Mammalian Camera Trap Data; Northwest Arkansas

The human footprint is rapidly expanding, and wildlife habitat is
continuously being converted to human residential properties. Surviving
wildlife that reside in developing areas are displaced to nearby
undeveloped areas. However, some animals can co-exist with humans and
acquire the necessary resources (food, water, shelter) within the human
environment. This may be particularly true when development is low
intensity, as in residential suburban yards. Yards are individually
managed “greenspaces” that can provide a range of food (e.g., bird
feeders, compost, gardens), water (bird baths and garden ponds), and
shelter resources (e.g., brush-piles, outbuildings) and are surrounded by
varying landscape cover. To evaluate which residential landscape and yard
features influence the richness and diversity of mammalian herbivores and
mesopredators; we deployed wildlife game cameras in 46 residential yards
in summer 2021 and 96 yards in summer 2022. We found that mesopredator
diversity had a negative relationship with fences and was positively
influenced by the number of bird feeders present in a yard. Mesopredator
richness increased with the amount of forest within 400m of the camera.
Herbivore diversity and richness were positively correlated to the area of
forest within 400m surrounding yard and by garden area within yards,
respectively. Our results suggest that while landscape does play a role in
the presence of wildlife in a residential area, homeowners also have
agency over the richness and diversity of mammals occurring in their yards
based on the features they create or maintain on their properties.