https://www.proquest.com/docview/3064395118/9B10DEAE6BFE47A4PQ/7?accountid=12725&sourcetype=Scholarly%20Journals

This study examines how more frequent and often negatively perceived interactions with wildlife is worsening with urban expansion. This is important because wildlife conservation largely depends on human tolerance for wildlife. The study area was the Metropolitan Atlanta, which contains 5.9 million people 45% forest cover. They examined wildlife related calls with complaints related to wildlife in neighborhoods, sick injured or orphaned animals, and the rest pertaining to threats to humans, domestic animals or other conflicts. The study then goes into demographic distributions, racial inequality with environmental justice, and quality of green spaces. They designed an online survey with demographic and geographic questions (like zipcode/neighborhood definition), whether they owned pets, or had gardens and how often they were tailored to. They selected 15 species for reporting based on frequency of past reports, and those that were likely to elicit different reactions from participants. These were matched with attitude rankings and emotional responses to different animals, as well as whether they would prefer populations to change.

The results were as follows: a little over half of the respondents were female and black. 68% of respondents lived in a house and 67% with a garden. Respondents’ gardens often contained lawn and flowering plants, thereby providing habitat for urban wildlife. The most frequently reported conflicts were raccoons raiding trash cans, squirrels, chipmunks, rabbits and deer damaging landscaping, and vehicle collisions with deer. Respondents’ attitudes toward species were positive predictors of tolerance. For example, those who were mutualistic (value wildlife and human harmony) in their beliefs were also more likely to be tolerant of coyotes, deer, opossums, snakes etc. Those who had threatening experiences with these animals had less tolerance. As far as demographics go, black respondents were less tolerant of foxes but more tolerant of squirrels and chipmunks, while Hispanic respondents were less tolerant of owls and rabbits. This could be due to the green space difference in certain minority communities and the species they interact with.

The methodology clearly presents a range of possibilities for interactions, giving participants ample descriptions of wildlife scenarios as well as matching them to frequency of occurance. The wildlife value orientation scale from traditionalist to mutualist views gives clear context for how certain participants may have responded differently to the same wildlife interaction. Equal and intentional sampling of minority groups allowed for clear analysis and comparisons between groups. The main deficit of this study is the amount of factors being assessed at once and its reliance on other research. In the discussion, the references to other studies explained the relationships more in depth than most of the correlations found within the study. They unexpectedly found an inverse relationship between self efficacy (protection from wildlife) and snake tolerance. This may be a result of the design of self-efficacy statements, which were generic and not specific to each focal species. There must be more specific relationships defined and more focus on a few variables, like emotions and conflict interactions, as well as demographics for example.

Future research should focus on implementation of the Urban Wildlife Program and community science’s influence on people’s responses and attitudes. I think more research on green space distribution and other factors besides gardens (like canopy cover) in black and minority neighborhoods would give more insight into their tolerance levels and interactions. I would love to learn more about how minority communities may benefit from urban wildlife, or be disproportionately harmed by it.

This paper caught my eye because I think there are more effective ways of managing human-wildlife conflict that have not been addressed. While agencies typically focus on education and conflict mitigation, more proactively increasing wildlife tolerance may be a more effective long term strategy for conservation. Because prior conflicts with species rarely influenced tolerance, more focus should maybe be reinforcing positive emotions and interactions, as well as just more opportunities for communities to safely observe wildlife and their behaviors.

Schulte-Hostedde AI, Mazal Z, Jardine CM, Gagnon J. Enhanced access to anthropogenic food waste is related to hyperglycemia in raccoons (Procyon lotor). Conserv Physiol. 2018 Jun 13;6(1):coy026. doi: 10.1093/conphys/coy026. PMID: 29992022; PMCID: PMC6025200. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6025200/#coy026C24

The study makes a hypothesis that if glucose metabolism, adiposity, and body weight are affected by consumption of anthropogenic food waste, then they predict that raccoons with greater access will have higher body mass and evidence of hyperglyclemia than those with reduced access. Samples were collected from 3 different location types in Southern Ontario. Each location type had varying access to anthropogenic food: one being the Toronto Zoo grounds, with access to garbage bins, on site restaurants, etc. Moderate access sites included 3 conservation areas in Grand River Watershed, Ontario in 2012. People do not live in these areas but in close proximity residential areas. Food was only available during weekly municipal garbage collection. Low access food waste site was a farming area in Grand River Watershed, Ontario in 2012.

They limited analysis of the raccoon samples to 60 adult raccoons sampled during the months of July and August to account for seasonal variations in body weight. Their estimates of consumption were qualitative and based on potential access to food, not specific bodily measurements. More precise estimates of consumption, for example, use of stable isotopes for corn, would help determine the relative consumption of processed foods.

With the sampling of raccoons, I believe they could’ve gone further by maybe doing a longer study about from the beginning of their life or different age brackets to see if it affects different groups. It would expand the scope to examine raccoons in different seasons, not just July-August, which restricts variation in body mass. Their distribution of females to males was also highly varied in each access level. For example, there were 5 males selected for the low access area and 16 for the high access area. Because there was a higher amount sampled in the high access area, there is more variability that can be accounted for and more reliable statistical analysis. There is a slight variation in weight between females and males, which was significant in the study. There was no interaction between sex and the effect of access to anthropogenic food waste on body weight. In the future, there should be more even sample sizes to accurately measure this.

No significant difference was observed between the mean body weights of the raccoons with moderate and low access to anthropogenic food waste. In this study, they assumed that variation in body mass would be the result of differences in fat mass, but there could be differences in body size or composition instead. Their are many different ways to look at body weight distribution. Raccoons with high access to anthropogenic food waste had significantly higher glycemia levels than those with moderate and low access to anthropogenic food waste. Leptin was not significantly different among sites nor was the body mass and leptin. With other wildlife groups, such as black bear and white tail deer, leptin has had both significant and insignificant results of correlation with adiposity (fat deposition). More studies are needed to understand the impact of lepin in different wildlife groups.

Overall, there is not enough research on human activities and wildlife nutrition beyond ecological and life history consequences. There needs to be more focus on how these diets affect the endocrine and metabolic functions of these species. This may have implications for human’s food sources containing more pesticides, as well as disposal methods as waste is only increasing. It makes me wonder what solutions to wildlife access to anthropogenic food would be, especially in high access areas. Hyperglycemia and adiposity could potentially compomise the immune system of animals and increase chances of disease transmission. This could threaten the livelihood of such species. It would be interesting to look at how species are adapting to anthropogenic food sources, and what metabolic pathways are formed with unique nutrients now in their diet.