North American cities, including the Salt Lake City area, are getting warmer, and researchers warn the heat is making it more difficult for native wildlife to adjust to the growing urbanization near their homes.
A new report published last week also says the effects of the heat are worse in cities in drier regions, such as the Wasatch Front, and for "larger-bodied" mammal species.
Dozens of researchers from the U.S. and Canada identified 37 native land mammal species from more than 20,000 camera-trap-days worth of data. These range in size from bears and cougars all the way down to rabbits and squirrels. This is likely because wetter cities have more vegetation that offers "greater access to limited resources such as food, water and refugia from predators" than less-vegetated cities, researchers wrote in the study.
"That kind of insinuates that if the climate is going to continue to get warmer, and rain events are going to continue to become more dispersed across time, then wildlife are going to have a harder and harder time adapting to urbanization," he said, adding urban wild animals tend to come out at night so they can avoid human interaction and also enjoy "temperature refugia."
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