Spatial ecology of conflicts: unravelling patterns of wildlife damage at multiple scales.

Carlos Bautista,Javier Naves,Eloy Revilla,Néstor Fernández,Nuria Selva,Teresa Berezowska-Cnota

doi:10.1098/rspb.2021.1394

Abstract

Human encroachment into natural habitats is typically followed by conflicts derived from wildlife damage to agriculture and livestock. Spatial risk modelling is a useful tool to gain the understanding of wildlife damage and mitigate conflicts. Although resource selection is a hierarchical process operating at multiple scales, risk models usually fail to address more than one scale, which can result in the misidentification of the underlying processes. Here, we addressed the multi-scale nature of wildlife damage occurrence by considering ecological and management correlates interacting from household to landscape scales. We studied brown bear (Ursus arctos) damage to apiaries in the North-eastern Carpathians as our model system. Using generalized additive models, we found that brown bear tendency to avoid humans and the habitat preferences of bears and beekeepers determine the risk of bear damage at multiple scales. Damage risk at fine scales increased when the broad landscape context also favoured damage. Furthermore, integrated-scale risk maps resulted in more accurate predictions than single-scale models. Our results suggest that principles of resource selection by animals can be used to understand the occurrence of damage and help mitigate conflicts in a proactive and preventive manner.

Highlights

Conflicts arising from wildlife damage to livestock and agriculture are one of the most urgent and complex challenges for conservationists today [1,2]
Spatial risk modelling is a useful tool to gain the understanding of wildlife damage and mitigate conflicts
Resource selection is a hierarchical process operating at multiple scales, risk models usually fail to address more than one scale, which can result in the misidentification of the underlying processes

Summary

Introduction

Conflicts arising from wildlife damage to livestock and agriculture are one of the most urgent and complex challenges for conservationists today [1,2]. Providing scale-integrated risk maps has potential to understand the ecological processes underlying damage occurrence and providing an effective tool for conflict mitigation. We hypothesized that bear damage to beehives would mostly occur in areas of high bear habitat suitability with low human influence [13] but with a high availability and accessibility of apiaries To evaluate this hypothesis, we modelled the risk of bear damage to beehives at three scales encompassing (i) the scale of a bear home range (hereafter landscape scale); (ii) the habitat selection of bears within their home ranges and the distribution of apiaries at the local scale (hereafter local scale) and (iii) the microhabitat preferences of bears and the preferences of beekeepers in locating their apiaries (hereafter household scale). We assessed whether the risk of damage follows a spatially hierarchical structure, in which the broader landscape context can shape bear damage response to household conditions

Methods

Results

Findings

Discussion