EDI Staging Environment
In urban and suburban areas, wildlife and people are often in close quarters, leading to human-wildlife interactions (HWI). Understanding how wildlife interact with humans and the built environment is critical as urbanization contributes to habitat change and fragmentation globally. In our study, we partnered with a local business that removes and relocates snakes from homes and businesses in the Phoenix area. The most frequently removed were venomous (family Viperidae, e.g., rattlesnakes) and nonvenomous (family Colubridae, e.g., gophersnakes) snakes. Using these records, we investigated taxa-specific habitat trends at two spatial scales. The neighborhood scale focused on front yard measures of cover and vegetation classes and the landscape scale focused on variables related to vegetation indices and degree of urbanization. Both analyses compared areas where snakes were removed to random locations in the city to represent possible habitat available to snakes. At the neighborhood scale (n=60), we found that removals occurred in yards with abundant cover opportunities. At the landscape scale (n=764), we found species-specific differences with nonvenomous snakes removed from areas of higher urbanization compared to venomous snakes. Understanding these distinct habitat patterns in residential yards can identify areas with potential human-snake conflict.
EDI is a collaboration between the University of New Mexico and the University of Wisconsin – Madison, Center for Limnology:
