Research overview: fire at the wildland-urban interface and cat populations

The wildland-urban interface, where development meets wildland vegetation, is expanding and is the zone where climate-driven fire most directly intersects with cat populations like urban-edge pumas and bobcats. This overview surveys how fire at this interface destroys and reshapes habitat, interacts with the fragmentation already squeezing these populations, and complicates both wildlife management and human safety. It reviews how growth into fire-prone areas increases the overlap of cats, people, and fire. The synthesis frames the wildland-urban interface as a focal point for several climate-habitat themes at once, explaining how fire, urbanization, and fragmentation converge there to create some of the most challenging conditions for cats persisting alongside dense human settlement.