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wildlife continued
What You Can Do
You’ve read about the important work of the Forest Preserves
wildlife biologists, aided by CZS staff, to prevent the spread
of zoonotic diseases and other hazards. Here’s a few things
you can do to help:
• Don’t handle bats and skunks. In this part of the
Great Lakes basin, they can harbor rabies. It’s only been
detected in bats at low levels, but it’s best to play it safe.
• Get your pet immunized to protect you, your family,
and your pet. “Every vaccine that your veterinarian
wants to put into your pet is for a disease found in the
area’s wildlife,” said Anchor.
• Don’t release pets into the wild. These animals can’t
survive in the wild and can carry diseases into wild
populations.
• Don’t feed wild mammals—especially coyotes.
“When coyotes have attacked people, it’s always in
areas where coyotes were actively being fed,” said Anchor.
Then all of the coyotes in the area had to be euthanized.
The feedings also cause animals to assemble and potential- human health. In addition, the risk of zoonotic disease
ly spread pathogens to one another.
• Get rid of standing water near your home that allows
mosquitoes to breed. You are most likely to be bitten by
mosquitoes bred near your home. Mosquito-eradicating
information is available under “West Nile virus”
at dph.illinois.gov.
36 GATEWAYS | WILDLIFE
City Critters VS. country Critters
With a population of 5.3 million people, Cook County
is the second most populous county in the U.S., after
Los Angeles County. Cook County is also home to many
species of wild animals, some at population densities that
are the highest in the state. “In general, per square mile,
we have more squirrels, more opossums, more skunks,
and more raccoons,” said wildlife biologist Anchor.
The research of Anchor and his team has been focused
on wild animals that have successfully adapted to living
in urban areas. Many of them occupy the woods and
wetlands of the Forest Preserves, but they also bed down
in the crawl spaces of homes, prowl mall parking lots,
hunt along roads and railroad tracks, and swim in
area waterways.
“Many of the animals we see in an urban environment
are opportunistic,” said Anchor. “They can insert them-
selves amongst us and take advantage of how we’ve
concentrated their food supply and shelter.”
Anchor has discovered vast differences between
animals in urban and rural areas. Urban wildlife have
had to change their behavior and survival strategies,
he said. “They tend to have smaller home ranges and
be less fearful of people. If you go a couple counties
over, deer and coyotes behave completely differently
because they are being hunted or trapped.”
Unfortunately, wildlife science hasn’t quite caught
up with the urban animals. The vast majority of peer-
reviewed literature in the field is based on studies of
animals in rural settings, said Anchor. “It has no value
when you try to study how disease moves within those
populations in an urban setting because the animals are
not living the same way or doing the same things . . .
Diseases don’t behave the same way in an urban setting
as they do in a rural setting.”
This lack of knowledge has serious implications for
spread is higher in an urban setting because animal
densities and the contact rate between animals and
humans tend to be much higher than in rural settings.
“You have the perfect storm,” said Anchor.
This is why the work of Anchor and other wildlife
biologists studying urban animals is important and why
the Chicago Zoological Society continues to lend our
support to their efforts.