Having Our Wine, and WildlifeToo Bobcats, Foxes and Coyotes Resort to Vineyards as Hunting Grounds

California’s vast and growing vineyards are home to more than just trellises of ripening grapevines.  According to a new study by scientists from the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and University of California, Berkeley, bobcats, foxes, coyotes and other predators, forced from their native oak forestlands, have resorted to using these regions as hunting grounds. But the authors warn that to maintain some semblance of native wildlife in these areas, “corridors” of natural habitat need to be protected.
 
The study, which appears in the latest issue of the journal Conservation Biology, says that the size of these corridors is a crucial factor, with wider swaths of natural vegetation attracting almost twice as many predator species than narrower ones. The many small streams that crisscross Northern California's vineyards could also serve as wildlife corridors, the authors say.  The size of these streamside setbacks is currently being debated in Sonoma County and many other grape-growing regions in California.

"Wide corridors may be necessary to retain the full complement of native species," said WCS scientists Dr. Jodi Hilty, the study’s lead author.
 
To assess predator use of streamside corridors in wine-grape growing regions, the authors set remote cameras in 21 areas within six vineyards.  Native carnivores detected included bobcats, coyotes, gray foxes, raccoons, and striped skunks, and non-native predators included opossums, domestic cats, and dogs.

The findings suggest that wide streamside corridors are important for native predators, which were eleven times more likely to be found more like to be found along streams than in the vineyards themselves. Also, some native species primarily used wider streamside corridors, and were not detected in narrower or denuded corridors.  In contrast, non-native species, especially domestic cats, were found primarily in wide expanses of vineyard and along denuded corridors.
 
The narrow corridors in this study are roughly the size being considered by the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors. The WCS study suggests that this setback distance would be too small to support larger native wildlife species.

Although maintaining wide streamside corridors may help some native species in the region, other native carnivores such as badgers and long-tailed weasels were never detected in this vineyard region.  "It is unlikely that wide streamside corridors will fully mitigate the effects of forest loss for all species," said co-author Dr. Adina Merenlender of the University of California, Berkeley.  “Careful land-use planning will be necessary to retain enough core habitat to sustain the region’s native large carnivores.”

For Media Contact Information, Please Click Here.