Temporal road closures improve habitat quality for wildlife

Jesse Whittington,Bill Hunt,Petah Low

doi:10.1038/s41598-019-40581-y

Abstract

Increasing levels of human activity threaten wildlife populations through direct mortality, habitat degradation, and habitat fragmentation. Area closures can improve habitat quality for wildlife, but may be difficult to achieve where tourism or other economic drivers are a priority. Temporal closures that limit human use during specific times of day have potential to increase habitat quality for wildlife, while continuing to provide opportunities for human use. However, the effectiveness of daily temporal closures has not been tested. We assessed how implementation of a temporal road closure affected wildlife movements in Banff National Park. Parks Canada closed a popular 17 km stretch of road between 2000 and 0800 hours to improve habitat quality for wildlife. We assessed the effectiveness of the closure on nine mammal species using three sets of data: remote cameras, road surveys, and grizzly bear (Ursus arctos) GPS data. In all three analyses, wildlife detection rates on the road doubled during the closure while remaining unchanged in reference areas. Our strong and consistent results suggest temporal closures are an important conservation tool that can increase habitat quality for wildlife while minimizing effects on people.

Highlights

Increasing levels of human use threaten wildlife populations globally through increased mortality, habitat loss, and habitat fragmentation[1,2,3]
Temporal closures, which we define as closure of areas to human activity for a portion of the day, are a management tool that has potential to improve habitat quality for wildlife while minimizing effects on human activity and potentially alleviate loss of social capital[35]
Wildlife could potentially adapt to changes in human activity associated with temporal closures and increase their use of habitat near linear features

Summary

Introduction

Increasing levels of human use threaten wildlife populations globally through increased mortality, habitat loss, and habitat fragmentation[1,2,3]. Increases in human activity have reduced wildlife movement worldwide[24] and conservation actions are frequently required to reduce mortality, restore habitat quality, and improve connectivity. Wildlife could potentially adapt to changes in human activity associated with temporal closures and increase their use of habitat near linear features. The number of visitors to Banff National Park has increased to over 4 million people per year (https:// www.pc.gc.ca/en/docs/pc/attend) and high levels of human use, commercial development and a busy transportation network have reduced habitat quality and connectivity for wildlife[9,36]. Our objective was to determine whether wildlife use of the secondary road would increase during the temporal closure We addressed this question using a combination of remote cameras, road-side observational surveys, and movement data from global position system (GPS) collared grizzly bears. We expected that wildlife use of the road would increase during the closure and that this would be reflected in increased detection of wildlife on remote cameras and road surveys, and a higher probability of road use by GPS collared bears

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Conclusion