Sprawl

Due to fragmentation of wildlife habitat, biodiversity in our area is on the decline. Habitat fragmentation occurs when wildlife habitat, such as a forest, gets sliced into pieces when we build roads and building developments through it. These separate, smaller forest fragments do not provide the same quality of habitat that the intact forest once did, and many wildlife species suffer as a result.

One of the major causes of habitat fragmentation is sprawl development. Sprawl is low-density, automobile-dependent development characterized by a dispersed pattern of single and low density uses most evident as developments of large-lot, single-family homes, office campuses, and strip malls. Sometimes described as "suburban sprawl," "urban sprawl" or "exurban sprawl," sprawl is not defined by geographic location but by type of development, regardless of where it occurs.

Sprawl fragments wildlife habitat, increasing the amount of development-associated species (e.g., white-tailed deer, Canada goose, snapping turtle), at the expense of the more rare development-sensitive species (e.g., eastern bluebird, box turtle). Instead of sprawl development, WCS/MCA encourages land use decision makers choose development options that are more biodiversity-friendly.

To learn more about sprawl's effects on ecology and society, consider reading Nature in Fragments, available through our Publications page.