Diverging from centuries of
established behavioral norms, red fox and coyote have gone against their wild
instincts and learned to coexist in the urban environment of Madison and the
University of Wisconsin-Madison campus, according to a recently published study
in the journal PLOS One.
Lead author Marcus Mueller, a
former graduate student in forest and wildlife ecology, and David Drake, his
advisor and a professor in the department, found that over a two-year period,
red foxes and coyotes they had radio-tagged were coming into close contact with
one another. Some even established home ranges that overlapped.
The findings have implications
for wildlife managers working to promote co-existence of species and mitigate
conflicts between animals and people in urban settings.
"It gives us a better
understanding of the types of habitats foxes and coyotes prefer to use in
developed and residential areas," says Mueller, who now owns a wildlife
management company in Milwaukee. "This in turn can help us reduce the
kinds of problems that can arise when wild animals and people come into
contact."
It also shows that these
relatives of dogs have been able to carve out a successful niche for themselves
in our own yards, parks and alleys, and are finding ways to coexist with each
other to take advantage of this new resource-rich real estate.
"We found an instance where
a coyote routinely visited a fox den over about a two or three week
period," Drake said. "But the fox and kits did not abandon the den,
suggesting to us that they didn't feel predation pressure from the
coyote."
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