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Biodiversity and Conservation in Europe pp 119–134Cite as

The Iberian ibex is under an expansion trend but displaced to suboptimal habitats by the presence of extensive goat livestock in central Spain

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Part of the book series: Topics in Biodiversity and Conservation ((TOBC,volume 7))

Abstract

In this paper an updated distribution of the Iberian ibex (Capra pyrenaica, Schinz 1838) in the central Spanish region of Castile–La Mancha is shown. The species is present in 19% of the study region, and in areas not cited so far in the literature. A detailed analysis of habitat suitability was also carried out, applying a new methodology, Ecological-Niche Factor Analysis, which uses presence data to build a habitat suitability map of a given species. As livestock activity is quite intense in the region, the presence of a potential competitor, the domestic goat (Capra hircus), was included in the analyses. Factors affecting ibex relative abundance were determined by means of a nested stepwise multiple regression, where livestock presence/absence was the nested factor. The presence of livestock has a negative effect on ibex relative abundance, causing the ibex to select areas of poor, sparse vegetation, cultivated lands and forests, whereas in the absence of livestock, the ibex is mainly present in pasture–scrub lands and non-cultivated lands. Conservation implications of these results are discussed in the context of a Mediterranean region where extensive livestock grazing systems abound.

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  1. Instituto de Investigación en Recursos Cinegéticos (IREC), CSIC, UCLM, JCCM, Ronda de Toledo s/n, 13005, Ciudad Real, Spain

    Pelayo Acevedo, Jorge Cassinello & Christian Gortazar

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  1. Pelayo Acevedo
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  2. Jorge Cassinello
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  3. Christian Gortazar
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Correspondence to Jorge Cassinello .

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David L. Hawksworth Alan T. Bull

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Acevedo, P., Cassinello, J., Gortazar, C. (2006). The Iberian ibex is under an expansion trend but displaced to suboptimal habitats by the presence of extensive goat livestock in central Spain. In: Hawksworth, D.L., Bull, A.T. (eds) Biodiversity and Conservation in Europe. Topics in Biodiversity and Conservation, vol 7. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-6865-2_9

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