DAVIS, Calif. -- University of California, Davis is planning to resort to birth control to try to limit the campus' rapidly growing squirrel population.

Officials said the university is being overrun with eastern fox squirrels, which aren't natives of the Davis area.

"In seven years, we went from having no eastern fox squirrels on the campus to having more than 400, and there is currently no sign that their reproduction is slowing down," UC Davis ecology doctoral student and project leader Sara Krause said in a news release.

The project will begin in the next week. Faculty wildlife experts and students will begin placing humane traps under trees and around lawns to capture the common creatures.

Squirrels will be examined, marked with a nontoxic dye and set free, the university said. For the remainder of this fall and winter, researchers will study the animals' behavior.

Next summer, the squirrels will be captured again, and some will be given hormone injections to stop them from having offspring, the school said.

Sal Genito, who manages buildings and grounds at the campus, said his team has ongoing programs to deal with a variety of animals -- mice, rats, bats, feral cats, rabbits, pigeons, chickens, guinea fowl, peacocks and Canada geese.

"The chief reason we have so many potential pests is that we have 5,300 acres of attractive habitats, from dining halls to woodlands and from student gardens to almond orchards," Genito said in a prepared statement. "And it's our obligation to be good property managers, so pest problems do not spill over to our neighbors' homes, parks, restaurants and farms."

Genito said the school is also working to solve ongoing problems with herons and egrets damaging the campus' Shields Oak Grove, and of large numbers of mallard ducks in the school's arboretum.

"Our goal is not to hurt the animals that find our grounds so attractive," Genito added. "It is to limit their ecological and human-health impacts as effectively and humanely as possible."