Wildlife Resilience in an Urban Landscape: Understanding Land–Use Impacts in Cape Town

Abstract

Abstract Urbanisation is rapidly transforming and fragmenting natural habitat, disrupting ecosystems and negatively impacting biodiversity. The city of Cape Town (CoCT) is situated in a global biodiversity hotspot but sustained anthropogenic activities have resulted in the local extirpation of most medium and large mammals. A recent survey of mammals within urban protected areas of CoCT revealed that only a few, mostly medium–sized generalist species, persist. What is not known is what native mammal species, if any, are living in unprotected green belts and parks in suburban and urban areas of the city. A total of 37 camera trap sites were established along four transects for a period of four weeks between the 31st of January and 31st of May in 2022. A total of 12 terrestrial mammal species were detected, nine of which were wild native mammals with three domestic species. Most detections were in natural habitat followed by suburban with urban areas having the lowest detection rate of native wildlife. Single season hierarchical multi–species occupancy models revealed that tree cover had a significant positive effect on both community and individual species occupancy. Contrary to our predictions, neither human population density nor the extent of the impervious surface at sites had a significant effect on occupancy. Cape grysboks (Raphicerus melanotis) were significantly more likely to occur at sites with a higher proportion of impervious surfaces supporting other recent research which showed this species together with water mongoose and Cape porcupine (Hystrix africaeaustralis) are one of only a few native mammals that appear to persist and even thrive in human–modified landscapes. Our findings underscore the complexity of urban biodiversity conservation and the species–specific responses to environmental factors, emphasizing the importance of tree cover in urban wildlife management.