Home Range and Habitat Selection of Wild Boar (Sus scrofa) in Rural Landscape

Abstract

Wild boars can cause crop damage and are vectors causing infectious diseases. Thus, population management is essential to mitigate the damage. Because home range and habitat selection is important for the management of target species, accurate spatial data would provide valuable information to establish population management scheme. In this study, we investigated the home range and habitat selection of wild boars and aimed to help implement effective population management. We captured seven wild boars in central Gifu Prefecture, Japan, and monitored each individual from October 2020 to June 2022. We calculated the home range size and investigated environmental characteristics during daytime and nighttime. The home range sizes estimated from the minimum convex polygon method ranged from 0.32 to 28.51 km2. Moreover, wild boars avoided anthropogenic environments during the daytime and selectively used areas in the cropland category during the nighttime. Therefore, wild boars had narrow home ranges depending on the anthropogenic environments. Consequently, wildlife managers could reduce agricultural damage caused by wild boars by managing bamboo forests and abandoned cultivated lands in the rural landscape. For infectious diseases, moreover, they should implement countermeasures against wild boars around areas where infectious diseases are endemic.