BULLETIN FLORIDA MUSEUM NATURAL HISTORY VOL. 38 PT. 11(9)


 INTRODUCTION


 Raccoons are omnivorous and opportunistic feeders. In most habitats plants
are more important than animal foods in their diets (Kaufman 1982), although
they can be very efficient predators. Eggs and hatchlings of birds and repules are
especially vulnerable to being taken by raccoons. Many threatened or endangered
species of these two taxa are suffering inordinately from continued or increased
raccoon predation pressure in the face of declining habitat (Urban 1970; Worth and
Smith 1976; Davis and Whiting 1977; Landers et al. 1980; Anderson 1981).
 In the sandhills of Florida, raccoons are predators of gopher tortoise
(Gopherus polyphemus) eggs and hatchlings (Douglass and Winegarner 1977;
Smith 1992). The gopher tortoise is confined to xeric sandhills, where the soil is
suitable for the construction of its extensive burrow systems. It is a keystone
species of that habitat type (Eisenberg 1983), and many vertebrate and invertebrate
species depend on its burrow for their survival. Its numbers have declined by an
estimated 80% in the last 100 years (Auffenberg and Franz 1982).
 Raccoons, in contrast, experienced a continent-wide population increase that
began about 50 years ago (Sanderson 1987) and was accompanied by an expansion
into more xeric habitats not utilized heavily when population levels were lower.
Today, with more raccoons using xeric gopher tortoise habitats, fewer gopher
tortoises, and less habitat suitable for gopher tortoises, raccoon predation could
play a significant role in limiting tortoise numbers.
 The Katherine Ordway Preserve-Carl Swisher Memorial Sanctuary
(henceforth called the Ordway Preserve) is a 3750 ha mosaic of sandhill uplands,
hammocks, old fields, and wetlands in Putnam County, Florida, about 40 km east
of Gainesville. A recent study of gopher tortoises on the preserve documented
predation on eggs and hatchlings by raccoons (Smith 1992). The objective of this
study was to describe habitat use by raccoons during the winter and spring at the
Ordway Preserve. Data on the extent and pattern of raccoon use of sandhills, the
critical gopher tortoise habitat, would be useful for the management of a major
predator of a keystone species at the Ordway.
 Raccoons are generally found in greater numbers in swamps and bottomland
hardwoods than in pine forests and sandhills in Florida and Georgia (McKeever
1959; Caldwell 1963). However, they can reach relatively high densities in some
xeric upland habitats (Worley 1980). On St. Catherines Island, Georgia, when
overall raccoon densities were low, raccoons were relatively more abundant in
mesic oak forests and close to the coast, but when densities were high, they were
evenly distributed throughout all habitat types, including the higher and drier areas
(Hudson 1978). In the southeastern United States, no studies have documented the
use of wetland and upland habitats within the same area by individual raccoons.
North Dakota prairie raccoons used wetlands and uplands differently according to
age, sex, and reproductive status (Fritzell 1978).