Abstract

Human presence or activities are perceived by animals as those associated with predation risk so activity and exploration patterns of animals should be shaped by indices of anthropogenic disturbances. The high level of human disturbances is noticed in big cities. Therefore, the aim of the study was to determine the occurrence of roe deer in Warsaw and its activity in the Warsaw urban forests. We used snow tracking on transect routes (winter seasons 2016, 2017, 2018; 115.1 km in total) to determine roe deer occurrence in four habitats: forests, open areas, parks, and built-up areas. The number of tracks was highest in forests (4.6 tracks/1 km/24 h), followed by open areas, built-up areas, and parks. We used camera traps to determine the activity of roe deer in selected urban forests. We collected 697 observations of roe deer in Warsaw forests in the years 2016–2019 (per 4826 trap-days in total). The peak of roe deer activity was noticed between 4:00 and 5:00 a.m. Animals were least active at 1:00–2:00 p.m. and between 11:00 p.m.–01:00 a.m. Our research showed that roe deer inhabiting the urban area avoided human presence by using well-covered habitats and being active in periods when humans’ disturbances’ level is lower.

Highlights

  • IntroductionUrbanization is considered as a global threat to biodiversity [1] and caused mainly landscape changes (habitat loss, fragmentation and reduced size and connectivity of landscape patches) [2,3,4,5].Nowadays areas of undisturbed wilderness are rapidly decreasing, compelling wild animals to integrate into urban environments

  • Urbanization is considered as a global threat to biodiversity [1] and caused mainly landscape changes [2,3,4,5].Nowadays areas of undisturbed wilderness are rapidly decreasing, compelling wild animals to integrate into urban environments

  • The density of roe deer tracks was different in every type of habitat

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Summary

Introduction

Urbanization is considered as a global threat to biodiversity [1] and caused mainly landscape changes (habitat loss, fragmentation and reduced size and connectivity of landscape patches) [2,3,4,5].Nowadays areas of undisturbed wilderness are rapidly decreasing, compelling wild animals to integrate into urban environments. Urbanization is considered as a global threat to biodiversity [1] and caused mainly landscape changes (habitat loss, fragmentation and reduced size and connectivity of landscape patches) [2,3,4,5]. Human presence and activities cause disturbances, which are perceived by animals analogous to the presence of natural predators [6,7,8,9,10]. Non-lethal activities are considered as less harmful to wildlife, but humaninduced disturbances can exceed the effects of predation risk [8, 14]. To deal with anthropogenic stressors, animals may shift their activity to more sheltered habitats, darker nights (considering moon phases) or become more nocturnal [18,19,20]

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