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Evaluating the spatiotemporal indicators of the population decline of a threatened large forest grouse

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Abstract

Many wildlife populations are declining due to anthropologic and environmental pressures. Indicators can facilitate detection of and reaction to population declines. We tested spatial population pattern variables as indicators for the future fate of capercaillie populations in Slovenia. This population was surveyed from 1979 to 1983, 1998 to 2000, and 2008 to 2011. We tested the following indicators of spatial population patterns: the proportion of occupied leks in the neighbourhood of each lek, the distance to the nth nearest occupied lek, the distance to the centre of the cluster and the distance to the closest neighbouring cluster. The AUC and conditional and marginal R2 were used to evaluate the strength of the indicators. There was a steep decline in the number of leks in the Dinaric Mountains during the period 1980–2010, while the number of leks in the Eastern Slovenian Alps and Julian Alps decreased until 2000 and then stabilized. There was an increase in the distance to the nearest occupied leks over the years, but there were differences in this indicator between the clusters. A combination of the distance to the fourth nearest occupied lek and the occupancy of the first nine leks best predicted the future of a lek, showing that the indicators used in the study can be used to predict the future fate of a lek. Our results can help guide future conservation and management decisions to conserve capercaille populations.

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Acknowledgements

From 1979 and 1985, research on capercaillie lek distribution and activity in Slovenia was organized and financed by projects of the Slovenian Forestry Institute (SFI) and the Slovenian Hunting association (SHA). Between 1998 and 2000, it was supported by projects V4-0175-98, V4-0435 and V4-0492 at the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Food of the Republic of Slovenia (RS); the Ministry for Science and Technology of the RS and the Ministry of the Environment and Spatial Planning of the RS. Between 2009 and 2011, it was supported by the voluntary work of foresters and hunters. Specialists from the SFI, Slovenian Forestry Service (SFS) and SHA were supported by the Research Programme (P4-0107) Forest Biology, Ecology and Technology, financed by the Slovenian Research Agency. Lek data were collected and analysed during all periods of the survey by Dr. M. Čas at the SFI. The research and paper manuscript preparation were financed by the project “Indicators of conservation status and measures for sustaining favourable conservation statuses of species and habitat types in the Natura 2000 forestlands” (V4-1143) at the Slovenian Research agency and the Ministry of Agriculture and Spatial Planning. We are especially grateful to Prof. Dr. M. Adamič for the first organization of the lek monitoring between 1979 and 1985 and support for the subsequent surveys. The authors thank all participants for their support and dedicated conservation fieldwork. We are indebted to Prof. Dr. K. Jerina for suggestions which greatly improved the manuscript. The manuscript is dedicated to the first author Dr. M. Čas, who passed away during its preparation.

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  1. Slovenian Forestry Institute, Večna pot 2, 1000, Ljubljana, Slovenia

    Miran Čas, Andrej Kobler & Maarten de Groot

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  1. Miran Čas
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  2. Andrej Kobler
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  3. Maarten de Groot
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Correspondence to Maarten de Groot.

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Čas, M., Kobler, A. & de Groot, M. Evaluating the spatiotemporal indicators of the population decline of a threatened large forest grouse. Eur J Wildl Res 63, 45 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10344-017-1099-0

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