Mammal Study

Urban wildlife management is growing in importance in the U.S. and Canada. This paper describes the archetypical history of wildlife population exploitation, recovery, impact management, and the anthropogenic root-causes for management of many species in urban environments. Although urban and traditional wildlife management situations differ in many ways, in both contexts, some species are welcome to co-exist with humans, while other species are considered intolerable. Management approaches and techniques tailored to urban situations are still in early days of development. Urban wildlife management issues tend to be “wicked problems” (problems where disparate human values lead to different interpretations of desirable outcomes and acceptable means of achieving them). People sharing the same space with each other and with wildlife inevitably perceive different impacts from wildlife. Experience has amply demonstrated the difficulty of finding a management response that is accepted across all segments of an urban community. Arguably, urban wildlife management ranks with species imperilment as one of the greatest conservation challenges of our time, but for a very different reason. The problems people experience with urban wildlife, if not curbed, could lead to popular backlash against wildlife and habitat conservation within or proximate to urban areas.

Recently, brown bears have moved deeper inside urban areas in Sapporo, the fifth-largest city with a population of 1.9 million in Japan. Here, I review urban large carnivore management and its human dimension and discuss how to create a model of harmonious coexistence that includes both management of human—brown bear conflict (HBC) and conservation of the lush, green environment of Sapporo. Although large carnivores that use urban landscapes can temporarily obtain an abundance of high-energy foods, they are also subject to high rates of human-derived mortality. Brown bear invasions of the city center of Sapporo are still rare and are likely caused by bear population increase and distribution expansion within the last decade. It is important to manage urban borders to reduce their attractiveness. A verdant environment and biodiversity conservation are considered to be important to urban residents in Sapporo. Urban HBC, however, is an unavoidable consequence of this style of living. Because a variety of stakeholders affected by HBC and its management live in the city, their various values should be reflected in wildlife management policy through a more collaborative, community-based decision-making model.

Species composition and pest status of rodents were studied in Tendaho Sugarcane Plantation during August 2013—April 2014. Three trapping grids were randomly selected in the plantation based on the growth stages of the cane, viz., immature (ISP), young (YSP), and old (OSP). An additional grid was selected in the bushland (BLA) area outside the sugarcane plantation. A total of 269 individuals of rodents were captured in 2,940 trap nights, with a cumulative trap success of 9.15% for the different habitats for wet and dry seasons. Captured animals were of the following seven species of rodents: Arvicanthis niloticus (103), Mastomys natalensis (63), Rattus rattus (47), Tatera robusta (22), Arvicanthis dembeensis (14), Mus mahomet (13), and Mus musculus (7). The Shannon-Weaver Index shows the rodent diversity was 0.24, 0.36, 0.34, and 0.33 in ISP, YSP, OSP, and BLA, respectively. Abundance of species varied in bushland and in different growth stages of the sugarcane plantation. There were seasonal differences in the abundance and trap success of rodents. Up to 4.6% of the sugarcane stalks were damaged by rodents in the present study area. Sugarcane fibers were present in the stomach contents of snap trapped rodents from plantations revealing their pest status.

The distance at which animals start to flee from approaching threats should reflects the degree of fearfulness, and thus, provides a useful measurement to evaluate animal personality and tolerance to human disturbance. Such metrics measurements, however, are mostly limited to open, high visible habitats, such as grasslands and urban parks. Alternative measurements are required for other types of habitats, such as typical forests. For arboreal species, we expect that a vertical escape distance (VED), the height at which animals stop climbing in a tree toward approaching threats, would reflect animal fearfulness. We compared VED and two commonly used metrics, alert distance (AD) and flight initiation distance (FID) in the Eurasian red squirrel (Sciurus vulgaris) towards human approach. We found that VED was significantly related with FID, but not AD. Data collection rate in VED was two to three times higher than that in the two previous metrics in vegetated areas. In natural environments, VED would also reflect the degree of fearfulness in arboreal species.

Karyotypes of Dremomys pernyi from Kanding, Sichuan Province, China and D. pyrrhomerus from Nanling, Guangdong Province, China were examined. The karyotype of D. pernyi was of 2n = 40 and FNa = 72, while that of D. pyrrhomerus was of 2n = 38 and FNa = 70. Karyotype of D. pernyi from Kanding was different in 2n and FNa from reported karyotype of conspecific population from Taiwan, and it is suggested that the Taiwan population represents a distinct species D. owstoni from D. pernyi. The difference between karyotypes of D. pernyi and D. pyrrhomerus may involve at least a Robertsonian rearrangement and a heterochromatin addition.

Northern fur seals (Callorhinus ursinus) disperse to broad areas and overwinter in the North Pacific Ocean during the non-breeding season. Fur seals breeding on islands off Russia mainly overwinter in the Sea of Japan and the off Pacific side of Japan in this season. Although the distribution of fur seals seems to vary with sexes and growth stages in this season, there is little information around Japan. We analysed data on stranding and collecting records of fur seals in the non-breeding season around northern Japan during 2005–2014 for investigating their intra-seasonal and spatial occurrence. The sex and growth stage composition differed between sampling areas. Adult males were dominant in the Sea of Japan, while juveniles and adult females were dominant in the Pacific coast of northern Japan. Compared with previous researches, our results can provide important information for elucidating migration pattern and habitat selection of each sex and growth stage around northern Japan.

Sika deer (Cervus nippon) populations in Hokkaido have irrupted during the last three decades, causing severe damage to agriculture and forestry. Methods have been developed to estimate their population size on large but not on small scales. We estimated deer density using distance sampling to analyze the feasibility of employing the line-transect method in forested habitats on a management-district scale. Spotlight counts were conducted four times each year on the Iburi (IMD; 11 routes; 328.8 km total survey length) and Kushiro (KMD; 10 routes; 352.6 km) management districts in November 2013 and 2014. We observed 206 herds (302 deer) on the IMD and 680 herds (1,173 deer) on the KMD. Density estimates on the KMD, 39.6 ± 4.9 (average ± SE) in 2013 and 15.6 ± 2.3 in 2014, were significantly higher than those on the IMD, the former 8.4 ± 1.9 and the latter 4.4 ± 0.8. The line-transect method using distance sampling was useful for estimating deer density on the management-district scale. However, the large interannual variations of estimated density suggest that we have to specify the factors for annual variation in the future studies.

Ciliate fauna collected from the rumens of eight wild Japanese serows (Capricornis crispus) captured in the northern part of Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan, were compared with the ciliate faunas found in other Japanese wild ruminants. We identified six species belonging to two genera of ciliates (Entodinium nanellum, Ent. minimum, Ent. simplex, Ent. dubardi, Ent. longinucleatum, and Elytroplastron bubali), all of which had been reported in a previous study examining the rumen contents of Japanese serows in Gifu and Miyagi Prefectures. However, four of the previously identified ciliate species (Dasytricha ruminantium, Ent. lobosospinosum, Ent. ekendrae, and Epidinium ecaudatum) were not detected in this study. Ely. bubali was detected frequently, suggesting that this species is characteristic of the rumen of Japanese serows. Furthermore, the six ciliate species in this study were observed in over 70% of the studied serows, suggesting that these ciliate species are widely distributed in the rumens of serows in this study area.