Climate Change Is Bringing Wildlife Into Your Backyard, According To A New Study

    A warmer world has carnivores like bears and bobcats searching for food and water anywhere they can, and that search is likely to end in your own backyard.

    Bobcat Hunting
    A new study shows bobcat encounters increase 3% with every inch of annual rainfall decrease.

    Climate change is impacting large aspects of not only humans' daily lives, but also the daily lives and survival of wild animals. During extremely dry periods, animals are desperate to find water and food wherever they can be found.

    The search for survival is leading them to human-inhabited areas as resources are exhausted in their own natural environment. This is according to a new study from a team at the University of California, Los Angeles.

    The researchers found that humans see increased encounters with wildlife during dry, drought-stricken years. These animal conflicts include property damage and nuisance claims.

    Decreased Rainfall Increases Animal Encounters

    The authors of the study published in the journal Science Advances found that for every inch of annual rainfall decrease, there was a 2 to 3 percent increase in encounters with carnivores during drought years.

    The carnivores most likely to have interactions with humans when resources are scarce are black bears, bobcats, mountain lions and coyotes. With bobcats seeing some of the highest increases.

    This conclusion came from the analysis of seven years of Wildlife Incident Reporting data from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. The team had to decide what counted as a "conflict" and decided to analyze those reported as property damage incidents or "nuisances".

    This study did not include general animal sightings or lower-level concerns in its findings. And when it comes to actual attacks, those events are very rare, according to the researchers.

    Though even the data chosen to be included could be skewed, as some people may think that an animal grazing in their garden isn't an issue, while a neighbor might say it is property damage.

    Climate Change Intensifying This Problem

    Regardless of how an encounter is defined, the conclusion is quite definite: animals are moving into human spaces during drought and events surrounding it, like fires.

    “Climate change will increase human-wildlife interactions, and as droughts and wildfires become more extreme, we have to plan ways to coexist with wildlife,” said lead author Kendall Calhoun in a news release. “Animals coming into human spaces are generally framed as wildlife trying to take resources from humans, but it’s often because we’ve taken the resources away from the wild areas.”

    The team suggests that if wild spaces aren't preserved that the number of wildlife encounters will continue to increase as they fight to survive. Ensuring that animals have resource-rich natural areas is likely to keep them from venturing into "human-dominated spaces".

    News Reference

    Human-wildlife conflict is amplified during periods of drought. Calhoun et al. Science Advances.