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The Value of Riparian Habitat and Wildlife
1
to the Residents of a Rapidly Urbanizing Community
S. Black, P. Broadhurst, J. Hightower and
s.
Schauman2
Abstract .--The values of residents were tested by two
surveys.
The first established the community's knowledge of
and preference for riparian habitat and wildlife. The second
survey established the position of the specific values found
in the first survey among the broader range of human values.
Results show that residents value natural habitat, which •
suggests important policy implications for the management of
urban water systems.
results from this survey in a broader context of
human values.
INTRODUCTION
This paper is a result of investigations
into public attitudes toward wildlife habitat in
Bellevue, Washington, a city juxtaposed between
the Cascade Mountains 30 miles east of Seattle
and Puget Sound 10 miles west.
PREVIOUS STUDIES
At a 1974 symposium, Wildlife in an Urbanizing Environment, Ann Dagg reported people's
reactions to urban wildlife.
Stating that a
person's attitude is closely correlated with his
interest in and knowledge of wild animals, she
surveyed how knowledgeable urban residents were
about animals.
Similarly, the Kelsey Creek
Survey developed a photo-survey to test resident's knowledge of local urban wildlife and
riparian habitat.
Two pilot studies were conducted on Kelsey
Creek, a riparian habitat in this rapidly urbanizing area of the Puget Sound basin.
In 1975
the City of Bellevue decided to improve a~
existing natural creek system to carry surface
storm drainage. Eight areas were acquired on the
creek for storm water retention, and eight
retention structures were installed for maintaining the water at existing levels.
Frederick
Gilbert,
in
Public
Attitudes
towards Urban Wildlife (1982), finds that the
local environment of an urban dweller impacts his
perception on proportion to its naturalness and
accessibility.
The proximity of natural areas
was found to be important in simulating residents
to view wildlife.
The Kelsey Creek Study
investigated the significance of riparian natural
areas to urban dwellers.
These retention areas are maintained in the
native vegetation and now help preserve the
habitat value of the creek to wildlife.
Since
that time, the population of the area has
approximately doubled.
The neighborhoods on the creek vary from
lower middle income to upper income.
Average
education, according to the 1980 census is 15.74
years and the great majority of residences abutting the creek are single family homes.
An
estimated 80% of Kelsey Creek's 15 mile length is
under private ownership.
Ronald Dick (1982) tested public interaction
with wildlife in urban parks.
Dick found wildlife an added bonus to activities for which the
park was originally either intended or entered,
and called it an "amenity resource" for the park
experience.
His label for wildlife in a park
setting is "aesthetic recreational resource."
This new terminology helped the Kelsey Creek team
interpret results.
The objective of Study A was to determine
how people feel about the wildlife they encounter
along Kelsey Creek, whether they can identify
species and their likely habitats
and what
interaction the residents seek with' this wildlife. The objective of Study B was to place the
This way of interpreting results is in
contrast to Stephen Kellert's views
(1984).
Kellert states that a person's response to wildlife is determined by a specific personality
trait.
Ronald Dick's study (1982) is the only
work cited from this region.
lpaper presented at the First North American
Riparian Conference, Riparian Ecosystems and Their
Management: Reconciling Conflicting Uses, April
16-18, 1985, Tucson, Arizona.
2Black, Broadhurst, and Hightower are students,
Schauman is Associate Professor and Chair, Department of Landscape Architecture, University of Washington, Seattle.
413
METHODOLOGY AND RESULTS
Two Kelsey Creek pilot studies were conducted in autumn and winter 1984-1985.
A photo
survey of landscape types showing six different
local landscape features on Kelsey Creek's edge
was the first part of the Survey A (Table 1).
The landscape types ranged from completely
natural with no human impact to a highly managed
golf course and a highly stylized landscape, a
Japanese-style garden.
PHOTO
TYPE
Where:
A
B
c
D
E
A few general conclusions could be drawn
from this survey: the residents were consistent
in their knowledge, sentiment and actions with
respect to wildlife and have a generic understanding of animal habitat needs. Residents find
wild animals both appealing and intripsically
important, and seek them as neighbors.
The
majority would like to see more animals in their
yards, but understand that urbanization has
already diminished the chances of this happening.
When asked to compare trival everyday problems
with potentially anoying interactive events with
wildlife,
residents uniformally indicated a
preference
for
interaction
with
wildlife.
Animals mentioned in the survey by residents
included coyotes,
raccoons,
rabbit,
possum,
birds, quail, duck, weasel, salmon, trout, geese,
blue heron and squirrel.
In light of wide
publicity Pacific Northwest to "Save the Salmon,"
it is interesting to note that only a small
percentage of people mentioned them.
RESPONSE:
B
c
D
E
1
2
2
9
12
2
3
1
8
13
3
2
4
11
5
1
'l
3
4
16
3
4
6
6
6
6
4
11
4
2
A
NATURAL
RIPARIAN
ORNAMENTAL
RIPARIAN
GOLF COURSE
RIPARIAN
ORNAMENTAL
RIP. (japanese)
MARSH
RIPARIAN
PART NATURAL
PART IMPACTED
Table 1
Eighty-seven percent of the respondents
recognized all species but only 20% named them by
their specific names. This reflects the experience of F. Gilbert in the Guelph study. The
final part of the first survey was a questionnaire designed to be a combination of closedended, scaled response and preference questions.
Preference
sample
response
to
phototype
by
= Dislike a lot
Dislike somewhat
Neutral
Like somewhat
Like a lot
Survey B was designed to correct for some of
the halo effect necessarily a factor in Survey A
by comparing the relative importance of wildlife
and habitat to other human values.
Residents
both in single family and apartments were surveyed at varying distances from the creek to establish the relative importance of proximity to the
creek and awareness of its riparian population
and habitat.
Results
show that
residents recognized
habitat value in the landscape for two species, a
racoon and a robin. This recognition also correlated with the absence of any human evidence in
the photograph at all.
Conversely, when asked
where they themselves would most like to live,
the overwhelming response was for the Japanesestyle landscape showing the greatest and· most
'idealized' landscape management approach. Their
most preferred landscape type, however, was a
natural wild area with a fallen log across the
creek.
The proportions of the sample housing type
was chosen to reflect census data for the area's
residential distribution;
75% single family
homes, 25% apartment dwellers.
The sample for
area A owned property abutting the creek.
The
sample for area B lived in sight of the creek and
the sample for area C lived out of sight of the
creek (fig. 1).
Survey A then tested animal identification.
Ten pictures were selected from a book on northwest wildlife and birds.
The pictures were
chosen for their neutrality in presenting endearing features of pictured wildlife, and all
animals shown wre known to reside on Kelsey
Creek.
This survey included a cognitive map survey
of the creek and the location of wildlife
populations. Kelsey Creek is well marked by
Apartment
ARE.,:\ A:
PROPERTY ABUTTING
THE CREEK.
AREA B:
PROPERTY WITHIN
VISUAL CONTACT OF
CREEK.
AREA C:
ll
PROPERTY WITH NO
VISUAL CONTACT
WITH CREEK
~AREA A~
Figure I.--Illustration showing a typical part of the Survey area.
414
the riparian corridor.
The creekside dwellers
had the longest residence and in the open-ended
interviews expressed a concern for seasonally
returning animals which illustrated a
more
intimate awareness of life around their homes.
Those who lived out of sight of the creek, in
area C, were statistically half as attuned to
habitat and its attendant wildlife as were those
residing in area A.
signs
throughout
its
course.
Of
the
43
respondents, 25% knew of the creek as a system,
50% related to it only as a part of their
neighborhood and 25% related to it at a single
location.
A second part was added to the
cognitive map survey to discover respondents'
awareness of the interrelation of wildlife to
water
edge.
Fifty-six
percent
identified
wildlife with either water course or lake edge,
67% related wildlife to the park area on the
creek only.
For 33%, wildlife had no apparent
relation to water at all. Given the large amount
of private ownership on the creek, this figure
helps substantiate Gilbert's finding that the
"public perception of wildlife is modified by the
local
environment
and
its
'naturalness
and
accessibility' (1982, p. 252).
Apartment dwellers showed no significant
differences in attitude toward wildlife and
habitat between the three groups tested.
One
hypothesis for this finding is that they may not
regard the land outside their dwellings as their
own, and a part of their responsibility.
Of the five major categories of response
tested,
Neighborhood
Quality
was
the
only
category showing significance, and this occurred
in area A, on creek, and among single family
residents.
A scaled response questionnaire was designed
to relate wildlife and natural areas or habitat
to a braoder range of human values.
Included
among the 26 questions were transportation,
convenience, quality of schools, neighborhood
safety, natural wooded areas, nearby employment,
etc.
These questions were put into five major
categories;
Economics,
Personal Preference,
Neighborhood Quality, Activity Choice and Community Quality.
RANK
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
E
Ip~
•
N
IAIc l H
-
-....
...
-
-
-
-
-
Responses were tallied under three groups,
those
referring
to
the natural environment
positively and in "spirtual" terms (pr~vacy,
tranquility,
restfulness, etc. were subsumed
under this category), those whose motivation for
living in this area was primarily spatial,
(idealistically motivated
by a
country/farm
image, space for children, animals, etc.), and
those whose choice was primarily based on
practical realities and ease of life in proximity
to workplace, freeway, shopping, and schools.
When viewed in this way, no one category received
significantly
more
weight
than
any
other
category.
-...
---
--
Rachael Kaplan
(1984)
has
studied
the
restorative experiences people have both in going
into nature and in conceptually thinking about
it.
The last part of the team's study was an
open-ended interview to discover the meaning of
the natural environment to the daily lives of
Bellevue residents.
-
-
--
'
-=---
----
~
-
CONCLUSIONS AND POLICY IMPLICATIONS
-
--
From the above survey results,
it
is
apparent that our sample like animals near their
homes, like habitat near their homes, perceive
their own habitat as including wildlife, and
recognize the relationship between urbanization
and habitat loss.
The majority recognize a
relationship between animals and water.
In the
overall list of values, country or suburban
living,
natural wooded areas,
and abundant
creeks, lakes, and woods ranked equally with
safety, transportation and good schools in the
top 10 of 26 questions.
Table 2.--Showing rank of questions by
categories.
Where:
Economics
E
p
Personal Preference
Neighborhood Quality
N
Activity Choices
A
Community Quality
c
Habitat
H
This survey can have meaning to riparian
ecosystem management in three ways: it sugests
that surburban residents prefer small natural
areas in the city to miniparks and ornamental
trees and lawns. It suggests that planners think
about retaining existing riparian habitat as
amenity and as a useful means of storm water
drainage, also, where appropriate.
Finally, it
Additionally, significant attitude and value
differences
concerning wildlife
and
habitat
occurred (by the Chi-square test) among residents
of single family homes in proportion to the
distance that they live from the creek.
The
residents were more responsive to wildlife along
415
was evident from this survey that with very
little additional information and education,
residents in an actively and rapidly urbanizing
environment may become the greatest proponents
for the maintenance of existing riparian ecosystems within and as an integral part of their
communities.
Kaplan, Rachel
1983.
"Impact of Urban Nature:
a
Theoretical Analysis,"
Urban
Ecology
8:3189-198.
Kellert, Stephen
1979.
"Public Attitudes
Towards
Critical
Wildlife
and
Natural
Habitat Issues," U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service, Yale School of Forestry.
LITERATURE CITED
Kellert, Stephen
1984.
"Urban American
Perceptions of Animals and the Natural
Environment," Urban Ecology 8:209-228.
Craik, K.A., and McKechnie, G.E., ed. 1978.
Personality
and
the
Environment,
Sage
Publications, Beverly Hills and London.
Pudelkewicz, Patricia J. 1984. "Visual Response
to Urban Wildlife Habitat," Forty-sixth
Wildlife
Conference.
North
American
46:381-389.
Dagg, A.I. 1974.
"Reactions of People to Urban
Wildlife," In Noyes and Progulske (1974)-Wildlife in an Urbanizing Environment.
pp.
163-165.
Schroeder, Herbert W. and Anderson L .M.
1984.
"Perception of Personal Safety in Urban
Recreation Sites."
Journal of Leisure
Research, 16: 2 178-194.
Davis, James D.
1974.
"Wildlife in Your Backyard," In Noyes and Progulske ( 197 4 )-Wildlife in an Urbanizing Environment.
pp.
175-177.
Dick, Ronald Eugene 1982. "An Analysis of Human
Response to Contacts with Wildlife in Urban
Parks," University of Washington Thesis SD
121 TH 30 347.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Many thanks to Darryl! R. Johnson, Project
Leader, Social Sciences Program, Cooperative Park
Studies Institute, College of Forest Resources,
University of Washington and Richard Converse,
Research Analyst, Cooperative Park Studies Unit,
College
of Forest Resources,
University of
Washington for their insightful help, expertise
and interest in our project.
Gilbert, Frederick F.
1982.
"Public Attitudes
Toward Urban Wildlife:
A Pilot Study in
Guelph, Ontario," Wildlife Society Bulletin.
10:245-253.
Render, J.C. and Schoenfield, c.
1973.
Human
Dimensions in Wildlife Programs, Mercury
Press, Rockville, Maryland.
416