Stags in the city: how deer found their way into our town centres and back gardens

As the UK’s deer population explodes, more of the animals are heading into urban areas. Why – and will they be welcome there?

Lucy Jones

Wed 20 Mar 2019 12.00 GMT

If you head out to the shops today, or a churchyard, or a school, or a playground, and you live in a town or city, you might be in for a surprise. Cats, dogs, squirrels, even foxes are part and parcel of our urban landscapes now but increasingly, it’s not out of the question that you might just as easily meet a deer.

The deer population in the UK is at the highest it has been for at least 1,000 years, at around two million. Over the past few decades, does and stags have been spotted in urban areas and villages around the UK, from Glasgow, to Sheffield and London. This week, the Royal Horticultural Society released guidance on how gardeners can deer-proof their outdoor spaces. Replace tulips with daffodils and red hot pokers, it suggests, because deer don’t like the taste and it will stop them rummaging through your flowerbeds.

So how did deer come to wander into our back gardens? For a start, population growth. Accurate data on exact deer numbers is scarce because the animals are secretive with a significant range. However, there is evidence that numbers of red, roe and muntjac deer are increasing. In Scotland, the deer population has doubled in the past 50 years. There are many reasons for this: since wolves, lynx and bears became extinct hundreds of years ago, deer have had no predators to contend with. They, along with other wildlife, have also benefited from other factors including milder winters, increased woodland cover in some areas and changes in farming such as the planting of winter crops.

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When coyote parents get used to humans, their offspring become bolder, too

Date: March 11, 2019

Source:  University of Washington

Across North America, coyotes are moving into urban environments, and regardless of how they feel about it, urban residents are having to get used to some new animal neighbors. A big question for wildlife researchers is how coyotes habituate to humans, which can potentially lead to conflict.

A study led by a University of Washington Tacoma faculty member, recently published in Ecology and Evolution, suggests coyotes can habituate to humans quickly and that habituated parents pass this fearlessness on to their offspring.

"Even if it's only 0.001 percent of the time, when a coyote threatens or attacks a person or a pet, it's national news, and wildlife management gets called in," said first author Christopher Schell, an assistant professor at UW Tacoma. "We want to understand the mechanisms that contribute to habituation and fearlessness, to prevent these situations from occurring."

The study, done as part of Schell's doctoral work at the University of Chicago, focused on eight coyote families at the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Predator Research Facility in Millville, Utah. The research center was founded in the 1970s to reduce coyote attacks on sheep and other livestock.

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Urban butterfly declines 69% compared to 45% drop in countryside

Pesticides, paving and higher temperatures have put huge strain on butterflies in cities over past two decades, finds study

Patrick Barkham

Thursday 16 February 2017 06.01 GMT 

Butterflies have vanished from towns and cities more rapidly than from the countryside over the past two decades, according to a new study.

Industrial agriculture has long been viewed as the scourge of butterflies and other insects but city life is worse – urban butterfly abundance fell by 69% compared to a 45% decline in rural areas over 20 years from 1995.

Butterfly species such as the small copper and small heath have suffered particularly disastrous urban declines, according to the study published in the journal Ecological Indicators. 

Scientists at Butterfly Conservation, the University of Kent and the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology found that numbers of small heath fell by 78% in urban areas compared to just 17% in the countryside, while small copper abundance fell by 75% in urban areas compared to 23% in the countryside.

Prof Tom Brereton, head of monitoring at Butterfly Conservation and one of the study’s co-authors, said causes included heightened effects of climate change in cities, building on urban green space, the loss of surprisingly wildlife-rich brownfield sites, council cuts and the neglect of parks and pesticide-wielding gardeners who have also turned lawns and flower beds into driveways and patios.

He said: “Urban areas are under massive pressure. People are paving over gardens for drives or patios and putting more pesticides on their gardens per area than are put on farmland. Bigger gardens are being sold off for development and councils have less resources for managing green spaces.”

The study, which compares trends for 28 species in urban and countryside environments, found that most urban butterflies are emerging earlier and are longer-lived than the same species living in rural areas.

On average, city butterflies emerge two days earlier than their country cousins. Urban brimstones are on the wing five days earlier than those found in rural locations.

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Urban habitats 'provide haven' for bees

By Helen Briggs

Environment Correspondent

Britain's urban areas are home to more types of wild bee than farmland, a study has found.

Flowers planted in gardens and allotments provide a valuable food source for bees across the year, according to research.

Scientists counted honey bees, bumble bees and other pollinating insects, in and around some of the UK's largest towns and cities.

Urban habitats can provide a valuable role in bee conservation, they say.

Honey bees, bumble bees and other insects that pollinate plants are under threat from habitat loss, pesticides and diseases.

But new research suggests that bees and other pollinating insects thrive as well in towns and cities as they do in farms and nature reserves.

A team led by Dr Katherine Baldock of the University of Bristol said urban landscapes - making up 7% of the UK - deserve more attention in the drive to protect bees from decline.

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Could sound design help captive rhino breeding?

1 November 2014 Last updated at 13:49

By Jonathan Webb

Science reporter, BBC News

Researchers in Texas are investigating whether the hum and rumble of urban life is one of the factors that hinders the captive breeding of rhinoceroses.

Other research has considered the influence of diet and physical surroundings, but scientists speaking at a conference said they believed the animals' soundscape might be crucial.

Rhinos have extremely good ears, picking up "infrasound" far deeper than the range of human hearing.

Three species are listed as endangered.

"We can go into some zoos and think, this is delightfully quiet - but it might be that some animals don't think it's quiet at all, because urban areas have a lot of chronic infrasound," said lead researcher Suzi Wiseman.

Ms Wiseman, who has just completed a doctorate in environmental geography at Texas State University, presented her preliminary results at a meeting of the Acoustical Society of America in Indianapolis.

'Healthy soundscape'

Rhinos, she explained, can hear down to a frequency of four hertz, whereas even a human baby, with entirely undamaged ears, can normally only pick up sounds as low as 20 hertz. Giraffes and elephants can also hear in this infrasound range.

The other end of rhino hearing might also be quite acute, because people have witnessed the animals making high-pitched whistling and giggling noises when adults and youngsters play.

"The soundscape is something that zoos need to consider and it's something that can be improved," Ms Wiseman told the BBC.

She said that although zoos and other institutions had made a lot of effort to make their animals as comfortable as possible, "nobody's really looked at the noise factor".

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Urban areas are hives for wild bees

23 August 2014 Last updated at 00:31

By Mark Kinver

Environment reporter, BBC News

A study has found a "considerable richness" of wild bee species in most types of urban habitats.

French researchers recorded almost a third of the nation's 900 species of wild bees living in towns and cities.

Writing in Plos One, they added that 60 species were also found in very urbanised areas in the city of Lyon.

There is widespread concern that wild bee populations in rural areas are being adversely affected by a number of factors, including pesticides.

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Invasive alien species threaten urban environments

Europe's towns and cities are particularly vulnerable to the threat posed by invasive species, say experts.

They say urban areas are at higher risk from invasive alien species (IAS) as a result of more transport links.

IAS are non-native plants or animals that have no natural predators, spread rapidly and overwhelm an area's native flora and fauna.

Next week, the European Commission is expected to outline its plans to tackle the continent's invasive species.

"These non-indigenous species represent one of the main threats to the world's biodiversity," explained Chantal van Ham, European program officer for the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

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Snapping Turtles Finding Refuge in Urban Areas While Habitats Are Being Polluted

Aug. 27, 2013 — In the Midwest, some people have a fear of encountering snapping turtles while swimming in local ponds, lakes and rivers. Now in a new study, a University of Missouri researcher has found that snapping turtles are surviving in urban areas as their natural habitats are being polluted or developed for construction projects. One solution is for people to stop using so many chemicals that are eventually dumped into the waterways, the scientist said.

"Snapping turtles are animals that can live in almost any aquatic habitat as long as their basic needs for survival are met," said Bill Peterman, a post-doctoral researcher in the Division of Biological Sciences at MU. "Unfortunately, suitable aquatic habitats for turtles are being degraded by pollution or completely lost due to development. We found that snapping turtles can persist in urbanized areas, despite the potential for more interaction with humans."

Peterman said that reducing negative inputs, such as waste and harmful chemicals, into waterways will help restore snapping turtles' habitats. Engaging in this type of environmental action also will increase biodiversity in those habitats and improve the quality of life to all species that call those habitats home.

However, even though turtles are living in urban areas, Peterman says people have nothing to fear.

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Native Landscaping in Urban Areas Can Help Native Birds

ScienceDaily (Aug. 22, 2012) — A recent study of residential landscape types and native bird communities in Phoenix, Ariz., led by a University of Massachusetts Amherst urban ecologist suggests that yards mimicking native vegetation and wildlands offer birds "mini refuges," helping to offset the loss of biodiversity in cities and supporting birds better than traditional grass lawns and non-native plantings.

The study, led by Susannah Lerman with her advisor Paige Warren at UMass Amherst, and Hilary Gan and Eyal Shochat at Arizona State University, is one of the first to use quantitative measures and a systematic approach, with 24-hour video monitoring, to assess and compare foraging behavior of common backyard birds in yards in Phoenix, at the northern edge of the Sonoran Desert. It appears in the current issue of PLOS ONE.

It is also one of the first to conduct experiments to compare different types of a single urban landscape form (residential yards), Lerman says. Overall, the study found that desert-like, "xeric" yards had a more even bird community and superior habitat compared to moist, or "mesic," grass lawns in the Phoenix area.

Continued: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/08/120822184134.htm