Every year in California, tens of thousands of hectares of natural and agricultural areas that are wildlife habitat are planned for conversion to early-successional stage urban and suburban development, with concomitant changes in characteristics of wildlife habitats in the affected areas. In California, these changes are generally subject to public and agency review, under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). The CEQA review process is intended to promote public disclosure of decisions, and adequate impact assessment and mitigation based on substantive information and analyses. It is difficult to address urban wildlife issues substantively under CEQA due to the general lack of information on the ecology of urban wildlife. Urban wildlife data are needed to support impact analysis and mitigation design for projects ranging in scale from urban fringe expansion, through parcel splits in rapidly suburbanizing foothills, to 49,000 ha "new towns," and county General Plans. Urban wildlife issues can be categorized by their association with 3 zones of urban structure: urban core, periphery, and landscape. These zones can change location as development occurs. Issues that require application of information on urban wildlife ecology include habitat loss, fragmentation, and degradation; and incremental impacts to rare plants, and game and nongame animals. These concepts are illustrated with recent examples from the San Joaquin Valley.
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