Legislation for the preservation of biodiversity has been instrumental to the recovery of multiple species and habitats. The European Habitats Directive 92/43/EEC is one of the strongest legal tools in nature conservation. This Directive seeks to achieve its biodiversity goals by requiring EU Member States to take measures to reach or maintain favorable conservation status (FCS) of natural habitats and species in Europe. FCS is a legal concept, but must be understood and applied by scientists, managers, and policy makers, and therefore a proper interpretation of this concept is crucial for biodiversity conservation and wildlife management. However, its definition contains several aspects that can lead to misinterpretation, forming the core of controversies in determining whether or not populations have reached FCS. In this review, we provide legal and ecological clarifications of the most contested aspects of FCS that have not yet been conclusively settled by analyzing and weighing a variety of sources. ; Peer Reviewed
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License.-- et al. ; Mesopredator control has long been used to alleviate the effect of elevated predation pressure on vulnerable, threatened or valuable species. However, the convenience of using mesopredator controls is technically questionable and scientifically-sound research is therefore required to evaluate the impact of predation on prey case by case. In this study we evaluated the effect of the alteration of terrestrial mesopredator dynamics on the demographic parameters of a relict capercaillie Tetrao urogallus aquitanicus population currently in decline for which the impact of predation has not previously been assessed. We used a six-year mesocarnivore removal experiment (2008-2013) together with seven-years of previous demographic information on capercaillies (1999-2007) within a before-after controlimpact (BACI) design to evaluate the effect of mesocarnivore removal on capercaillie demographic parameters and on spatial behaviour of the most frequent predatory mesocarnivores of the capercaillie (Martes spp. and red fox Vulpes vulpes). Using a dynamic siteoccupancy approach, the reduction of mesocarnivore population levels as a result of removal was clear for marten species, mainly during key months for capercaillie reproduction, but not for the red fox. Our results show that the breeding success of capercaillies was enhanced in areas where carnivores were removed and was inversely related to the occupation level of the studied mesocarnivores, although being only significant for Martes spp. Moreover, capercaillie predation rates were lower and adult survival seemingly higher in treatment during the removal phase. Cost-effective, long-term management interventions to ensure the recovery of this threatened capercaillie population are discussed in the light of the results. At our study area, the decision for implementing predation management should be included within a broader long-term conservation perspective. In this regard, a more feasible and sustainable management intervention in ecological and economic terms may be to balance the impact of mesocarnivores on capercaillies through the recovery of apex predators. ; The present work was commissioned by the Spanish Ministry of Environment, and the GALLIPYR-POCTEFA 2007 cofunded by the Generalitat de Catalunya and the European Union, who provided support in the form of salaries for authors [RM-O, IA, JP, JM-I], but did not have any additional role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. JVLB received a postdoctoral grant "Juan de la Cierva" from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness." ; Peer Reviewed
Resource clumping (prey hotspots) and intraspecific competition may interact to influence predator foraging behaviour. Optimal foraging theory suggests that predators should concentrate most of their foraging activity on prey hotspots, but this prediction has received limited empirical support. On the other hand, if prey concentration at hotspots is high enough to allow its use by several individuals, increased competition may impose constraints on foraging decisions of conspecifics, resulting in a temporal segregation in the use of shared resources. We investigated how artificial prey hotspots influence foraging behaviour in the Iberian lynx Lynx pardinus, and examined variations in the use of prey hotspots by individu- als with different competitive abilities. All lynx, irrespective of their position in the competitive hierarchy, focused their activity on prey hotspots. Supplemented lynx concentrated higher proportions of active time on 100 m circular areas around hotspots than non-supplemented lynx did on any area of the same size. However, we found evidence for a dynamic temporal segregation, where inferior competitors may actively avoid the use of prey hotspots when dominants were present. Dynamic temporal segregation may operate in solitary and territorial predators as a mechanism to facilitate coexistence of conspecifics in the absence of opportunities for spatial segregation when they use extremely clumped resources. ; This research was funded by the projects CGL2004-00346/BOS (Spanish Ministry of Education and Science) and 17/2005 (Spanish Ministry of the Environment; National Parks Research Programme), and BP-Oil Spain. Regional Government of Andalusia partly funded the supplementary feeding programme (LIFE-02NAT/8609). Land-Rover España S.A. kindly lended two vehicles for this work. JVLB was supported by a FPU fellow (Ministry of Education). ; Peer reviewed
Starting in the 1970s, many populations of large-bodied mammalian carnivores began to recover from centuries of human-caused eradication and habitat destruction. The recovery of several such populations has since slowed or reversed due to mortality caused by humans. Illegal killing (poaching) is a primary cause of death in many carnivore populations. Law enforcement agencies face difficulties in preventing poaching and scientists face challenges in measuring it. Both challenges are exacerbated when evidence is concealed or ignored. We present data on deaths of 937 Wisconsin gray wolves (Canis lupus) from October 1979 to April 2012 during a period in which wolves were recolonizing historic range mainly under federal government protection. We found and partially remedied sampling and measurement biases in the source data by reexamining necropsy reports and reconstructing the numbers and causes of some wolf deaths that were never reported. From 431 deaths and disappearances of radiocollared wolves aged > 7.5 months, we estimated human causes accounted for two-thirds of reported and reconstructed deaths, including poaching in 39–45%, vehicle collisions in 13%, legal killing by state agents in 6%, and nonhuman causes in 36–42%. Our estimate of poaching remained an underestimate because of persistent sources of uncertainty and systematic underreporting. Unreported deaths accounted for over two-thirds of all mortality annually among wolves > 7.5 months old. One-half of all poached wolves went unreported, or > 80% of poached wolves not being monitored by radiotelemetry went unreported. The annual mortality rate averaged 18% ± 10% for monitored wolves but 47% ± 19% for unmonitored wolves. That difference appeared to be due largely to radiocollaring being concentrated in the core areas of wolf range, as well as higher rates of human-caused mortality in the periphery of wolf range. We detected an average 4% decline in wolf population growth in the last 5 years of the study. Because our estimates of poaching risk ...
Food availability is considered a major factor determining spacing behaviour in territorial species, especially for females. Theoretically, spatial overlap (considered the opposite of territoriality) and food availability are related in a nonlinear manner (hypothesized inverted-U function), with high overlap levels at the extremes of a food availability gradient and low overlap at intermediate levels of this gradient. Similar patterns are expected for encounter frequencies owing to its expected correlation with spatial overlap. However, these predictions have rarely been tested in highly structured social systems on a broad gradient of food availability, which implicitly requires experimental manipulation. We test these predictions in a solitary, territorial and trophic specialist, the Iberian lynx Lynx pardinus, taking advantage of a three-decade data set of spatial behaviour in different scenarios of food availability (i.e. rabbit density). In contrast with expectations, home range overlap among resident females was low (median overlap index = 0·08, range 0–0·57) and core area overlap was nearly nil (median overlap index = 0, range 0–0·22) throughout the entire gradient of prey availability. Furthermore, spatial associations between pairs of females were negligible regardless marked variation in prey availability. Therefore, we did not find support for a model of flexible lynx territoriality driven by food availability. Our results suggest that the exclusive use of space in the Iberian lynx was not related to food. Lack of influence of prey availability on lynx territoriality may be adaptive to cope with the consequences of frequent drought-induced periods of prey scarcity or other disturbance typically affecting wild rabbit populations in Mediterranean environments. Thus, lynx would adopt an obstinate strategy of territoriality that consists in defending exclusive areas across a broad range of resource availability ensuring an exclusive access to the minimum amount of prey necessary for survival and eventually reproduction even during periods of prey scarcity. However, we found signs that territoriality was influenced by lynx density in a nonlinear fashion. Our results suggest the occurrence of population regulation through territoriality in this species. ; This research was funded by the Spanish Government (projects CGL2004-00346/BOS, 17/2005), BP-Oil Spain and the EU project LIFE-02NAT/8609. JVLB was supported by a FPU fellowship and a postdoctoral fellowship from the Spanish Ministry of Education and the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, respectively. ; Peer reviewed
Obtaining reliable estimates of the structure of carnivore communities is of paramount importance because of their ecological roles, ecosystem services and impact on biodiversity conservation, but they are still scarce. This information is key for carnivore management: to build support for and acceptance of management decisions and policies it is crucial that those decisions are based on robust and high quality information. Here, we combined camera and live-trapping surveys, as well as telemetry data, with spatially-explicit Bayesian models to show the usefulness of an integrated multi-method and multi-model approach to monitor carnivore community structures. Our methods account for imperfect detection and effectively deal with species with non-recognizable individuals. In our Mediterranean study system, the terrestrial carnivore community was dominated by red foxes (0.410 individuals/km2); Egyptian mongooses, feral cats and stone martens were similarly abundant (0.252, 0.249 and 0.240 individuals/km2, respectively), whereas badgers and common genets were the least common (0.130 and 0.087 individuals/km2, respectively). The precision of density estimates improved by incorporating multiple covariates, device operation, and accounting for the removal of individuals. The approach presented here has substantial implications for decision-making since it allows, for instance, the evaluation, in a standard and comparable way, of community responses to interventions. ; We are in debt to the staff of the Regional Government of Extremadura, and the Spanish Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Environment, for their collaboration and the logistical support they provided. J.V.L.B. was supported by a 'Juan de la Cierva' research contract (JCI-2012-13066) from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness. ; Peer Reviewed
Granting legal protection to an endangered species has long been considered a major milestone for its conservation and recovery. A multitude of examples such as wolves in the contiguous USA (Boitani 2003) or many large carnivore populations in Europe (Chapron et al. 2014) have revealed how instrumental wildlife protection laws can be for species recovery. However, legal obligations to conserve endangered species may be useless if the rule of law is not properly enforced. Such situation is not exclusive to countries with political instability or weak institutional capacities but can also be relevant, for instance, to member states of the European Union and therefore bound to European legislation on nature conservation. ; Peer reviewed
We compared movement patterns and rhythms of activity of a top predator, the Iberian lynx Lynx pardinus, a mesopredator, the red fox Vulpes vulpes, and their shared principal prey, the rabbit Oryctolagus cuniculus, in relation to moon phases. Because the three species are mostly nocturnal and crepuscular, we hypothesized that the shared prey would reduce its activity at most risky moon phases (i.e. during the brightest nights), but that fox, an intraguild prey of lynx, would avoid lynx activity peaks at the same time. Rabbits generally moved further from their core areas on darkest nights (i.e. new moon), using direct movements which minimize predation risk. Though rabbits responded to the increased predation risk by reducing their activity during the full moon, this response may require several days, and the moon effect we observed on the rabbits had, therefore, a temporal gap. Lynx activity patterns may be at least partially mirroring rabbit activity: around new moons, when rabbits moved furthest and were more active, lynxes reduced their travelling distances and their movements were concentrated in the core areas of their home ranges, which generally correspond to areas of high density of rabbits. Red foxes were more active during the darkest nights, when both the conditions for rabbit hunting were the best and lynxes moved less. On the one hand, foxes increased their activity when rabbits were further from their core areas and moved with more discrete displacements; on the other hand, fox activity in relation to the moon seemed to reduce dangerous encounters with its intraguild predator. ; This study was funded by six research projects of the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (PB90-1018, PB94-0480, PB97-1163, CGL2004-02780/ BOS, CGL2004-00346/BOS and CGL2008-02871/BOS; with FEDER co-financing) and one of the Spanish Ministry of the Environment, National Parks Research Programme (project 17/2005), a grant of the Ministry of Education and Science–C.S.I.C. (Proyectos Intramurales Especiales, DG-2606-PC), and the Junta of Andalucía (Excellence Project, RNM-5090). V. P. was the recipient of a grant from the Spanish Secretaría General de Universidades, Ministry of Education (Salvador de Madariaga Program); A. K. received a postdoctoral grant (no. 132828) from the Academy of Finland. M. M. D. received a post-doctoral fellowship from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation and a post-doctoral grant (no. 140367) from the Academy of Finland, and J. V. L. B. received a post-doctoral fellowship from the Spanish Ministry of Education. The Regional Government of Andalucía partly funded the supplementary feeding programme of lynx (LIFE-02NAT/8609). ; Peer reviewed
