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What is Habitat Fragmentation?
Habitat fragmentation is the seperation of a landscape into various landuses (e.g, development, agriculture, etc.), resulting in numerous small, disjunct habitat patches left for use by wildlife. Fragmentation eliminates habitat for those species requiring large unbroken blocks of habitat (e.g., bobcats and upland sandpipers). Additionally, the small habitat patches resulting from fragmentation often do not provide the food and cover resources for many species that do attempt to use them (e.g, New England cottontail, which requires large patches of shrubland). This can result in an increased risk of death by predation, if the animal has to venture beyond the cover of the patch to find new food resources, or starvation.
Food and cover resources are limited for many species of wildlife in fragmented landscapes (left) as compared to unfragmented landscapes (right). Coupled with a high predator population, the risk of predation in fragmented landscapes is heightened.
Risk of predation is generally higher in fragmented landscapes for other reasons as well. Populations of predators such as raccoons, foxes, coyotes, house cats, and crows tend to increase in fragmented landscapes. These creatures,
termed generalist predators, are highly adaptable - being able to take full advantage of the resources that exist in human-dominated landscapes (e.g., garbage, bird feeders, pet food, agricultural crops, etc.). A high predator population, coupled with small habitat patches that are easily penetrated, makes death by predation quite probable for many species. This is one of the factors thought to be contributing to the decline of neotropical migrant songbirds in our eastern temperate forests.
These are just a few very general and simplified examples, but they do illustrate a few of the negative impacts associated with habitat fragmentation that must be considered when selecting an area for abandoned field reclamation.
Illustrations by Jim Oehler. Photo by W.F. Berliner, American Society of Mammalogists' Slide Library.
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