Human Behavior May be Drastically Impacting Birds in Suburbia

Human behaviors may just be impacting birds. Scientists have found that habitat alteration may be less important when it comes to driving the effects of "exurban" development on bird communities.

Exurban development is generally rural residential development in attractive natural areas characterized by low density and large lot sizes. This type of development can result in a series of environmental impacts, including habitat fragmentation and disturbance from domestic pets. This usually results in altered wildlife abundance, species composition and behavior in a surrounding ecosystem.

In this latest study, the researchers decided to see whether some ecosystem types were more sensitive than others to exurban development. The scientists examined developmental impacts on bird communities in Essex County, New York and Madison County, Montana. The former is marked by relatively continuous, closed canopy Adirondack forest while the latter is marked by heterogeneous grasslands interspersed with forest and shrub communities of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.

"We hypothesized that due to its greater structural diversity, the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem would be less sensitive to exurban development and would therefore show fewer impacts to bird communities than in the Adirondacks," said Michale Glennon, one of the researchers, in a news release. "Surprisingly, that was not the case."

The researchers divided the birds into several different groups. These groups included edge specialists, low-nesters, area sensitive species and neotropical migrants. They found that with the exception of microhabitat specialists, exurban development had very similar effects on birds in both regions.

So what impacts did they have? Neotropical migrants, low-nesters and area sensitive species were negatively impacted while edge specialists benefited from the development. The greatest impacts included human disturbance.

"These findings underscore the importance of understanding the role humans play within an ecosystem and could potentially lead to specific recommendations for landowners to minimize their impacts on local biota," said Heidi Kretser, WCS Livelihoods Coordinator.

The findings are published in the journal Environmental Management.

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