Environmental Health and Societal Wealth Predict Movement Patterns of an Urban Carnivore

Abstract

How societal, ecological and infrastructural attributes interact to influence wildlife movement is uncertain. We explored whether neighbourhood socioeconomic status and environmental quality were associated with coyote (Canis latrans) movement patterns in Los Angeles, California and assessed the performance of integrated social–ecological movement models. We found that coyotes living in more anthropogenically burdened regions (i.e. higher pollution, denser development, etc.) had larger home ranges and showed greater daily displacement and mean step length than coyotes in less burdened regions. Coyotes experiencing differing levels of anthropogenic burdens demonstrated divergent selection for vegetation, pollution, road densities and other habitat conditions. Further, movement models that included societal covariates performed better than models that only assessed ecological features and linear infrastructure. This study provides a unique social–ecological lens examining the anthropogenic drivers of urban wildlife movement, which should be applicable to urban planners and conservationists when building more equitable, healthy and wildlife-friendly cities.