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.