Consumption of game and pest species by small-and medium-sized carnivores

Koen Van Den Berge,Pieter Verschelde,Sanne Van Den Berge,Jan Gouwy,Maxime Eeraerts,Timo Van Der Veken

doi:10.26496/bjz.2022.97

Koen Van Den Berge, Pieter Verschelde + Show 4 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.26496/bjz.2022.97

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Abstract

Ecosystem services are the contributions that natural ecosystems make to people. Mammalian carnivores can provide both positive and negative ecosystem services by consuming pest or game species, respectively. In this study, we determined the consumption of certain game and pest species for a guild of sympatric small- and medium-sized carnivores (European badger, red fox, European polecat, stone marten, stoat and least weasel). We found that game and pest species comprise a notable proportion of the diet, ranging from 0.0% to 12.6% and from 2.7% to 46.3%, respectively. Furthermore, for all carnivores we found that the proportion of pest species such as rats and voles (i.e., positive ecosystem service) was higher than the proportion of game species such as pheasants, partridges and hares, i.e., negative ecosystem service). Moreover, stoat and weasel did not consume any game species. This study gives a first overview of the potential ecosystem services through consumption of pest and game species provided by small- and medium-sized carnivores.

Highlights

Biological diversity has invaluable intrinsic value, but is functionally important, as it influences how ecological systems perform and deliver services to society (Díaz et al 2018)
We found that consumption of pest species was significantly higher than the consumption of game species in red fox, badger, stone marten and polecat
Our study demonstrates that most of the small- and medium-sized carnivores that were included in the study consume game species as well as pest species

Summary

Introduction

Biological diversity has invaluable intrinsic value, but is functionally important, as it influences how ecological systems perform and deliver services to society (Díaz et al 2018). This component of diversity that influences ecosystem dynamics and productivity is defined as ‘functional biodiversity’. Functional biodiversity includes, e.g., pollination of crops by wild pollinators and crop pest control via natural enemies (Lichtenberg et al 2017; Eeraerts et al 2019), both are typical examples of ‘ecosystem services’ (ES). Using the concept of ES is attractive because it helps us to describe how society is linked to nature and how it benefits from its services (Haines-Young & Potschin 2013).

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