But they destroy a lot.”