Urban Wildlife Management

Urban Wildlife Management

What is Urban?

  • Developed areas

  • Farmlands

  • Cities

  • Urban vs. Suburban?

  • When does urban end?

Census Definitions

  • Peru: “100 contiguous swellings”

  • Sierra Leone: “2,000 inhabitants”

  • Denmark: “built-up area with at least 200 inhabitants, and where distance between buildings is not more than 200 meters (1/10 mi), unless the interruption is due to facilities, parks, cemeteries, etc”

  • Japan: “area with 50,000 inhabitants or more, in which at least 60% of buildings are in the main built-up areas and at least 60% of people are engaged in non-ag business”

  • United States: “Area in which population density is 1,000 people per square mile and total population is 2,500 or more”

What are cities from a wildlife perspective?

  • Wildlife can’t define landscape features, only recognize cities as a new landscape with new features

  • A new landscape with new features

  • Vegetation removal for houses/stores/farms

  • Landscape fragmentation like roads, prevent animal crossings

  • Extensive ground cover change

    • things like buildings and roofs, changes of rain movement

  • Altered hydrology

    • water run-off into stream, percolating through ground, dripping off leaf

    • macroinvertebrates pushed off rocks

    • natural areas have more steady streams unlike urban areas

  • Altered noise and light regimes

    • loud cities, does not stop at night

    • interrupts animal calls

    • sea turtles follow moonlight, confused by local light sources

  • Pollution

  • Invasive species

    • exotic plants/animals

    • outcompete native wildlife

Challenges

  • Remember Leopold’s “Plow, cow, gun, match, and axe”

    • Only left with axe

  • Hunting, fire, and land management become difficult/dangerous to implement

    • can’t shoot guns in urban areas, can’t do prescribed burns, and animals like cows unable to access

  • Crime and/or fear of crime

    • difficult for wildlife biologists to perform research

  • Police/difficulty with landowner permissions

  • RED TAPE

    • need to go through a lot of approval stages before solving anything

Why manage wildlife here at all?

  • Many humans live in urban areas, and humans love wildlife

  • Animals have great capacity to do damage

    • Disease (rats)

    • Infrastructure damage

    • car collisions

    • other human harm

      • social carrying capacity

  • Urban wildlife are beneficial and fascinating

    • pigeons are pre-adapted to urban areas

    • bats and habitat

    • geese like fountains

    • robins like lawns for worms

    • raccoons/possums/crows/house sparrows and food… we provide a lot of sugary/fatty food for wildlife (and throw it in the trash)

      • they can do better in our environment than in the wild

Urban Exploiters

  • Traits:

    • omnivorous

    • dietary generalists

    • tolerant of human presence

    • able to avoid humans

      • flying

      • hiding

        • chimney swifts hide in chimney, similar to natural habitat

      • climbing

Urban Adapters

  • Species also tolerant of human development

    • white-tailed deer

    • peregrine falcon

    • coyotes

    • squirrels

  • Behaviorally flexible

  • Do not depend on urban landscapes

Urban Avoiders*

  • Traits:

    • Sensitive to human landscape change

    • Have large home ranges

      • mountain lions

    • Habitat specialists

      • loggerhead shrike, predatory bird, Hawthorne trees impale prey

      • red-cockaded woodpecker, longleaf pine forests

      • elk

      • hellbender, healthy clean water

*they don’t persist here because they die, not avoiding, but excluded

So what can we do?

  • Make urban parks, like Central Park, Carol Park

    • urban parks are often:

      • too small

      • too isolated

      • lacking the appropriate vegetation structure to support non-generalist species

  • What about greenways?

    • can be good

So the message is clear: Dense urbanization is bad for wildlife

  • Except it’s not!

  • Dense human development is an excellent way to save space for wildlife conservation

    • Vertical growth → less space use through using tall buildings instead of expanding

      • Dense human development can be a great conservation tool!

        • New York City’s Counties vs. Raleigh’s Counties save space for people/mile… 1/8 of the space

        • NC pop = 10.5 million, NYC is 8.3 million

        • if you condensed all of NC pop, could fit it into Wake County, leaving the rest of the entire state for wildlife!

    • Zoning

      • Zoning determines what you can do where

      • Determines allowance for big and small lots, low-income housing, green areas

    • Reduced transportation

      • no need to drive because houses and stores and work are close

Human Dimensions

  • You can’t get people to do things just because it makes sense from a wildlife point of view

  • We can make some changes that would provide habitat elements for a number of species

  • Land management one property at a time

How to support non-generalist species in urban areas

  • Do away with lawns

    • they have no wildlife value

  • Native vegetation—provided varies structure

    • make it messy!

    • temporarily varied food for wildlife, different seasons

  • Leave snags up (when possible)

    • habitat for woodpecker, bats

  • Provide seasonal variation in food sources

  • Try to live near where you want to go

    • fewer drivers—less demand for roads—less car traffic—less fragmentation

Take home messages

  • Provide incentives to make more wildlife-friendly properties

  • Cities (humans in them) are part of nature, not apart from nature

  • We should not pick and choose where we are going to be stewards

  • Land management is people management, city planning included

  • There are winners and losers

  • Try to be more like rats, look for opportunity

  • The world is urbanizing