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Le Minh fishes in a pond behind Total Wine in the Central Park shopping center in Fredericksburg. The pond is sandwiched between Interstate 95 (right) and Cowan Boulevard. Minh works nearby at Star Nails and enjoys the natural area in the fast-developing region.

Female mallards have adapted to development and swim in a pond in the Central Park shopping center in Fredericksburg.

Ducks flock on the bank of a pond near Outback Steakhouse in Central Park in Fredericksburg.

Along State Route 205 near Colonial Beach, a sign warns motorists to watch out for deer crossing the highway.

Development taking a toll on wildlife, though some species able to adapt

Date published: 9/11/2005

IT'S A SCENARIO familiar to anyone living in the Fredericksburg area:

Forests, fields and farmland are purchased by developers. The big timber comes off, then the bulldozers and graders show up. Not long after, houses, roads, schools and shopping centers follow.

For the most part, the developments are planned to avoid harming sensitive wetlands, and to provide parks and green space for people.

But wildlife--deer, songbirds, wood ducks, rabbits, squirrels, beavers, turkeys and a host of other animals--are an afterthought, left to fend for themselves.

Sprawl, according to biologists and state game officials, is taking a toll on wildlife populations. According to a recent report by the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries, more than 900 species, including the peregrine falcon and loggerhead turtle, are on the decline because of habitat loss and pollution.

While some animals, such as deer, raccoons and squirrels, are able to adapt, other species, such as some songbirds, have trouble relocating.

"Every time you build a road or a shopping center, you lose habitat," said Jerry Sims, regional wildlife biologist manager at the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries' Fredericksburg office.

In the summer of 1608 when Capt. John Smith sailed up the Rappahannock River to the fall line where Fredericksburg was founded more than a century later, he found a vast, uninterrupted wilderness along the way.

He wouldn't recognize it today.

Some areas are still relatively pristine, but the forest is largely gone, and houses are going up all along the river's banks.

According to the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation, of the estimated 25.2 million acres in Virginia, only about 3 million acres, or 12 percent, is protected from development.

Urbanization creates gaps in the habitat, making it harder for wildlife to find safe places to rest, feed and raise their young.

Songbirds are particularly susceptible.

"Some of them are very severely impacted by fragmented habitat," Sims said. Bluebirds, which thrive in fields, suffer along with pileated woodpeckers, which prefer large stands of forest.

What's left are fewer, hardier species that tend to take over.

White-tailed deer, for example, thrive in suburban Virginia because predators are gone.

In Northern Virginia, for example, "The biggest predator is the automobile rather than a hunter's bullet," Sims said.

Date published: 9/11/2005