"Island getaways lure creatures great, small; Data indicate more and more animals are making their way across Harbor" by Jeremy C. Fox | Globe Correspondent, August 10, 2013
It’s not just day-trippers who are flocking to Boston’s scenic Harbor Islands. Furry four-legged creatures are also swimming or scurrying their way onto the island shores, creating an unexpected population boom.
An ongoing survey of mammals on a half-dozen of the close-in islands has found thriving populations of coyotes, foxes, and deer. Researchers also have seen “aberrantly large” varieties of usually tiny animals — white-footed mice on Peddocks Island, for example — that weigh twice as much as their mainland cousins.
The data, though still preliminary, reveal “dramatic shifts in mammal populations within a given decade,” said Marc Albert, who manages the islands’ stewardship program for the National Park Service.
The animals are arriving by various means, said Lauren Nolfo-Clements, a Suffolk University biology professor who is leading the survey, the first of its kind on the park’s 34 islands and peninsulas. Some were brought by humans, deliberately or accidentally. Large animals are able to swim from the mainland.
Some may cross the water in winter, when parts of the harbor freeze, and for about 15-20 minutes a day, a land bridge appears at low tide between the town of Hull and Bumpkin Island. Park rangers have seen coyotes run across, Nolfo-Clements said.
Animals are often drawn to areas humans frequent, she said, because food is readily available. And on the islands, they lack natural predators, though coyotes and foxes could change that....
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