Mesocarnivores in residential yards: Influence of yard features on the occupancy, relative abundance, and overlap of coyotes, grey fox, and red fox

As conversion of natural areas to human development continues, there is a lack of information about how developed areas can sustainably support wildlife. While large predators are often extirpated from areas of human development, some medium-bodied mammalian predators (hereafter, mesocarnivores) have adapted to co-exist in human-dominated areas.

How human-dominated areas such as residential yards are used by mesocarnivores is not well understood. Our study aimed to identify yard and landscape features that influence occupancy, relative abundance and spatial-temporal overlap of three widespread mesocarnivores, namely, coyote (Canis latrans), grey fox (Urocyon cineroargenteus) and red fox (Vulpes vulpes).

Over the summers of 2021 and 2022, we deployed camera-traps in 46 and 96 residential yards, spanning from low-density rural areas (<1 home per km²) to more urban areas (589 homes per km²) in north-western Arkansas, USA.

We found that mesocarnivore occupancy was marginally influenced by yard-level features as opposed to landscape composition. Fences reduced the occupancy probability of coyotes, although they were positively associated with the total area of potential shelter sites in a yard. We found that relative abundance of grey fox was highest in yards with poultry, highlighting a likely source of conflict with homeowners. We found that all three species were primarily nocturnal and activity overlap between the species pairs was high.

Thus, these species may be using spatio-temporal partitioning to avoid antagonistic encounters and our data supported this, with few examples of species occurring in the same yards during the same 24-h period.

As the number of residential yards continues to grow, our results suggested that there are ways in which our yards can provide resources to mesocarnivores and that homeowners also have agency to mitigate overlap with mesocarnivores through management of their yard features.