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132 results for “large carnivores”
Europeans support large carnivore recovery while opposing both further population growth and hunting
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Predicting potential distributions of large carnivores in Kenya: An occupancy study to guide conservation
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Data & Code: Artificial eyespots on cattle reduce predation by large carnivores
<p>Data and code used in article on: artificial eyespots on cattle reduce predation by large carnivores.</p>
Infanticide by females is a leading source of juvenile mortality in a large social carnivore
Social animals benefit from their group-mates, so why do they sometimes kill each other's offspring? Using 30 years of data from multiple groups of wild spotted hyenas, we address three critical aims for understanding infanticide in any species: (1) quantify the contribution of infanticide to overall mortality (2) describe the circumstances under which infanticide occurs and (3) evaluate hypotheses about the evolution of infanticide. We find that, although observed only rarely, infanticide is in fact a leading source of juvenile mortality. Infanticide accounted for 24% of juvenile mortality, and 1 in 10 hyenas born in our population perished due to infanticide. In all observed cases of infanticide, killers were adult females, but victims could be of both sexes. Of four hypotheses regarding the evolution of infanticide, we found the most support for the hypothesis that infanticide in spotted hyenas reflects competition over social status among matrilines.
Data from: Assessing the relationship between illegal hunting of ungulates, wild prey occurrence and livestock depredation rate by large carnivores
1. Illegal hunting of ungulates can reduce the prey base of carnivores, which can increase human-carnivore conflict (HCC) through livestock depredation. However, the relationship between ungulate poaching, wild prey abundance and livestock depredation has rarely been empirically studied. 2. We surveyed 18 sites across the Hyrcanian forest in northern Iran; a global biodiversity hotspot under pressure of illegal hunting of ungulates, prey depletion, livestock grazing and HCC. We conducted three field surveys across 1204 km in 93 4×4 km cells to count signs of ungulate poaching as well as encounters with livestock and prey species of the Persian leopard Panthera pardus saxicolor and the grey wolf Canis lupus. We documented sheep/goat and cattle depredation from interviews with 201 herders and analysed the effects of illegal hunting of ungulates, forest cover, IUCN categories of reserves, elevation, distance to villages, and wild prey and livestock encounter rates on carnivore depredation rates using generalized linear models. 3. Illegal hunting of ungulates was the most influential depredation predictor. An increase in the illegal hunting of ungulates by one sign/km significantly increased depredation by up to four times. We also found significantly lower levels of ungulate poaching in national parks (IUCN category II) compared to protected areas (V), wildlife refuges (IV) and no-hunting areas, though poaching signs were frequently found in most cells (58%). Encounters with livestock was inversely linked to wild prey species, but positively coupled with signs of ungulate poaching. 4. Synthesis and applications. Our study reveals that: (i) an increase in the intensity of illegal hunting of ungulates can intensify livestock depredation by carnivores; (ii) future efforts in reducing human-carnivore conflict (HCC) to acceptable levels require a combination of law enforcement, prey recovery approaches and mitigation measures; (iii) there is an urgent need to better understand the root causes of poaching of ungulates to help minimize HCC.
Data from: Individual and population fitness consequences associated with large carnivore use of residential development
<p><span>Large carnivores are negotiating increasingly developed landscapes, but little is known about how such behavioral plasticity influences their demographic rates and population trends. Some investigators have suggested that the ability of carnivores to behaviorally adapt to human development will enable their persistence, and yet, others have suggested that such landscapes are likely to serve as population sinks or ecological traps. To understand how plasticity in black bear (<i>Ursus americanus</i>) use of residential development influences their population dynamics, we conducted a 6 year study near Durango, Colorado, USA. </span>Using space-use data on individual bears, we examined the influence of use of residential development on annual measures of bear body fat, cub productivity, cub survival and adult female survival, after accounting for variation in natural food availability and individual attributes (e.g., age). We then used our field-based vital rate estimates to parameterize a matrix model that simulated asymptotic population growth for bears using residential development to different degrees. We found that bear use of residential development was highly variable within and across years, with bears increasing their foraging within development when natural foods were scarce. Increased bear use of development was associated with increased body fat and cub productivity, but reduced cub and adult survival.<span> When these effects were simultaneously incorporated into a matrix model </span>we found that the population was projected to decline as bear use of development increased, given that the costs of reduced survival outweighed the benefits of enhanced productivity. Our results provide a mechanistic understanding of how black bear use of residential development exerts opposing effects on different bear fitness traits and a negative effect on population growth, with the magnitude of those effects mediated by variation in environmental conditions. They also highlight the importance of monitoring bear population dynamics, particularly as shifts in bear behavior are likely to drive increases in human-bear conflicts and the perception of growing bear populations. Finally, our work emphasizes the need to consider the demographic viability of large carnivore populations when promoting the coexistence of people and carnivores on shared landscapes.</p>
Environmental impact assessment for large carnivores: a methodological review of the wolf (Canis lupus) monitoring in Portugal
<p>The continuous growth of the global human population results in increased use and change of landscapes, with infrastructures like transportation or energy facilities, being a particular risk to large carnivores. Environmental Impact Assessments were established to identify the probable environmental consequences of any new proposed project, find ways to reduce impacts, and provide evidence to inform decision making and mitigation. Portugal has a wolf population of around 300 individuals, designated as an endangered species with full legal protection. They occupy the northern mountainous areas of the country which has also been the focus of new human infrastructures over the last 20 years. Consequently, dozens of wolf monitoring programs have been established to evaluate wolf population status, to identify impacts, and to inform appropriate mitigation or compensation measures. We reviewed Portuguese wolf monitoring programs to answer four key questions: do wolf programs examine adequate biological parameters to meet monitoring objectives? is the study design suitable for measuring impacts? are data collection methods and effort sufficient for the stated inference objectives? and do statistical analyses of the data lead to robust conclusions? Overall, we found a mismatch between the stated aims of wolf monitoring and the results reported, and often neither aligns with the existing national wolf monitoring guidelines. Despite the vast effort expended and the diversity of methods used, data analysis makes almost exclusive use of relative indices or summary statistics, with little consideration of the potential biases that arise through the (imperfect) observational process. This makes comparisons of impacts across space and time difficult and is therefore unlikely to contribute to a general understanding of wolf responses to infrastructure-related disturbance. We recommend the development of standardized monitoring protocols and advocate for the use of statistical methods that account for imperfect detection to guarantee accuracy, reproducibility, and efficacy of the programs.</p>
A Functional Response in Resource Selection Links Multi-Scale Responses of a Large Carnivore to Human Mortality Risk
<p>This repository contains code and data to reproduce results from the manuscript 'A Functional Response in Resource Selection Links Multi-Scale Responses of a Large Carnivore to Human Mortality Risk'. </p>
Trust in researchers and researchers' statements in large carnivore conservation
<p>Human-wildlife interactions occur when humans and wildlife overlap in the same landscapes. Due to the growing human population, the number of interactions will continue to increase, and in some cases, develop further into social conflicts. Conflicts may occur between people disagreeing about wildlife conservation or arguing over which wildlife management measures should be taken. Social conflicts between humans are based on different attitudes, values and land-use aspirations. The success of solving these social conflicts strongly depends on building trust between the public, stakeholders, authorities, and researchers, as trust is fundamental to all communication and dialogue.</p> <p>Here we have examined how trust in large carnivore research differs within a geographically stratified sample of the Norwegian population. The comprehensive survey, including 2110 respondents, allows us to explore how people perceive factual statements about large carnivores depending on the source of these statements. Specifically, the respondents were given multiple statements and asked to judge them in terms of meaning and authenticity depending on whether the statements were made by a politician, the Norwegian farmers' association, the Norwegian Fish and Game association or a large carnivore researcher. Based on the variations in perceptions, we inferred that trust in large carnivore researchers and their research results varied with people's attitudes, values and direct experience of large carnivores.</p> <p>In general, respondents perceived 60% of the statements to be genuine when given no information of who had made them. Although this increased to 75 % when informed that the statements were made by a large carnivore researcher, there was still a 25 % probability that the statement was perceived as manipulative or political. Age, environmental values, and negative experiences of carnivores increased the probability of perceiving research statements as manipulative or political. People living in areas with high proportions of hunters showed particularly polarized views, either more strongly perceiving the statements as political, or in contrast as research.</p> <p>This study provides a novel perspective in understanding the role trust plays in social conflicts related to human-wildlife interactions.</p>
No Allee effect detected during the natural recolonization by a large carnivore despite low growth rate
<p>Eurasian lynx (Lynx lynx) have recently naturally recolonized southern Sweden. The first documented reproduction of lynx in recent times occurred in 2003, and the population increased from two to 48 family groups (the unit of measurement in Swedish monitoring) during its first 18 years (2003/04 – 2020/21). We did not detect any Allee effect, i.e., lower growth rate at low population density, during the recolonization of southern Sweden, although our population simulations revealed a non-negligible (30 %) chance that population observed development could include an Allee effect. The probable absence of an Allee effect was likely because colonizing females did not lack mating partners, as a larger number of wide-ranging males were established in the area before documented reproduction took place. Despite the absence of an Allee effect, the growth rate during recolonization was lower in southern Sweden (lambda = 1.20) than in central Sweden (lambda = 1.29). We have no evidence of higher mortality, including that from poaching, or lower reproduction in southern Sweden could explain the lower growth rate. Instead, we suggest that the lower growth rate during the recolonization of southern Sweden was explained by fewer immigrants arriving from central Sweden due to areas of less suitable habitat between central and southern Sweden, partially preventing immigration southward. From a conservation point of view, it is positive that this small population could recover without being negatively influenced by an Allee effect, as small populations with an Allee effect experience lower viability than those without.</p>
Data from: Large carnivores avoid humans while prioritizing prey acquisition in anthropogenic areas
<ol> <li>Large carnivores are recovering in many landscapes where the human footprint is simultaneously growing. When carnivores encounter humans, the way they behave often changes, which may subsequently influence how they affect their prey. However, little research investigates the behavioral mechanisms underpinning carnivore response to humans. As a result, it is not clear how predator-prey interactions and their associated ecosystem processes will play out in the human-dominated areas into which carnivore populations are increasingly expanding.</li> <li>We hypothesized that humans would reduce predation risk for prey by disturbing carnivores or threatening their survival. Alternatively, or additionally, we hypothesized that humans would increase predation risk by providing forage resources that congregate herbivorous prey in predictable places and times.</li> <li>Using gray wolves (<em>Canis lupus</em>) in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, USA as a study species, we investigated 170 kill sites across a spectrum of human influences ranging from heavily restricted human activities on protected federal lands to largely unregulated activities on private lands. Then, we used conditional logistic regression to quantify how the probability of predation changed across varied types and amounts of human influences, while controlling for environmental characteristics and prey availability.</li> <li>Wolves primarily made kills in environmental terrain traps and where prey availability was high, but predation risk was significantly better explained with the inclusion of human influences than by environmental characteristics alone. Different human influences had different, and even converse, effects on the risk of wolf predation. For example, where prey were readily available, wolves preferentially killed animals far from motorized roads but close to unpaved trails. However, wolves responded less strongly to humans, if at all, where prey were scarce, suggesting they prioritized acquiring prey over avoiding human interactions.</li> <li>Overall, our work reveals that the effects of large carnivores on prey populations can vary considerably among different types of human influences, yet carnivores may not appreciably alter predatory behavior in response to humans if prey are difficult to obtain. These results shed new light on the drivers of large carnivore behavior in anthropogenic areas while improving understanding of predator-prey dynamics in and around the wildland-urban interface. </li> </ol>
Data for Multidimensional diversity drives stability of mammal communities with large carnivores in temperate forests
<p>R code and data for Multidimensional diversity drives stability of mammal communities with large carnivores in temperate forests</p>
Spatial separation of prey from livestock facilitates coexistence of a specialized large carnivore with human land use
<p><span>There is an increasing emphasis in</span><span> conservation strategies for large carnivores on facilitating their coexistence with humans.</span> <span>Justification for coexistence</span><span> strategies should be based on a quantitative assessment of currently remaining large carnivores in human-dominated landscapes. An essential part of a carnivore's coexistence strategy has to rely on its prey</span><span>. In this research, we studied snow leopards <em>Panthera uncia</em> whose habitat mainly comprises human-dominated, unprotected areas, to understand how a large carnivore and its primary prey, the bharal <em>Pseudois nayaur</em>, could coexist with human land use activities in a large proportion of its range. Using a combination of livestock census, camera trapping and wildlife surveys, across a broad gradient of </span><span>livestock grazing intensity in a 363,000 km<sup>2</sup> landscape on the Tibetan Plateau, </span><span>we found no evidence of livestock grazing impacts on snow leopard habitat use, bharal density and spatial distribution, even though livestock density was 13 times higher than bharal density.</span><span> Bharal were found to prefer utilizing more rugged habitats at higher elevations with lower grass forage conditions, whereas livestock dominated in flat valleys at lower elevations with higher productivity, especially during the resource-scarce season. These findings suggest that the spatial niche separation between bharal and livestock, together with snow leopards' specialized bharal diet, minimized conflicts and allowed snow leopards and bharal to coexist in landscapes dominated by livestock grazing. In recent years, reduced hunting and nomadic herder's lifestyle changes towards permanent residence may have further reinforced this spatial separation.</span><span> Our</span><span> results indicated that, </span><span>for developing conservation strategies for large carnivores, the niche of their prey in relation to human land-use is a key variable that needs to be evaluated.</span></p>
Data from: Numerical top-down effects on red deer (Cervus elaphus) are mainly shaped by humans rather than large carnivores across Europe
<p>Terrestrial ecosystems are shaped by interacting top-down and bottom-up processes, with the magnitude of top-down control by large carnivores largely depending on environmental productivity. While carnivore-induced numerical effects on ungulate prey populations have been demonstrated in large, relatively undisturbed ecosystems, whether large carnivores can play a similar role in more human-dominated systems is a clear knowledge gap. As humans influence both predator and prey in a variety of ways, the ecological impacts of large carnivores can be largely modified. We quantified the interactive effects of human activities and large carnivore presence on red deer (<em>Cervus elaphus</em>) population density and how their impacts interacted and varied with environmental productivity</p> <p>Data on red deer density were collected based on a literature survey encompassing 492 study sites across 28 European countries. Variation in density across study sites was analysed using a generalised additive model in which productivity, carnivore presence (grey wolf, European lynx, Brown bear), human activities (hunting, intensity of human land-use activity), site protection status and climatic variables served as predictors. </p> <p>The results showed that a reduction in deer density only occurred when wolf, lynx and bear co-occurred within the same site. In the absence of large carnivores, red deer density varied along a productivity gradient without a clear pattern. Although a linear relationship with productivity in the presence of all three large carnivore species was found, this was not statistically significant. Moreover, hunting by humans had a stronger effect than the presence of all large carnivores in reducing red deer density and red deer density increased with increasing intensity of human land-use, with stronger large carnivore effects (all three carnivore species present) at sites with low human land-use activities. </p> <p><em>Synthesis and applications</em>: This study provides evidence for the dominant role played by humans (i.e. hunting, land-use activities) relative to large carnivores in reducing red deer density across European human-dominated landscapes. These findings suggest that when we would like large carnivores to exert numeric effects, we should focus on minimizing human impacts to allow the ecological impacts of large carnivores on ecosystem functioning.</p>
Understanding habitat selection of range-expanding populations of large carnivores: 20 years of grey wolves (Canis lupus) recolonizing Germany
<p><strong>Aim</strong>: The non-stationarity in habitat selection of expanding populations poses a significant challenge for spatial forecasting. Focusing on the grey wolf (<em>Canis lupus</em>) natural recolonization of Germany, we compared the performance of different distribution modelling approaches for predicting habitat suitability in unoccupied areas. Furthermore, we analysed whether grey wolf showed non-stationarity in habitat selection in newly colonized areas, which will impact the predictions for potential habitat.</p> <p><strong>Location</strong>: Germany</p> <p><strong>Methods</strong>: Using telemetry data as presence points, we compared the predictive performance of five modelling approaches based on combinations of distribution modelling algorithms –GLMM, MaxEnt, and ensemble modelling– and two background point selection strategies. We used a homogeneous Poisson point process to draw background points from either the minimum convex polygons derived from telemetry or the whole area known to be occupied by wolves. Models were fit to the data of the first years and validated against independent data representing the expansion of the species. The best-performing approach was then used to further investigate non-stationarity in the species' response in spatiotemporal restricted datasets that represented different colonization steps.</p> <p><strong>Results</strong>: Whilst all approaches performed similarly when evaluated against a subset of the data used to fit the models, the ensemble model based on integrated data performed best when predicting range expansion. Models for subsequent colonization steps differed substantially from the global model, highlighting the non-stationarity of wolf habitat selection towards human disturbance during the colonization process.</p> <p><strong>Main conclusions</strong>: While telemetry-only data overfitted the models, using all available datasets increased the reliability of the range expansion forecasts. The non-stationarity in habitat selection pointed to wolves settling in the best areas first, and filling in nearby lower-quality habitat as the population increases. Our results caution against spatial extrapolation and space-for-time substitutions in habitat models, at least with expanding species.</p>
Data from: Numerical top-down effects on red deer (Cervus elaphus) are mainly shaped by humans rather than large carnivores across Europe
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Large carnivore distribution maps for Europe 2017 – 2022/23
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Data from: Large carnivores avoid humans while prioritizing prey acquisition in anthropogenic areas
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Data from: Spatial heterogeneity of habitat selection of large carnivores and their ungulate prey in proximity to roads
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Infanticide by females is a leading source of juvenile mortality in a large social carnivore
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