Abstract While roads have well‐documented effects on wildlife movement, the impact of smaller non‐vehicle recreational trails typical of urban preserves is less thoroughly understood, particularly for small mammals. We used mark–recapture to identify movement of deer mice ( Peromyscus maniculatus ) across three broad (>2.5 m) recreational trails in small (≤200 ha) forest preserves in Ithaca, New York. The trails were a one‐lane gravel emergency road, a two‐track dirt running trail, and a woodchip recreation trail. All three trails showed approximately 50% reduction of mouse movement across the path compared to movements in the adjacent woods. There was no significant difference in effect among the three trails. The large effect of all these trail types despite numerous differences in trail characteristics suggests that small mammals may be directly inhibited by the presence of broad recreational trails regardless of specific substrate and level of human foot traffic. Potentially, this aversion may be due to the perceived risk posed by openness of all these trails at ground level. The ecological consequences of this semi‐barrier are unclear, but the ubiquity of recreational trails may magnify their impact on small or more vulnerable ecosystems, and their presence should be carefully considered in management.
Kanda et al. (Sun,) studied this question.