Identifying Potential Wildlife–Vehicle Collision Locations for Black Bear (Ursus americanus) in Florida under Different Environmental and Human Population Factors

Abstract

Road networks can lead to serious negative impacts on wildlife populations. In particular, wildlife–vehicle collisions (WVCs) caused by traffic is the best known and most visible effect of roads on wildlife. Despite such impact, there is still a lack of integrative understanding of the relative importance of different factors associated with areas of high WVC impact. Only a few studies have tested the idea that spatial variation of WVCs is affected by interaction of both environmental and sociodemographic characteristics. In this study, we characterized different contributing factors to the occurrence of male adult, female adult, and cub black bear (Ursus americanus) WVCs in Florida and projected the potential WVC locations for black bear using the maximum entropy (MaxEnt) model. We used the data set containing 2,789 locations of Florida black bear WVCs collected and maintained by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. Our results indicated that although the natural and built environment (e.g., land type and road density) are the dominant factors in likelihood of black bear WVCs, higher likelihood is also influenced by sociodemographic characteristics such as human population density. We found little difference between WVC likelihood for adult females and cubs, but a substantially different distribution between male adult and female adult, and cub mortality. We conclude that the MaxEnt model can be used to predict potential mortality locations. Where black bear populations are at increased risk of coming into contact with traffic, the model could be useful for planning effective mitigation measures to minimize impacts of existing and future roads on wildlife populations.