Abstract
Simple SummaryBait is often used to attract wildlife to enhance viewing opportunities, increase harvest rates, or to improve population survey methods for research and management purposes. However, baiting wildlife can alter animal behavior, leading to negative outcomes such as increased disease transmission, competition, and susceptibility to predation. Our objectives were to determine the effects of short-term baiting on male white-tailed deer behavior and distributions within several properties in southwestern Georgia, USA. We used cameras at baited and unbaited locations to assess the impacts of bait on deer space use within home ranges and to determine whether bait caused shifts in the distribution of home ranges during summer and winter surveys. We found little evidence that short-term baiting affected the distributions of home ranges on the landscape; however, we found evidence that space use within home ranges was affected by bait. By concentrating deer space use within seasonal home ranges, bait may enhance disease transmission and change harvest susceptibility.Bait is often used to increase wildlife harvest susceptibility, enhance viewing opportunities, and survey wildlife populations. The effects of baiting depend on how bait influences space use and resource selection at multiple spatial scales. Although telemetry studies allow for inferences about resource selection within home ranges (third-order selection), they provide limited information about spatial variation in density, which is the result of second-order selection. Recent advances in spatial capture-recapture (SCR) techniques allow exploration of second- and third-order selection simultaneously using non-invasive methods such as camera traps. Our objectives were to describe how short-term baiting affects white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) behavior and distribution. We fit SCR models to camera data from baited and unbaited locations in southwestern Georgia to assess the effects of short-term baiting on second- and third-order selection of deer during summer and winter surveys. We found little evidence of second-order selection during late summer or early winter surveys when camera surveys using bait are typically conducted. However, we found evidence for third-order selection, indicating that resource selection within home ranges is affected. Concentrations in space use resulting from baiting may enhance disease transmission, change harvest susceptibility, and potentially bias the outcome of camera surveys using bait.
Highlights
There was no effect of distance to bait on spatial variation in density, Pr(w = 1) < 0.05, except for site A, and the effect was only evident during the summer survey
Baiting had little influence on spatial variation in male deer density, suggesting that the distribution of male deer home range centers is not impacted by the presence of short-term baited sites
We could not address the possibility of long-term shifts in home range selection, our finding that bait exerted limited short-term effects on second-order selection is important from a management perspective because it suggests that bait will not alter landscape-scale distribution during the hunting season
Summary
Baiting wildlife can produce undesirable outcomes such as trophic cascades [9], inter- and intra-specific competition [10,11], and increased risk of disease transmission [12,13,14,15]. Baiting can congregate species such as white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) in closer proximity than would occur under natural foraging conditions, increasing the chance of horizontal transmission of diseases such as chronic wasting disease (CWD) and bovine tuberculosis through deer-deer contact [12,13,18], as well as indirect contact from contaminated bait sites [20,21].
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