Overview:

This study seeks to understand more about urban wildlife management in U.S. cities, specifically looking at predator management and rodent control. It looks at rodenticides, as well as non-lethal forms of rodent control. Human-wildlife coexistence and interactions are also discussed in this article.

Methods:

The authors first looked wildlife management and rodent control governmental policy documents, newspaper articles, and fact sheets from wildlife organizations. They then chose fourteen urban wildlife management plans that prioritized nonlethal management of predators and rodent control. They conducted a direct content analysis qualitatively on the wildlife documents. The analysis consisted of each researcher reading the documents and finding relevant themes, exchanging notes with each other, and lastly discussed together the themes/subthemes that felt most relevant to the group about co-existence based urban wildlife management, shown in the table below.

Results:

The researchers found that the urban wildlife plans desired for human-wildlife coexistence. Additionally, they found that the plans were against eradicating species that are considered “nuisance species” and that some cities were okay with living near predators that may pose a risk for humans. Humans should instead get used to living with them, with coyotes being included in this plan as long as it is in the boundaries that they should exist in. The plans also are against killing urban wildlife, unless the animal is seriously aggressive. Normalizing human-wildlife interactions that are unproblematic are also important to show the public that interactions with urban wildlife can be positive.

When looking at rodent control, rodenticides have been most popular to control rat populations. However, predators that consume rats that have poisoned have also perished because of the poison that was in the rats. Thus, there has been more of a movement to ban these rodenticides. Some nonlethal methods to control rat populations are mostly preventative measures that limit the possibility of rat populations to occur in a specific area.

Reflection/Critiques:

I found this study to be very informative when looking at urban wildlife plans from around the United States. I also found it interesting what the urban wildlife management plans had to say about predator management. However, I do think that they could have benefited from incorporating data about different types of human attitudes toward wildlife. Going more in depth about the history of certain species and why humans feel a certain way towards them could be helpful as well. Lastly, I found the data analysis to be lacking a bit and not as professional as I would have thought.

References:

Hunold, C., & Mazuchowski, M. (2020). Human–wildlife coexistence in urban wildlife management: Insights from Nonlethal Predator Management and rodenticide bans. Animals, 10(11), 1983. https://doi.org/10.3390/ani10111983 

Overview: This study assessed the public’s perceptions of urban wildlife in Krakow, Poland and compared it with 2010 data. In a questionnaire, the researchers found that wildlife interactions with wild boars, red squirrels, brown hares, red foxes, and roe deer have increased since 2010. Since urbanization is only increasing, it makes sense that human-wildlife interactions are increasing as well.

Methods: The study area was in Krakow, Poland which is the second largest city in Poland. The Vistula River goes through the city which acts as a natural migration corridor for wildlife. The area consists of green patches, agricultural areas, watercourses, and urban land. The researchers sampled the population of Krakow, with 887 responses observed. The questionnaire consisted of sections that observed the population’s attitudes toward wildlife in the city, attitudes toward managing conflict situations with wildlife, socio-demographic information, encounters with wildlife and their reported behavior, and perceptions of conflictual wildlife and their associated problems. This questionnaire conducted in 2020 was similar to the 2010 questionnaire and statistical differences of the sociodemographic variables between the two years were calculated in ANOVA. Chi-square tests were also conducted to evaluate the differences in wildlife in Krakow and the respondents’ attitudes toward wildlife.

Results: The results showed that the socio-demographic factors between 2010 and 2020 were not significantly different. Results also showed that human-wildlife encounters have increased over the decade, with multiple species being significant.

Wildlife	2010 (n)	2020 (n)	Mean (±SD)	χ2	p-Value
Red squirrel (Sciurus vulgaris)	93	791	442 (±493.56)	551.13	<0.001
Hedgehog (Erinaceus roumanicus)	601	701	651 (±70.71)	7.68	0.005
Red fox (Vulpes vulpes)	276	444	360 (±118.79)	39.20	<0.001
Roe deer (Capreolus capreolus)	271	409	340 (±97.58)	28.00	<0.001
Wild boar (Sus scrofa)	130	308	219 (±125.87)	72.34	<0.001
Stone marten (Martes foina)	256	394	325 (±97.58)	29.30	<0.001
Mute swan (Cygnus olor)	490	651	570.5 (±113.84)	22.72	<0.001
Bat (Chiroptera)	257	286	271.5 (±20.51)	1.54	0.213
Mallard (Anas platyrhynchos)	29	703	366 (±476.59)	620.60	<0.001
Brown hare (Lepus europaeus)	66	344	205 (±196.58)	188.50	<0.001

“χ²: p < 0.05; Bonferroni correction: p < 0.025. Italic: significant in Chi Square test, bold: significant after Bonferroni correction, bold and italic: significant in Chi Square test and Bonferroni.”

Additionally, the behavior of the species also changed from 2010 to 2020. More recently, the respondents found wildlife showing more behaviors (Figure B) other than running away from humans when being encountered like in 2010 (Figure A).

“Fig. 1. Canonical correlational analysis (CCA) ordination biplot of wildlife (in red) and their reaction while observing residents (blue arrows) as recorded in Krakow in 2010 (A) and 2020 (B). CCA plots to determine the relationship between wildlife and their observed behaviour.”

The researchers also found that the participants agreed that the most conflict causing species included the roe deer, stone marten, red fox, and wild boar. (Figure A = 2010, Figure B = 2020) The number and types of nuisance wildlife proved to be significantly different.

Lastly, the attitudes of the public were mostly neutral (36%), with around 25% of people being negative and 23% being positive. They found that there was a significant difference in the attitudes of the public between 2010 and 2020.

Critiques: Although this paper was pretty straight forward, I do wish that they mentioned the 2010 data of the public’s overall attitudes like they did with the 2020 data. Additionally, they mentioned in the limitations section that their selection of the participants was not completely random, and that there was only 23% of men representation. I do think picking a better selection of the participants would have been better for a more accurate representation of the Krakow population. Other than that, I did find it interesting to see how human-wildlife encounters have changed from 2010. I think this paper could help wildlife managers understand the public opinion in Krakow in order to inform possible management strategies.

References: Basak, S. M., Hossain, Md. S., O’Mahony, D. T., Okarma, H., Widera, E., & Wierzbowska, I. A. (n.d.). Public perceptions and attitudes toward urban wildlife encounters – a decade of change. ADS. https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2022ScTEn.83455603B/abstract