Scott Dawn M, Berg Maureen J, Tolhurst Bryony A, Chauvenet Alienor L M, Smith Graham C, Neaves Kelly, Lochhead Jamie, Baker Philip J
Biology and Biomedical Sciences Division, University of Brighton, Brighton, East Sussex, United Kingdom.
National Wildlife Management Centre, Animal Health and Veterinary Laboratories Agency, York, Yorkshire, United Kingdom.
PLoS One. 2014 Jun 11;9(6):e99059. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0099059. eCollection 2014.
Urbanization is one of the major forms of habitat alteration occurring at the present time. Although this is typically deleterious to biodiversity, some species flourish within these human-modified landscapes, potentially leading to negative and/or positive interactions between people and wildlife. Hence, up-to-date assessment of urban wildlife populations is important for developing appropriate management strategies. Surveying urban wildlife is limited by land partition and private ownership, rendering many common survey techniques difficult. Garnering public involvement is one solution, but this method is constrained by the inherent biases of non-standardised survey effort associated with voluntary participation. We used a television-led media approach to solicit national participation in an online sightings survey to investigate changes in the distribution of urban foxes in Great Britain and to explore relationships between urban features and fox occurrence and sightings density. Our results show that media-based approaches can generate a large national database on the current distribution of a recognisable species. Fox distribution in England and Wales has changed markedly within the last 25 years, with sightings submitted from 91% of urban areas previously predicted to support few or no foxes. Data were highly skewed with 90% of urban areas having <30 fox sightings per 1000 people km(-2). The extent of total urban area was the only variable with a significant impact on both fox occurrence and sightings density in urban areas; longitude and percentage of public green urban space were respectively, significantly positively and negatively associated with sightings density only. Latitude, and distance to nearest neighbouring conurbation had no impact on either occurrence or sightings density. Given the limitations associated with this method, further investigations are needed to determine the association between sightings density and actual fox density, and variability of fox density within and between urban areas in Britain.
城市化是当前栖息地改变的主要形式之一。尽管这通常对生物多样性有害，但一些物种在这些人类改造的景观中繁衍生息，这可能导致人与野生动物之间产生负面和/或正面的相互作用。因此，对城市野生动物种群进行最新评估对于制定适当的管理策略很重要。城市野生动物调查受到土地分割和私有制的限制，使得许多常见的调查技术难以实施。争取公众参与是一种解决方案，但这种方法受到与自愿参与相关的非标准化调查工作固有偏差的限制。我们采用以电视为主导的媒体方式，征集全国范围内对一项在线目击调查的参与，以调查英国城市狐狸分布的变化，并探索城市特征与狐狸出现情况及目击密度之间的关系。我们的结果表明，基于媒体的方法可以生成一个关于一个可识别物种当前分布的大型全国性数据库。在过去25年里，英格兰和威尔士的狐狸分布发生了显著变化，之前预计很少或没有狐狸的城市地区中有91%提交了目击报告。数据高度偏态，90%的城市地区每1000人平方公里的狐狸目击数少于30次。城市总面积是对城市狐狸出现情况和目击密度都有显著影响的唯一变量；经度和城市公共绿地百分比分别仅与目击密度显著正相关和负相关。纬度以及与最近相邻城市集聚区的距离对出现情况或目击密度均无影响。鉴于这种方法存在的局限性，需要进一步调查以确定目击密度与实际狐狸密度之间的关联，以及英国城市内部和城市之间狐狸密度的变异性。
