SBWeinstein
commented
8 years ago raccoon density estimates usually range from 1-60 racs/km2. occassionally there are some crazy high (over 100 estimates, but those probably reflect very small sampling areas will locally very high densities) raccoon home ranges fun from about 5km2 to 150 km2, depending on sex (fem smaller) and resources. Most extreme reach about 25km2 in North Dakota, where resources are very scarce. raccoons can travel surprisingly far, if they feel like it. can go at least 14.5 km in a night, and have been known to disperse up to 275 km. However, this is rare, typical max dispersal distances are more like 10-33 km, and many individuals only go 1-3 km. If we set our raccoon world to be 100 km2, it would be roughly the size of santa barbara city (sb county is 10,000 km2). A single raccoon could disperse from end to end (that would be like starting at the beach and ending up on the other side of camino cielo). Averaging raccoon densities across habitat types, we could assume 30 racs/km2. which would give our 100 km2 world a population of 3000 raccoons- would this break our world? (20 racs/km2 is also reasonable- 2000 is still a lot of raccoons....
set theoretical size of the "world" to match the maximum distance a raccoon could move while dispersing (or in life?) so that a raccoon could change between any human overlaps. then use this world size to set carrying capacity, averaging raccoon densities for urban and rural environments and raccoon population (initial value- set at about the carrying capacity)