Wetlands and Mammals

This chapter briefly examines the ecological interrelationships between wetlands and mammals, exploring the importance of wetland ecosystems to mammals as well as investigating the importance of mammals to wetlands. Mammals, even as one of the smallest taxonomic groups, utilise or occur in an extensive range of habitats, including wetlands. This includes semi-aquatic mammals in which wetlands are a critical component of their home-range, but also “terrestrial” species where wetlands can form an important component of their habitat, albeit not necessarily essential, nor throughout the year. The role a wetland plays for terrestrial mammals will vary depending on the nature of the wetland, an extensive network within a landscape, or single isolated waterholes distant from other similar features. Waterholes, specifically, can impact mammal ecology and behavioural ecology both in arid/semi-arid regions where water availability is sparse and in regions where there is a temporal scarcity of water. Mammals themselves can also impact wetland ecosystems; some semi-aquatic mammals are ecosystem engineers, while others influence the diversity and nature of vegetation, and contribute to allochthonous inputs of biomass and nutrient cycling in wetland systems, influencing the presence and survival of other animal species. Despite such strong interrelationships, consideration of mammals and their roles in wetland dynamics are seldom part of the discourse of sustainable wetland management. It is thus strongly suggested that more attention is focused on mammal-wetland associations and ecosystem function.