Abstract: Due to hunting and habitat loss, wild turkeys in early America reached very low population sizes. In the last 50 years, America as a country has implemented different laws and regulations to attempt to increase the number of turkeys in the wild, which is working! With this exciting news, human interactions with turkeys in highly populated areas are a rising issue. Wild turkeys seem to be recolonizing in urban areas, specifically Washington, D.C.. Researchers aimed to determine which urban areas are most affected by wild turkey populations and how those wild turkeys are using the urbanized land.

Methods: 75 studies across Washington, D.C. were conducted. These studies were conducted in random green spaces, consisting mostly of parks and occasionally, a cemetery or golf course. Each of these points was 2 km apart, to ensure coverage. Multiple brands of trail cameras were deployed from July 2020 to November 2023 and were active 28.7 days per sampling. With 4 different sampling trials lasting 30-45 days each, these cameras observed assorted landscape features as well as turkey sightings. These landscape features include human population density, vegetation coverage, impervious coverage, and distance to roads or water. The final number of turkeys observed by the trail cameras was 2,656, showing up at 32 different sites.

Figure 1: “Location of the 75 sampling sites used to estimate wild turkey (Meleagris gallopavo silvestris) occupancy across the Washington, D.C. metropolitan region, USA (38.9072° N, 77.0369° W). The size of the circles represents the total number of wild turkey detections at each site from July 2020 to November 2023.”

Results: The result of this study was the sighting of 2,656 wild turkeys at 32 of 75 different sites. Of the sites, 29 were public parks, 2 were cemeteries, and 1 was a golf course. Wild turkeys were on average detected 22.9 days per season, being more detected in the spring. The results showed that the average wild turkey occupancy was 7% (95% CI = 0.04–0.10) across the region. Increased distance from roads and increased vegetation increased the probability of turkey presence, or positive correlations. Increased distance from water and decreased canopy height/vegetation coverage both reduced the number of turkeys present, or negative correlations. Overall, the data shows that turkeys favored areas close to water with moderate canopy coverage that is also away from roads/traffic.

Conclusions: Research shows that wild turkeys can survive successfully in urban green spaces, specifically ones that mimic the natural habitat of a wild turkey. These areas are near open water, are away from traffic, and have moderate canopy coverage from foliage. This leads to a possible management effort that involves reducing roads being paved in larger urban green spaces, focusing on keeping populations away from roadways, and creating patches of canopy coverage on smaller scales.

Critical Analysis: I think that this is a very well executed research article, and it is one of the first of its kind. The research shows a valuable insight on how wildlife adapts to urbanization, despite population increases. The method of collecting data was ingenuitive, ensuring minimal errors. Some limitations of this research is the area limit. Only conducting research in Washington, D.C., limiting applications to other areas. The occupancy rate being low (7%) also limits the use of the data in other areas.

Reference: Collins, M. K., Edwards, K. E., Bates, S., & Gallo, T. (2025). Returning neighbors: eastern wild turkey (Meleagris gallopavo silvestris) occupancy in an urban landscape. Journal of Wildlife Management. https://doi.org/10.1002/jwmg.70129