Urban WIldlife Habitats
WILDWOOD PARK
- Description
- Flood Management
- Urban Wildlife
Urban Wildlife Habitat Dimension of Wildwood:
The fact that it has large areas of continuous green space with little to no interaction with automobile traffic makes Wildwood a potential habitat for many forms of urban wildlife. This is explained by Marsh (1998) as the Concept of island biogeography where “the larger the area of an island or its terrestrial counterpart, the patch, the larger the number of species it can support” (pg. 358). Although Wildwood can provide continuous green space void of automobiles it has been somewhat hostile to some forms of wildlife in its past. The neighbourhood was fogged with DDT until 1973 to eliminate pests like the mosquito and Wildwood fought frequent outbreaks of tent caterpillars and canker worms (Reimer, 1989). The pictures above show a fairly large flock of wild turkeys, certainly it is a large flock to be living this far into a major city centre. Gilmour (2001) claims that these birds have been in Wildwood since 1989 and that they numbered 23 by 2001 with little or no fear of local residents. Hough (2001) argues that manicured green-space can become devoid of life because it does not provide enough variety of space for many animals. Wildwood is made up of denser vegetation than your typical suburb as can be seen in the picture below. Wildwood Park also has a direct connection to the Red River that can provide wildlife with a riparian system route to and from the neighbourhood.
