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Assessing the importance of protected areas in human-dominated lowland for brown bear (Ursus arctos) winter denning

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Abstract

Protected areas are often designed with conservation focus on rare species. However, provision of essential areas for other species is crucial for maintenance of overall biodiversity. The brown bear (Ursus arctos), throughout most of its present distribution area, helps to maintain diverse ecosystems through trophic effects. As with other hibernating mammals, undisturbed wintering areas are a highly important resource for bears. In lowland areas containing intensively managed forests, undisturbed winter dens might largely be confined to protected areas. Here, we assess the importance of protected areas for bear winter denning in a forested landscape. We employed maximum entropy modelling and data of 80 bear winter den locations in a 39,000 km2 area of mainland Estonia to evaluate areas suitable for winter denning. We compared the amount of highly suitable wintering areas (suitability index > 0.6) in 22 protected areas with two ring buffers around these areas to assess the relative importance of adjoining areas for bear wintering. The proportion of highly suitable wintering area was significantly lower in protected areas than in nearby ring buffers. Therefore, our results demonstrate that protected areas do not provide much conservation support for denning brown bears, and we recommend focussing attention on managed forests to meet conservation objectives. The results reveal the importance of larger forest areas for brown bear wintering in lowland to avoid constant disturbance.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Peep Männil from the Department of Game Monitoring, Estonian Environmental Agency, Ahto Täpsi and Vahur Sepp, for kindly sharing the data on brown bear wintering sites and Riinu Rannap, Ann Kraut, John Davison, Urmas Saarma, Marju Keis and Peeter Anijalg and anonymous reviewers for their generous help and comments on earlier versions of the manuscript.

Funding

The study was funded by European Union through the European Regional Development Fund by the program 3.2.0802.11-0043 and the Estonian Ministry of Education and Research by institutional research funding (IUT-2032).

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  1. Department of Zoology, Institute of Ecology and Earth Sciences, University of Tartu, Tartu, Estonia

    Egle Tammeleht & Katri Pärna

  2. Institute of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, Estonian University of Life Sciences, Tartu, Estonia

    Anne Kull

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Tammeleht, E., Kull, A. & Pärna, K. Assessing the importance of protected areas in human-dominated lowland for brown bear (Ursus arctos) winter denning. Mamm Res 65, 105–115 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13364-019-00447-0

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