SPRING 2003 • 1

V O L U M E 1 7 , N U M B E R 4 S P R I N G 2 0 0 3

COASTALHERITAGECOASTALHERITAGE

Nature orNurture?

2 • COASTAL HERITAGE

NATURE OR NURTURE?Driven out of their habitats, many wildlife species are flourishing in

America’s urbanized areas, thriving on our handouts and causing nuisances.

FRONTIER OF URBAN ECOLOGYCities are surprisingly rich in biodiversity.

EBBS AND FLOWS

ON THE COVERRaccoons, though adorable to some, can carry rabies and roundworm. PHOTO/WADE SPEES

Coastal Heritage is a quarterly publicationof the S.C. Sea Grant Consortium, a university-based network supporting research, education,and outreach to conserve coastal resources andenhance economic opportunity for the people

of South Carolina. Comments regarding this orfuture issues of Coastal Heritage are welcomed.

Subscriptions are free upon requestby contacting:

S.C. Sea Grant Consortium287 Meeting Street

Charleston, S.C. 29401phone: (843) 727-2078

e-mail: Annette.Dunmeyer@scseagrant.org

Executive DirectorM. Richard DeVoe

Director of CommunicationsLinda Blackwell

EditorJohn H. Tibbetts

Art DirectorPatty Snow

Contributing WriterSusan Ferris

�Board of Directors

The Consortium’s Board of Directors iscomposed of the chief executive officers

of its member institutions:

Dr. Ronald R. Ingle, ChairPresident, Coastal Carolina University

James F. BarkerPresident, Clemson University

The Honorable Ernest A. Finney, Jr.Interim President, S.C. State University

Dr. Raymond GreenbergPresident, Medical University of South Carolina

Major General John S. GrinaldsPresident, The Citadel

Leo I. Higdon, Jr.President, College of Charleston

Dr. Paul A. SandiferExecutive Director

S.C. Department of Natural Resources

Dr. Andrew SorensenPresident, University of South Carolina

CONTENTS3

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REST STOP. In urban environments, non-native bird species suchas house sparrows, starlings, and pigeons predominate at the expenseof native birds. PHOTO/WADE SPEES

COPYRIGHT © 2003 by the South Carolina Sea Grant Consortium. All rights reserved.

SPRING 2003 • 3

UNEXPECTED COMPANY. Alicia Kelly, holding her daughter, Patricia, recalls when a seven-point white-tailed deer burst into her suburbanCharleston home. A WCSC-Channel 5 camera spotlighted the animal after it was sedated. PHOTO/WADE SPEES

By John H. Tibbetts

Alicia Kelly was napping on her den couch insuburban Charleston one afternoon last October.Her three-month-old daughter, Patricia, was

sitting awake, propped up and protected in the spacebetween Kelly’s prone body and the couch’s back cushions.

“I was sound asleep, lying on my side, baby in front ofme,” says Kelly. “Then I felt something land on me. Ithought it was my dog’s front legs, like she does when shewants me to get up. But I looked and thought, that’s notSerena. It was a deer; I saw the rack on him. Your mindcannot process that. He was right there, and he just staredat me, and I stared at him. I think he was as stunned as Iwas. I’m sure it was just a few seconds, but it felt likeminutes. Then my baby screamed and that brought meinto reality and I screamed too.”

Panicking, the white-tailed deer leaped away and randown a hallway, crashing into walls. “He didn’t stop afterthat,” says Kelly. “He ran all over the house,” looking for

an escape route. Kelly grabbed her daughter and started forthe back door.

“Then I saw him come down the hallway. The deerwas heading for the back door too. He lowered his rack,and just bam! He hit that glass, but he didn’t break it.”

Kelly fled the house, and Charleston County depu-ties arrived and sedated the seven-point buck. Becausethe deer suffered internal injuries, a veterinarian later putthe animal to sleep.

When the deer initially approached the Kelly home,he probably glimpsed himself in the glass back door. “Itwas mating season, and he saw another male deer inreflection,” says Diane Duss, supervisor of animal controlfor Charleston County Sheriff Department. Respondingto a competitor, he butted the door. When the lock anddoorframe gave way, the buck skidded across the den rugto the couch and, rearing, threw his forelegs on Kelly.The glass door rebounded against the wall and closed

Nature or Nurture?What happens if we let wildlife go wild?

4 • COASTAL HERITAGE

STEPHEN R. PALUMBI

“Some species areenormously successful

because they travel aroundon our coattails. They tend

to be species that takeadvantage

of the disruptionswe cause.”

nesting site to another if they have to.And some creatures prefer “edges”—they’re drawn to places like transitionsbetween forests and meadows or subdivi-sions. Omnivores, which eat almostanything, adjust particularly well tocities. Certain species—the super-adapters—have most or all of thesecharacteristics.

“There are only three choices acritter has to make (when faced with ahuman-dominated environment), andthose are to adapt, move, or die,” saysClark E. Adams, a Texas A&M urbanwildlife researcher. “And those that areadapting cause us big problems.”

The coyote, once unknown in theeastern United States, is one of the super-adapters, prowling from the tip of Florida

to Alaska, findinghabitat in majormetros, collegecampuses, and golfcourses. This omnivo-rous animal “will go toour garbage cans or ourpets for its food source,”says Adams.

Packs of“coydogs”—coyotesinterbred with dogs—have migrated fromsuburban WestchesterCounty to the Bronx’s

abandoned lots and even Manhattan’sCentral Park. In ranching areas,coyotes kill thousands of head oflivestock, causing $13.6 millionannually in damages.

South Carolina had no coyotes in1978; today the animals are ubiquitous,taking up residence in every county. “I’veseen coyotes in just about every town inthe South Carolina lowcountry,” saysChristian Agnew, a biologist and part-owner of Wildlife Solutions, Inc., ananimal-control enterprise. A rabid coyotebit Agnew on Sullivan’s Island inNovember 2000. “The coyote had tocross the bridge, because coyotes don’tswim for the heck of it.”

Instead of migrating north to breedin the Arctic, large numbers of Canadageese now summer in the United States,

What to do

Follow a few simple rules toavoid conflicts with mostnuisance species, says PriscillaM. Wright, S.C. Department ofNatural Resources wildlifeassistance coordinator.

First, don’t put out food forwildlife. “I can’t tell you howmany people put out food forfoxes,” says Wright. “Peoplethink they’re cute and that thepoor things don’t have anywhereto get food. But foxes do carryrabies.” If you put out food,you’re encouraging young animalsto migrate to where people live,and that’s cruel, she says.“You’re taking away the animals’ability to take care of them-selves.”

Second, put garbage cansbehind a locked door or strapdown garbage lids with bungeecords, so raccoons can’t get tothem.

Third, landscape with nativeplants to discourage deerinvasions. Consider using pinestraw instead of planting peoniesand other plants that deerprefer to eat.

behind the buck, cutting off his onlyescape route.

A bewildered deer rampagingthrough a suburban house is a rareoccurrence, but it’s just one example ofincreasing conflicts between peopleand wildlife around the country. Eachyear, more Americans complain aboutwild animals that have lost deep-country habitat and now search forfood and shelter in cities and suburbs.

Many metro areas have plantedtrees and protected open spaces,creating habitat for wild creatures.Homeowners have built ponds andplanted flower gardens that attractwildlife, and they have left out petfood and uncovered garbage contain-ers. Some creatures have come todepend on us forhandouts, adapting sosuccessfully to human-made environmentsthat they are nolonger truly wild. Inthe parlance ofwildlife biologists,these creatures arecalled “subsidizedspecies,” and theirpopulations aregrowing much fasterthan our understand-ing of them.

Some common nuisance animalsinclude opossum, crow, rat, squirrel,fox, muskrat, and skunk. Non-nativebirds such as house sparrows, streetpigeons (also known as rock doves),and starlings prosper in huge numbersin every major city in the nation,

regardless of climate. “Some speciesare enormously successful because

they travel around on ourcoattails,” says Stephen R.Palumbi, Stanford Universitybiologist. “They tend to bespecies that take advantage ofthe disruptions we cause.”

Ecological generalists,tolerating a broad range of

environmental conditions, thrivein urban centers. Opportunistic speciescan transfer from one kind of prey or

SPRING 2003 • 5

GOT TRASH? Some animals rely on us forhandouts, adapting so thoroughly to humansociety that they are no longer truly wild.Raccoons, like this one shown peeking out ofa restaurant dumpster, are an example of a“subsidized species.” Populations ofopossum, rat, squirrel, fox, skunk, andmany other urban nuisance species aregrowing rapidly. PHOTO/WADE SPEES

6 • COASTAL HERITAGE

JAWS. Alligator attacks are rising in some southerncommunities since habitats have been disrupted bydevelopment. Alligators are turning up in backyardponds, canals, and swimming pools.PHOTO/WADE SPEES

dropping excrement mounds thatfoul golf courses, parks, and publicbeaches. Just 20 geese can leave aton of feces each year.

Raccoons, sheltering inattics and eating out of garbagecans, not only carry rabies butalso roundworm, which caninfect humans and causeblindness; there is no knowncure. In places where raccoonsproliferate, they can degradewater quality.

As humans alter wildlifehabitats, large predators are alsochanging their habits. Alligatorsroutinely show up in southeast-ern back yards and swimmingpools. Hardy and adaptable,alligators can live and breed indrainage ditches if driven out of

their habitat. Alligator popula-tions—about 100,000 alligators inSouth Carolina and an estimatedone million gators in Florida—havegrown rapidly, as have alligatorattacks. American saltwatercrocodiles have found homes in thecooling canals of Florida’s nuclearpower plants.

Bears, it turns out, have a tastefor pet rabbits, goats, and llamas.Two years ago, bears in New Jerseywent on a rampage, killing live-stock and pets and breaking intohomes and cars. In South Carolina,bears have wandered out of wildliferefuges and been hit by cars.

Having grown accustomed topeople in some western communi-ties, mountain lions stroll fearlesslythrough back yards and urban paths

in the noonday sun. Mountain lions—also known as cougars, pumas, andpanthers—have altered their diet toraid Alpo and Purina meals. Theirpopulations and attacks are sharply onthe rise. Various mountain-lionsubspecies once ranged throughout theUnited States, but until recently theyhave been relegated to western statesand a narrow range in South Florida.

The most dangerous and expen-sive fur-bearing animal is one of themildest-mannered—Bambi. Deer, infact, is the number-one vertebrate pestin the United States, according to theJack H. Berryman Institute at UtahState University.

At least three-quarters of a millionvehicles collide with white-tailed andmule deer annually in the United States,injuring about 29,000 people and killinganother 200. That makes deer deadlierthan sharks, alligators, bears, andrattlesnakes combined.

Wealthy suburbs and resort commu-nities are ideal habitat for deer, whichprefer forested places with smallclearings and low-lying vegetation inearly stages of growth. Applying copiousdoses of water and fertilizer on their lushgardens, prosperous suburbanites createtasty treats for deer safe from huntersexiled to distant forests. “Many of theseplaces have wonderful deer habitat, butthere is nothing but Cadillacs to killthem,” says Jay Butfiloski, furbearerproject biologist with the SouthCarolina Department of NaturalResources (DNR). Some homeownershave installed eight-foot fences to keepout animals they call “rats with hooves.”

Deer menace forest ecology andwildlife habitat in dozens of statesthroughout the eastern third of United

SPRING 2003 • 7

States. When deer populationsexplode, they often strip woods ofnative vegetation and eliminateniches for other species. Deer eatwildflowers, small bushes, andseedlings, displacing smalleranimals from their habitat. “Deerhave a huge, huge impact on all thelittle components of a forest,” saysSteward Pickett, senior scientist atthe Institute of Ecosystem Studies,based in Millbrook, New York.

By exterminating most largepredators and creating edgehabitat between forests andlawns, Americans have createdideal conditions for deer. “It’s asimple fact that deer do not havethe predators they use to have—the red wolf, the eastern cougar,and the Florida panther,” saysLarry Richardson, wildlifebiologist at the U.S. Fish andWildlife Service Florida PantherRefuge in Naples, Fla.

The heavily forested, urban-ized Northeast has the most deercollisions, but the South has itsshare too. In South Carolina, fourpeople died in deer collisions and420 were injured during 2001.Last October, two Ohio residentswere killed when their car strucka deer near Myrtle Beach.

Even so, South Carolina’sone million deer are a majoreconomic asset to rural areas.Deer hunters annually spend $200million in retail sales duringSouth Carolina’s harvest season,which typically reduces herds bynearly a third. “The positiveaspects of a deer population farexceed the negative aspects,” saysCharles Ruth, DNR deer projectsupervisor. “Rural counties reallyrely on the economics of deerhunting.”

What’s behind the growingdrumbeat of conflict with wildcreatures?

In a word, sprawl. Seekingthe country life, Americans arebuilding homes farther out in the

boondocks and commuting back tojobs at the metropolitan edge. “Inthe Southeast, conflicts are all dueto urban encroachment,” saysAgnew. “Animals have run out ofplaces to go.”

Growing numbers of Ameri-cans flock to second homes,vacation hideaways, and gatedretirement communities surroundedby woods. These low-densitydevelopments are connected tourban centers by road and highwaynetworks, which break up andisolate habitat for most largemammals, particularly predators.

Americans with urban valuesare moving ever deeper into thecountryside, extending the so-called“urban-wildland interface” or“suburban-rural interface.”

“As that interface increases,we’re going to have more conflictsbetween animals and people,” saysJohnny Stowe, DNR heritagepreserve manager. “A lot of peoplecan now afford to live in thecountry and commute into the city.But most of these people are urban,with urban values. They get upsetwhen animals do what animals do

naturally, usually barging in to getsomething to eat. They are not willingto deal with the animals themselvesand they expect the state or a privatecontractor to take care of it. Thirty-five years ago, the people who lived inthe countryside were country people,and if they had a problem with ananimal, they took care of it.”

Vast wooded buffers oncesurrounded DNR’s coastal wildlifepreserves. But urban growth is squeez-ing the Lewis Ocean Bay HeritagePreserve near Myrtle Beach and theVictoria Bluff Heritage Preserve onHilton Head Island. “Those pre-serves,” says Stowe, “will be hugechallenges because of the peoplearound them.”

Some city people reject measuresto control wild animals. The problemis that large predators, unless they’rehunted or managed wisely, can killyou. “When we populate an area thatis typically (big) cat country,” saysRichardson, “animals get used toseeing us, and after a while theyexperiment and try to taste us. This istrue of bears, alligators, and cougars.When animals lose their fear, theybecome dangerous.”

Reading

Bears in the Backyard, Deer in the Driveway. Washington, D.C.: International Associationof Fish and Wildlife Agencies, 1999.

Conover, Michael. Resolving Human-Wildlife Conflicts: The Science of Wildlife DamageManagement. Boca Raton, Fla.: Lewis Press, 2002.

Harden, Blaine. “Deer Draw Cougars Ever Eastward.” New York Times, Nov. 12, 2002.

MacCleery, Douglas W. American Forests: A History of Resiliency and Recovery. Durham,N.C.: Forest History Society, 2002.

Matthews, Anne. Wild Nights: Nature Returns to the City. New York: North Point Press,2001.

McKibben, Bill. “An Explosion of Green.” Atlantic Monthly, April 1995.

Paige, L.C. America’s Wildlife: The Challenge Ahead. Washington, D.C.: InternationalAssociation of Fish and Wildlife Agencies, 2000.

Palumbi, Stephen R. The Evolution Explosion: How Humans Cause Rapid EvolutionaryChange. New York: Norton, 2001

Reven, Andrew C. “Out of Control, Deer Send Ecosystem into Chaos.” New York Times,Nov. 12, 2002.

8 • COASTAL HERITAGE

HABITAT RECOVERY

Many Americans believe thathabitat and wildlife have steadilydisappeared throughout the UnitedStates over the past century. Butthat’s only partly true. In theeastern third of the United States,forested habitat and many wildlifepopulations have improved, butonly because conditions were sodreadful to begin with.

By 1800, the eastern seaboard’sforests were already aggressivelyconverted to farms and timber lots.Most Americans were subsistencefarmers who conducted “slash andburn” agriculture. They cut andburned the forest, grew crops for afew years until the fertility wasexhausted, and abandoned the land.Forests were cleared for shipbuildingproducts and charcoal for homeheating in towns and cities.

Americans already noticedwild-game declines by the 1830s.In England, the crown ownedwildlife, but in the United States itwas common property, and anyonewas free to shoot wild animals forfood or profit. Market hunters, whosold meat and feathers to urbanmarkets, began decimating birdand mammal populations.

During the nineteenth century,agriculture for international marketsintensified, particularly in theSouth. On the eve of the Civil War,there were tens of thousands ofsmall farms and hundreds of giantcotton plantations in the Carolinas.King Cotton’s reign continued longafter Reconstruction, thoughsouthern farmers and planters drewlower profits. South Carolina’scotton agricultural output morethan doubled between 1860 and1890. Prices for cotton, however,fell. Northern railroad syndicatescontrolled transportation networksand price mechanisms for southerncommodities.

To survive, farmers over-worked the land, using heavy doses

of fertilizer and tilling marginalsoils, causing severe erosion.Meanwhile, farmers and loggingcompanies cut down vast forests eastof the Mississippi River, andcommercial hunting flourished.

By 1900, many wildlife speciesneared extinction, including white-tailed deer, wild turkey, and blackbear. In response, conservationistslobbied to outlaw hunting of threat-ened species and then slowly nurturedthem back in some areas by restock-ing, setting bounties on predators, andcatch-limits for hunters and trappers.Game-conservation laws aided somespecies but harmed others. Predatorssuch as the coyote and cougar werehunted out of the South and East,and the red wolf was driven almostto extinction.

Then suddenly the southernagricultural economy fell apart. In the1920s, the boll weevil and a longdrought crushed U.S. cotton agricul-ture. About 40 percent of SouthCarolina’s 19 million acres were soexhausted that they were declared“destroyed” in 1934. Hungry ruralpeople killed wild creatures for food,and many game populations struggled.

Farmers during the nineteenthcentury fled New England’s rocky soilsfor western farms or factory jobs intowns and cities. The South followed asimilar pattern in the 1920s and ‘30s.Tens of thousands of black farmers leftSouth Carolina, and many whitefarmers gave up too.

Worn-out farmland quicklyreturned to forest. Since then, theeastern third of the United States has

SPRING 2003 • 9

ON THE MOVE. Some toppredators—coyote, red wolf, graywolf, bobcat, and cougar—should befurther encouraged or reintroduced toprevent populations of smallerpredators and herbivores from spinningout of control, some experts say. Redwolves, like this one at the SeweeVisitor and Environmental EducationCenter in Charleston County, wereonce extinct in the wild. But red wolveshave been successfully reintroducedinto northeastern North Carolina. Andnow a pair of red wolves—a youngfemale and a more experienced male—share an enclosure in Cape RomainNational Wildlife Refuge, wherebiologists hope the animals will producea pup in the spring and then they canbe returned to the wild.PHOTO/WADE SPEES

been home to one of the world’smost remarkable reforestations. In abook reissued in 2002, DouglasMacCleery of the U.S. ForestService describes the easternwoodlands’ comeback: “By the1960s and 1970s, the pattern offorest, field, and pastures (in theAppalachians and in many otherareas of the South and the East)was similar to that prior to 1800.”

That is, the extent of forest andagricultural land in many parts ofthe South and East in VietnamWar-era America was comparableto that when George Washingtonserved as U.S. president.

During the twentieth century,rural population drain, agriculturalstagnation, the modern conserva-tion movement, and hunting

regulations set the stage for anextraordinary rebirth for somewildlife species in the eastern thirdof the United States. Severalthousand white-tailed deer roamedSouth Carolina in 1900. Thispopulation grew to 30,000 to 40,000by the 1960s—when it grewexponentially to a million by thelate 1990s, says Ruth. The wildturkey was virtually extinct duringthe Depression; now four millioninhabit eastern and southern forests.

Yet few modern forests providethe rich habitat they once did,Pickett points out. Many easternand southern forests are immaturein ecological function, lacking thecomplexity found in more maturewoodlands. After logging, the forestcanopy grows back fairly quickly.

But the intricate, complexgroundcover—wildflowers, lichens,mushrooms, and small bushes—don’treturn for a much longer period. Nordo the animals that rely on specializedgroundcover. This is particularly trueof the South Carolina coastal plain’spine plantations, which replacedbiodiversity-rich longleaf pine forests.

“The plantation forests may lookgreat,” says Pickett, “but they oftenhave a very low biodiversity structure.Just because we have all these forestsdoesn’t mean we have all this habitat.”

WORLD’S DOMINANT FORCE

Humans today have unprec-edented influence on the future ofwild creatures. Either on purpose orby accident, we often determinewhich species survive and which fadeinto the background or face extinc-tion. Our manipulations of theenvironment alter animals’ behaviorsand sometimes even their evolution-ary tracks.

We could be the world’s domi-nant evolutionary force, arguesPalumbi, the Stanford Universitybiologist. With applications ofantibiotics and pesticides, intensecommercial fishing, and speciesintroductions, people have causedextremely swift evolutionary changesin bacteria, insects, and wild fish.Under intense harvesting pressure, forexample, pink salmon have rapidlyevolved smaller bodies. The largerfish were caught in nets, causing agenetic change so that new genera-tions grow more slowly.

Bacteria, insects, and wild fishreproduce rapidly and in largenumbers, so generations of changecan be readily observed, and naturalselection in the wild can be docu-mented. These creatures rely ongenetically based adaptation mecha-nisms to cope with new conditions.

Land animals, by contrast, haverelatively large brains, which offermechanisms other than genetics toconfront challenges. Instead of

10 • COASTAL HERITAGE

genetic evolution alone, terrestrialanimals can evolve behaviorally.“Cultural behavior can be learnedwithin a group,” says Palumbi, “andthat behavior can be passed downlike a cultural legacy from genera-tion to generation.”

A raccoon routinely beggingfor food at someone’s back porchsoon brings along her young, whichlearn to beg too. If this behavior isrewarded longenough, it ispassed downculturally, saysPalumbi.

Mountainlions and otherlarge predatorsalso learnquickly—tooquickly—aboutfriendly, curioushumans fasci-nated by bigcats. “We shouldnever attempt toassociate with them,” saysRichardson. “Every time they seeus, they should run. When theystop running and start walkingtoward us, we’re in trouble.”

But as humans have continueddominion over the natural world,the creatures most likely to survivehave been those attuned culturallyto our habits and tastes. A fewspecies, such as raccoon andopossum, may have even lost someof their feral—or wild—instincts.“Some of these animals arebecoming more like commen-sals”—like rats and mice that relyon and live in close proximity tohumans, says Greg Yarrow, aClemson University wildlifebiologist.

It’s not uncommon for suchspecies to alter their behaviors to adegree that they begin adaptingphysiologically. “Some animalsreproduce differently in urbanenvironments, with more litters peryear and larger litters,” says Adams.

TOP PREDATORS PROMOTED

Americans have encouragedbooming populations of nuisancespecies, yet many of us feel uneasytaking steps to control them.

Beginning in the 1960s, someenvironmentalists began to view anyhuman management of nature asdestructive, and animal-rights groupscondemned killing of animals for

sport or tomanage wildlifepopulations. Inrecent years,animal-rightsactivists havethwarted effortsby some localitiesto kill white-tailed deer inurban andsuburban areas.

As a result,some wildlifemanagers havetried to control

nuisance deer using various types offertility control. Some attempts atfertility control have shown prom-ise, but these have generally focusedon small numbers of deer in isolatedsettings. Until a researcher developsan effective long-term fertility-control method that is easy to use,hunters will continue to provide thebest opportunity to control herds.“Killing deer is currently the bestmanagement tool,” says Ruth. “Yetsome people say, ‘Don’t kill them.’”

South Carolina hunters havesuccessfully controlled deer herds inrural parts of the state. SouthCarolina has one of the leastrestrictive deer-hunting regulatorystructures in the nation, includingseasons, bag limits, and methods.

But hunting isn’t practical inurbanized areas, particularly alongthe coast. Hunters don’t want toshoot guns near houses, and cityordinances prohibit dischargingfirearms. Now some coastal residentscomplain about abundant deer,

while their neighbors want toprotect them. “In many coastalareas where there is development,we don’t hunt anymore, so the deerherds get tremendous,” says PriscillaM. Wright, DNR wildlife assistancecoordinator.

After a protracted lawsuit byanimal-welfare activists, DNR andthe managers of the gated commu-nity Sea Pines on Hilton HeadIsland are proceeding with a deer-management program to kill someanimals with sharpshooters.

Perhaps top predators—such ascoyote, wolf, bobcat, and cougar—should be further encouraged orreintroduced to prevent smallpredators and herbivores fromgetting out of control, some expertssay. Red wolves have been reintro-duced in North Carolina, and graywolves have been re-established inthe Northern Rocky Mountains.

Coyotes, which proliferatewithout direct help from man, couldalready be culling deer herds alongsome suburban-rural edges. Humanand coyote populations have grownrapidly during the past 15 years inNew York’s Hudson Highlands 50miles north of New York City, apopular second-home and weekenddestination. But, surprisingly, deerpopulations have not increased incomparable numbers. Scientiststheorize that coyotes are preying onvery young deer, especially fawnsless than a few months old.

“Now that deer are becoming asuburban problem, the coyotes mightactually help to maintain ecologicalhealth,” says Fred Koontz, director ofthe New York Bioscape Initiative, aresearch and education project basedin Palisades, New York. “Thesuburban-rural interface is whereyou’ll likely have bigger concentra-tions of coyote,” says Koontz, “andit’s at these interfaces where coyotescould play a role in balancing thedeer populations.”

Mountain lions meanwhile aresteadily migrating from western

CHARLES RUTH

“Killing deer is

currently the best

management tool.

Yet some people say,

‘Don’t kill them.’”

SPRING 2003 • 11

HOT PURSUIT. Doug Smith of Wildlife Solutions,Inc., a private company, puts traps on the roof of anabandoned building where raccoons have climbedinto the attic through openings in the eaves. Withtheir habitats disappearing under suburban sprawl,wildlife will find places to live in cities, causingeconomic losses and property damage.PHOTO/WADE SPEES

12 • COASTAL HERITAGE

Baltimore Long-Term Ecological Research Program: http://beslter.org

Central Arizona-Phoenix Long-Term Ecological Research Program:http://caplter.asu.edu

Clemson University Extension Wildlife Program: http://www.clemson.edu/wildlife

International Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies:http://www.iafwa.org/page2.htm

S.C. Department of Natural Resources Wildlife and Freshwater FisheriesDivision: http://www.dnr.state.sc.us/wild/index.html

Web sites

states to the Midwest, attracted by vastnumbers of deer. Confirmed lionsightings or their roadside carcasseshave been found in Nebraska, Kansas,North Dakota, Iowa, and Minnesota.

“Eventually you will see puma inSouth Carolina,” says Paul Beier, awildlife ecologist at Northern ArizonaUniversity, who has extensively studiedmountain lions.

It might take 50 years or more formountain lions to migrate naturally toSouth Carolina, or five to 10 years if theFlorida panther is reintroduced intonorthern Florida under a proposed U.S.Fish and Wildlife plan. Environmental-ists and resource managers have hopedto return the panther to its historicrange in the South, which includes thecoastal plain of South Carolina betweenSavannah and Charleston and thewestern third of the state.

More mountain lions in the Southand East would diminish deer numbers,says Beier. “Most attempts to model thedynamics suggest that deer herds areprobably 10 percent to 25 percent lowerwith the top predator in the system.There would still be a lot of deer left forhunters and wildlife viewers.”

Top predators help preserveecosystem functions and contribute toricher biodiversity. Mountain lions notonly limit overabundant herbivores,which can destroy native plants, butthese large cats also devour smaller

predators like raccoons, which feast onsongbird eggs and thus suppress somebird populations.

Mountain lions, of course, aredangerous if people are careless aroundthem. As author Anne Matthews pointsout in a recent book: “For a hungryyoung mountain lion, humans and deerpose similar problems in hunting: samesize, same weight, same tendency to boltwhen confronted. But deer run faster.”

Richardson, the Florida pantherexpert, argues that big cats can besafely integrated into places in theSouth and the East where sufficienthabitat has been preserved. The Floridapanther lives without incident inSouth Florida’s remaining wild areasadjacent to densely populated cities.

Still, mountain lions must behunted or otherwise managed toremind them that humans are danger-ous. “We need to keep these animalswild,” says Richardson. “When they getused to us, we start having troubles.That’s why wild areas are so important.Wild areas are for our protection asmuch as for the animals’.”

That’s the paradox of the modernrelationship between humans and wildcreatures. For wildness to thrive, peoplemust manage it intensively, recreatingor sustaining natural processes andfunctions. Leaving wildness to its owndevices usually means that it willdisappear—or turn around and bite us.

Adaptable raptors

Many species of hawks, owls,eagles, and falcons are generalists,which means they can adapt quicklywhen one source of food disappearsor when nesting sites are disrupted.

“Changes (to raptors’ habitat)don’t have to be fatally disruptive,”says James D. Elliott, Jr., executivedirector of the S.C. Center for Birdsof Prey. “It’s a matter of understand-ing the ecology of the birds you’redealing with. Raptors can adapt, butit’s a question of whether you’remaking changes at a crucial time intheir nesting and breeding cycle.The scale and pace of developmentcan be too large and fast, shockingthe population, so the birds don’thave a chance to modify theirbehavior. We often don’t allow timefor them to adjust.”

Many raptors can adapt todramatic changes to their environ-ment, but only if the changes occuroutside nesting and breedingschedules. Thus a developer can cutdown an historically favored nestsite if this change happens whenthe birds are not breeding, so thebirds have time to find anotherplace, says Elliott.

Some raptors are so adaptablethat they thrive in the nation’sbiggest cities. In 1970, theperegrine falcon was an endangeredspecies, with only 300 pairsnationwide. Now falcons nest andhunt in New York City, Baltimore,Chicago, Seattle, and other cities,swooping among high buildings tocatch pigeons.

But raptors with specializedfeeding or nesting requirements arestruggling. Take the snail kite, whicheats freshwater snails in Florida.When swamps are drained, thefreshwater snails disappear, and thesnail kite cannot switch to anotherfood source, says Elliott. Now thesnail kite is classified as endan-gered in Florida. Other raptors thathave lost population due to habitatloss include the southeasternAmerican kestrel, the spotted owl,and the burrowing owl.

SPRING 2003 • 13

Wildlife ecologists once believed that the only environments worth studying were remote and“pristine,” untouched by human hands. Ecologists ignored urban areas except as places wherepeople had destroyed nature.

But this began to change in the mid-1970s, when scientists began acknowledging that humans hadaltered virtually every environment in the continental United States by hunting, harvesting, ranching, andfarming. “All of these landscapes were formed by fire, cattle, people of different cultures,” says ChristineAlfsen-Norodom, the coordinator of Columbia University and UNESCO’s joint program on the biosphereand society. Today, the United States “is heavily impacted by humans from coast to coast.”

In other words, human influences on nature are a matter of degree, and people are embedded in allnatural processes. Such ideas led some scientists to explore a new frontier of research: urban ecology.

City environments are surprisingly rich biologically. Forexample, bird diversity in the Phoenix metro area is actuallyhigher than that in the surrounding desert, as is total birdabundance. Many bird species are attracted to the city wherewater and other resources are more consistently available thanin the desert. Birds especially prefer sewage treatment plantsand detention basins, where plant productivity flourishes.

Still, “knowing the number of species (in a given place) isnot that instructive,” says Steward Pickett, senior scientist atthe Institute of Ecosystem Studies, based in Millbrook, NewYork, and project director of the National Science

Foundation’s Long Term Ecological Research Program (LTER) in Baltimore. The agency is supporting thenation’s two major, interdisciplinary urban-ecology studies in Phoenix and Baltimore.

“Biodiversity by itself doesn’t mean all that much,” says Pickett. “You really have to know what thespecies are and what the species do, and that’s the hard part of ecology.”

In both the Baltimore and Phoenix metro areas, non-native nuisance species predominate, according toLTER research. Two hundred bird species have been documented in Phoenix, but one-quarter of them areexotics like house sparrows, starlings, and rock doves. “A few of these urban specialists are very efficient atusing resources of the city,” says Madhusudan Katti, a post-doctoral research associate at Arizona StateUniversity. “They are more flexible and can out-compete native species.”

Resource-rich urban environments are altering many birds’ physiology. A bird’s hormonal clock coin-cides breeding with warmer weather and longer spring days so that newborns arrive at times of greater foodavailability. The urban environment, however, is altering these hormonal clocks. Fossil-fuel burning in-creases local temperatures in large metro areas, creating microclimates where spring starts sooner. Some birdspecies have begun their spring breeding earlier in the city than in the desert, and their breeding seems tolast longer. Some species breed more than once each year in urbanized places, so they build up higherdensities there.

But “not all bird species are capable of altering their reproductive systems” to accommodate urbanliving, says Katti. “Some birds have hormonal systems that are very tightly coupled with day length,” so theyare less flexible and therefore have difficulty competing in the city. “The ones that do well are more flex-ible.” Meanwhile, the birds that lack flexibility fade in population, at least in urban places.

Frontier of urban ecology

“A few of these urban specialistsare very efficient at using resourcesof the city,” says Madhusudan Katti,a post-doctoral research associateat Arizona State University. “They aremore flexible and can out-competenative species.”

14 • COASTAL HERITAGE

Coastal Zone ’03Baltimore, MarylandJuly 13-17, 2003

The Coastal Zone conferenceseries is the premier internationalgathering of ocean and coastal-management professionals. Thisbiennial symposium attracts morethan 1,200 participants from aroundthe world. Attend Coastal Zone ’03to explore coastal-zone manage-ment through time—yesterday,today, and tomorrow. Throughconcurrent plenaries, panels,roundtables, and discussions,participants will gain knowledgethey can use to guide future coastal-management decisions. For generalinformation, contact Gale Peek,conference manager, atGale.Peek@noaa.gov or(843) 740-1231.

Coastal Heritage is printedon recycled paper.

Web site: http://www.scseagrant.org

287 Meeting StreetCharleston, S.C. 29401

NON-PROFIT ORGU.S. Postage PaidCharleston, SCPERMIT #248

SUBSCRIPTIONS ARE FREE UPON REQUEST BY CONTACTING: ANNETTE.DUNMEYER@SCSEAGRANT.ORG

Science Serving South Carolina’s Coast

SouthEast COSEEOcean EducationLeadership InstituteWilmington, North CarolinaJune 22-27, 2003

The SouthEast Center forOcean Sciences Education Excel-lence (COSEE) will be hosting itsfirst Ocean Education LeadershipInstitute for middle- and high-school educators at the Universityof North Carolina at Wilmington.The institute’s participants willconsist of 30 educators from NorthCarolina, South Carolina, andGeorgia. Eight educators and twomedia specialists from each statewill be chosen to participate. Forinquiries and electronic applica-tions, contact Margaret Olsen atmargo@mindspring.com

South Carolina ClearWater ContractorWorkshopCharleston, South CarolinaMay 28, 2003

General contractors, paving andgrading contractors, bulldozer operators,excavators, and all others involved in landdisturbance will learn how to reducesediment and erosion into South Carolinawaterways. Upon completion of the one-day course, which includes a final exam,each graduating attendee will have thestatus of a South Carolina Clear WaterContractor. The workshop helps kick offthe new South Carolina Clear WaterContractor Program, a partnership ofClemson Extension Service, DHEC’sOffice of Ocean and Coastal ResourceManagement, and the South Carolina SeaGrant Consortium. The program will soonexpand across the state. For more informa-tion, contact Cal Sawyer at (843) 722-5940 or calvins@clemson.edu