THE EFFECTS OF HISTORICAL AND CURRENT LAND USE ON THE HABITAT USE AND COMMUNITIES OF URBAN WILDLIFE IN THE WASHINGTON, D.C. METROPOLITAN AREA

Abstract

Understanding past legacies of urban land use is important to identify ecological processes and inform best management practices for wildlife-friendly cities in the future. My first dissertation chapter is an overview of my personal research philosophy and how it relates to this dissertation. The second chapter is a systematic literature review that addresses the state of global urban wildlife research. Urban wildlife research is predominantly conducted in North America, Europe, and Australia by academic researchers, and less so in the Global South. The third chapter explores how a gregarious species, the Eastern wild turkey (Meleagris gallopavo silvestris) once extant from the Washinton, D.C. landscape, is making a comeback. Wild turkey had a higher probability of occupying sites further from roads and at lower elevations. The fourth and concluding chapter looks at historic neighborhood valuation in Washington, D.C. to identify any legacy effects of racist and discriminatory urban planning on mammal communities. While I did not find any relationship, I did find similar mammal communities across the city regardless of neighborhood categorization and I derive management implications from this information.