Abstract
Linear infrastructures are a primary driver of economic development. However, they also can negatively affect wildlife by mortality and the barrier effect. In this paper, we address how paved and unpaved roads, high-tension power lines, and gas/oil pipelines affect home range size, core areas, and movement in an endangered primate, the golden lion tamarin (GLT). Location data were recorded using radio telemetry on 16 groups in two protected areas and in privately owned forest fragments. The GLT’s home range, not core area, increased in size for the groups that occupied locations far from linear infrastructures; home range was also significantly influenced by available forest size. None of the home ranges contained a road, but home ranges did contain power lines. GLTs used the surrounding landscape near all types of infrastructure. Movement analysis showed that most of the step lengths (distances between subsequent locations) were less than 100 m between two consecutive locations, but step length was longer for roads and longer for groups in fully forested habitats. Tamarins avoided paved roads when in close proximity to this type of infrastructure; this behavior increased in areas without adequate adjacent forest habitat. Our results show that linear infrastructures differ in their level of impact: roads can act as a barrier, whereas other types of infrastructure have minimal effect on movement and home range. We discuss these differences in impact in terms of structure, maintenance schedules, and edge effects of infrastructure.
Highlights
Man-made linear structures, such as roads, highways, railways, power lines, canals, pipelines, and wind farms, are vital to any nation’s economic development [1,2,3].these structures come with undesirable negative ecological consequences for native forest ecosystems and wildlife throughout every phase of their implementation [4]
To estimate group home range and core area, we considered only the group-living individuals with more than 100 locations/group in total, resulting in 4190 points for 16 groups of golden lion tamarin (GLT) clustered into three regions: União Biological Reserve (UN), PA, and isolated patches
We developed a similar map for highways, in which we calculated the distances between each GLT location and the closest highway
Summary
Man-made linear structures, such as roads, highways, railways, power lines, canals, pipelines (for petroleum, gas, and water), and wind farms, are vital to any nation’s economic development [1,2,3]. These structures come with undesirable negative ecological consequences for native forest ecosystems and wildlife throughout every phase of their implementation [4]. The first factor is direct mortality, which is caused by, for example, wildlife-vehicle collision (wvc) and wildlife-train collision (wtc) [11,12,13]. Powerlines can cause mortality of arboreal animals by electrocution [14,15]
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