Date of Award:

8-2024

Document Type:

Thesis

Degree Name:

Master of Science (MS)

Department:

Wildland Resources

Committee Chair(s)

Julie K. Young

Committee

Julie K. Young

Committee

Jon P. Beckmann

Committee

Erica F. Stuber

Abstract

As more people live in cities, wildlife increasingly encounters people. Coyotes (Canis latrans) and red foxes (Vulpes vulpes) are two carnivores that have easily adapted to urban environments causing them to come into conflict with people and their pets. Citizen science, where members of the community aid scientists in the collection of data, has emerged as a low-cost method of studying these species that can provide benefits to management agencies but may provide different results than traditional methods. We analyzed data collected by citizen scientists and data collected via motion-triggered camera traps to see how each relates to distance to roads, building density, median household income, and distance to water. We also investigated the potential benefits of advertising the citizen science project on social media. To evaluate differences between the two methods, we used data from a grid of 67 cameras across the city of Wichita, Kansas, USA, between March 2023 and February 2024 and data collected simultaneously from a website we created and advertised on social media where members of the public could report sightings of urban coyotes and foxes to determine canid distribution. The camera-trap models suggested that red fox occurrence was not related to any of our variables and coyote occurrence was only related negatively to building density. The citizen science models suggested that sightings of both species were more likely closer to roads, at intermediate building densities, and in high income neighborhoods. Additionally, coyotes and red foxes were both most likely to be detected by people during crepuscular periods but most likely to be detected by cameras at night. We also found that in addition to increasing the reports of sightings from the public, the advertisements generated six times as much revenue for the wildlife agency than was spent. Our study suggests that citizen science data differs from camera-trap data by human activity patterns and distribution, but citizen science projects can provide other benefits such as generating revenue for management agencies.

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Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License

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