Animal Behavior and Wildlife Conservation
322
Animal Behavior and Wildlife Conservation
322Overview
Efforts to conserve wildlife populations and preserve biological diversity are often hampered by an inadequate understanding of animal behavior. How do animals react to gaps in forested lands, or to sport hunters? Do individual differences—in age, sex, size, past experience—affect how an animal reacts to a given situation? Differences in individual behavior may determine the success or failure of a conservation initiative, yet they are rarely considered when strategies and policies are developed.
Animal Behavior and Wildlife Conservation explores how knowledge of animal behavior may help increase the effectiveness of conservation programs. The book brings together conservation biologists, wildlife managers, and academics from around the world to examine the importance of general principles, the role played by specific characteristics of different species, and the importance of considering the behavior of individuals and the strategies they adopt to maximize fitness.
Each chapter begins by looking at the theoretical foundations of a topic, and follows with an exploration of its practical implications. A concluding chapter considers possible future contributions of research in animal behavior to wildlife conservation.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781597268370 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Island Press |
| Publication date: | 04/09/2013 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 322 |
| File size: | 9 MB |
About the Author
Marco Festa-Bianchet is Professor of Ecology at the University of Sherbrooke in Quebec, Canada.
Marco Apollonio is Professor of Zoology at the University of Sassari in Italy.
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Animal Behavior and Wildlife Conservation
By Marco Festa-Bianchet, Marco Apollonio
ISLAND PRESS
Copyright © 2003 Island PressAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-59726-837-0
CHAPTER 1
General Introduction
Marco Festa-Bianchet and Marco Apollonio
Many of the species with whom we share our planet are going extinct because we overexploit them or destroy their habitat (Ehrlich and Wilson 1991, Caughley 1994). Species extinction and habitat destruction have an immediate impact upon many economic and social activities because various uses of wildlife provide income, enjoyment, or recreation for millions of people (Geist 1994). It is therefore not surprising that interest in the conservation of biodiversity is increasing among the general public as well as among behavioral ecologists who study wild animals and their environment.
Two related disciplines, wildlife conservation and wildlife management, use ethological knowledge to limit the impact of humans on ecosystems. Wildlife conservation is concerned with the preservation of species and their habitat in the face of threats from human development. Wildlife management, including fisheries management, seeks sustainable strategies to exploit wild species while ensuring their persistence and availability for future use. Ideally, these strategies should also not damage components of the ecosystem other than the exploited species. Although the distinction between the two disciplines is often blurred, wildlife management is often oriented toward specific objectives for one or a few species of economic interest. The goals of conservation are broader and include the preservation of genetic diversity so that species will maintain their ability to evolve in response to environmental change. Recently, however, wildlife conservation and management are coalescing into a single discipline. Management is often a component of conservation strategies (for example, limited sport harvest of some high-profile species can be used to generate funds for habitat preservation [Lewis and Alpert 1997]), and the conservation of genetic diversity or interpopulation connectivity is often a goal of wildlife management. For simplicity, we will use the term management in this introduction to refer both to situations where wild animals are the subject of some form of exploitative management, and to situations where they are of concern because they are at risk of extinction.
Regardless of how one defines wildlife management or wildlife conservation, however, practical application of these terms inevitably involves the consideration of both animal and human behavior. This book explores how knowledge of animal behavior can help prevent species extinction and sustainably exploit wildlife populations. It is clear to us, however, that human behavior plays a far greater role than animal behavior in both conservation and management.
The Role of Animal Behavior in Wildlife Management
It is important to define the role that animal behavior can play in wildlife conservation and management. Problems in wildlife management are a subset of the global environmental problems that are of interest to conservation biology. Major ecological problems include the wholesale loss of species through habitat destruction; the pollution of air, soil, and water; the introduction of exotic species (including domestic animals, parasites, and pathogens); and the alteration of global biogeochemical cycles. Knowledge of animal behavior is not the sole key to solving global conservation problems; but then, paradoxically, neither is any branch of ecology or any other science. Indeed, biologists do not make the important decisions that affect species extinction and people's continued ability to benefit from functional ecosystems. Such decisions are the purview of politicians and business leaders, who are primarily interested in political and economic goals and are therefore much more influenced by political and economic processes than by science (Morowitz 1991).
Changes in socioeconomic circumstances are also important. For example, immediately following World War II, agriculture was the main occupation in several southern European countries. People were widely distributed over the countryside. Almost all natural resources were exploited, including lands with low productivity. Following industrialization in the mid-1960s, much of the land that was either hilly or mountainous was abandoned as people sought a more comfortable lifestyle in cities. Space and resources in the abandoned countryside became available for wildlife. Urbanization may thus explain the recent recovery of wildlife in Europe more than any other economic or biological process. In North America, increased affluence, good rural road networks, and ability to work from home are instead leading to suburbanization of wildlife habitat, with negative consequences for biodiversity, especially of large predators.
Everyone can make "minor" decisions with environmental consequences, from not eating seafood caught with methods causing extensive bycatch of nontarget species, to not building a home on critical habitat, to family planning, to voting patterns in democratic societies. Zoologists, including animal behaviorists, clearly play a major role in the conservation of biodiversity by informing decision makers and the general public about the ecological consequences of human activities. Solving the global conservation problems that threaten our quality of life, and in some cases our very lives, will require scientific knowledge, but first and foremost it will require a better system of economic valuation of goods and services. Economic externalities such as pollution, habitat destruction, and the loss of ecological functions (including those that provide clean air, safe drinking water, and a stable climate) must be incorporated in the evaluation of different activities (Chichilnisky and Heal 1998). Perhaps the greatest contribution that ecologists can make to environmental conservation is to convince decision makers at all levels, from heads of state to individual consumers, to think about the long-term consequences of their decisions.
Behavioral ecologists typically study the long-term evolutionary consequences of different animal behaviors. As a result, when examining the consequences of human actions, they usually consider a longer timescale than the few years to the next election, or this year's balance sheet, or the time it takes to win one particular court case. It is essential that they transmit such long-term thinking to other sectors of society.
Students of animal behavior can provide an extremely important approach to wildlife conservation because of their tendency to examine individual differences, to emphasize the role of variability, and to think in terms of trade-offs between different behavioral strategies. Such emphasis on the behavior of individuals and the strategies they adopt to maximize fitness plays an important role when a species' natural behavior can lead to conservation problems in habitats altered by humans. In extreme and rare cases, the best management strategy may be to interfere with a species' natural behavior.
The study of animal behavior is most usefully applied to the conservation and management of populations because it both identifies and provides ways to deal with a key characteristic of animals: they are not all alike. Individual differences in age, sex, size, aggressiveness, learning ability, past experience, heterozygosity, and a myriad of other variables can all affect how an animal reacts to a given situation and may determine the success or failure of a management strategy or a conservation initiative. Conservation of animal populations thus often depends on meeting the challenge of how to incorporate individual differences in wildlife management. The importance of individual differences in wildlife conservation is a central theme of this book.
There is a hierarchy of levels of individual heterogeneity, and all are important to wildlife management and conservation. One may start by considering behavioral differences between similar species. For example, two North American canids, the wolf (Canis lupus) and the coyote (C. latrans) react in opposite ways to urbanization and intensive agriculture: wolves disappear, coyotes prosper (Tremblay, Crête, and Huot 1998; Mladenoff, Sickley, and Wydeven 1999). One may argue that the coyote's greater behavioral adaptability is the key to its success because it allows coexistence with humans, whereas the wolf's behavior leads to its demise: wolves range over a wide area, hunt in packs, and are intolerant of humans. Within the same species, however, there are often behavioral differences between broad geographical areas: wolves in southern Europe coexist with human population densities that are much greater than densities that wolves tolerate in North America (Promberger and Schroeder 1992). The animals belong to the same species, but their behaviors are very different. Southern European wolves resemble North American coyotes in their ability to survive alongside dense human populations. At a smaller geographical scale, variables such as prey type and level of human exploitation can affect pack size, turnover rates, and social structure, which in turn can determine the level of genetic diversity by varying the opportunities for dispersers to recruit into packs. Indeed, it has been suggested that high levels of shooting and trapping in eastern Canada may artificially increase the rate of hybridization of wolves with coyotes (Wilson et al. 2000). Finally, the sex/age composition of each pack, individual preferences, and previous experience may affect variables such as prey selection or space-use patterns, which may in turn affect vulnerability to human harvest or the probability of conflict with humans because of livestock depredation.
Specialist predators that appear to form a "search image" for a particular type of prey are a very good example of how animal behavior can affect wildlife management on a local scale. Marco Festa-Bianchet has studied the ecology and behavior of bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis) in the Sheep River population since 1981 (Festa-Bianchet et al. 1995). From 1982 to 1995, cougars (Puma concolor) were studied in the same area. Most cougars in the Sheep River drainage had radio collars. From 1982 to 1993, they killed only zero to two sheep a year. From 1993 to 1995, one adult female cougar suddenly switched from hunting deer (Odocoileus spp.) and wapiti (Cervus elaphus canadensis) to preying upon bighorn sheep, and was almost single-handedly responsible for a 20% decline in the bighorn population (Ross, Jalkotzy, and Festa-Bianchet 1997). A similar phenomenon occurred in another study area, Ram Mountain, from 1997 to 1999: again, following a sudden increase in cougar predation, mortality of adult females doubled, mortality of adult males tripled, and the bighorn population declined by almost 50%, although factors other than cougar predation were likely also involved. Almost no cougar predation was recorded at Ram Mountain from 1972 to 1997, but cougar signs were seen in almost every year. In both cases, the increase in predation was apparently due to an individual cougar's specialist behavior. Predation was not associated with increased availability of bighorn sheep as prey or, apparently, a decline in alternate prey.
Because the behavior of bighorn sheep is very different from that of cervids, a cougar must change hunting technique to prey on sheep. Hunting bighorn sheep requires specialized, learned skills that not all cougars have. Indeed, one male cougar attempted to kill a lamb and was itself killed when he and his victim fell off a cliff. From a management viewpoint, the experience both at Sheep River and at Ram Mountain suggests that a generalized predator-control program would have had little effect without removal of the sheep-killing individual (Ernest et al. 2002). Finally, in both cases cougar predation led to an increase in bighorn mortality despite low population density: because the increased predation was due to individual behavior, it was independent of population density.
At about the same time, some cougars in southwestern Alberta started preying on domestic dogs, possibly as a response to increased residential development on cougar range, which is currently a problem in many areas in western North America. Included among the victims were the hounds used to capture cougars at Sheep River from 1985 to 1994. The normal reaction of a cougar pursued by hounds is to climb a tree. It is likely that tree-climbing by cougars has been selected as an adaptive response to pursuit by packs of wolves. Wolves compete with cougars for the same prey and can kill a cougar if they can catch it. Cougars may react to dogs as they would react to wolves. Once a cougar learns that domestic dogs are easily killed, however, it may change its behavior and fight rather than run. Clearly, dog kills lead to rural residents' intolerance of cougars in general. Faced with a difficult social situation, it would be very valuable for managers to know whether the dog-killing behavior is generalized or limited to a few specialist cougars. It would also be very useful to know how to prevent the development of dog-killing behavior in wild cougars. These examples show how behavior, even the behavior of single individuals, can affect many aspects of wildlife management.
Goals of This Book
Our principal objective in assembling this volume was a simple one: to provide a broad overview of how knowledge of animal behavior can improve our ability to manage wildlife. Most chapters explore how conservation strategies either are or should be affected by animal behavior and how particular aspects of behavior affect the viability and growth of populations. Others explore the limits of animal behavior's contribution to conservation biology. In particular, the book addresses practical aspects of conservation and explores the role of animal behavior in the conservation of various ecosystems. Contributors examine both the importance of general principles and the key role played by specific characteristics of different species. Conservation is not a biological problem, it is a human problem. We do not subscribe to the view that wildlife management must improve natural systems, but rather believe that management actions are required either to remedy environmental damages caused by humans or to lessen the impact of human exploitation on natural systems. Because behavior can affect the reactions of wildlife to different conservation strategies, behavior must be taken into account for both remedial and preventive management. The chapters herein will outline the circumstances in which animal behavior affects conservation biology, and identify which behaviors are particularly important to ensure either the continued survival or the sustainable exploitation of wildlife.
Because conservation biology arises from a need to prevent, or at least lessen, human impact on ecosystems, an exploration of the role of animal behavior in conservation must take into account the diversity of situations that are faced in different areas of the world. Human attitudes, societal orientations, economic diversity, and traditions are all very important aspects of wildlife conservation. Social attitudes also determine what people want to protect or exploit, which wild species have economic or cultural value, and the acceptance of different management strategies. These social and economic factors interplay with animal behavior to affect the consequences of human actions on biodiversity. To partially account for diversity in both biology and culture, we attempted to select contributors interested in different aspects of animal behavior, based in different countries, and with expertise in animal behavior in a variety of geographical and political settings. We were only partially successful, mostly because researchers interested in and able to pursue studies in animal behavior are most often based in Western countries. The contributors bring to bear their own scientific expertise as well as their personal experience. Just as differences in behavior can affect the success of alternative conservation strategies, differences in societal attitudes are often the main reason why a conservation strategy can work in one human setting and fail in another.
Structure of the Book
The book is organized into five parts. In part I, chapter 1 provides a general introduction. In chapter 2, Morris Gosling explores the main reason why animal behavior is important to conservation: because individuals differ, models attempting to predict population dynamics, genetic variability, and the risk of population extinction can be improved by a consideration of individual behavior.
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Table of Contents
PrefacePART I. Why Animal Behavior Is Important for Conservation
Chapter 1. General Introduction
Chapter 2. Adaptive Behavior and Population Viability
PART II. Resource-Use Strategies in Space and Time
Chapter 3. Dispersal and Conservation: A Behavioral Perspective on Metapopulation Persistence
Chapter 4. Migration and Conservation: The Case of Sea Turtles
Chapter 5. Bridging the Gap: Linking Individual Bird Movement and Territory Establishment Rules with Their Patterns of Distribution in Fragmented Forests
Chapter 6. Knowledge of Reproductive Behavior Contributes to Conservation Programs
Chapter 7. Foraging Behavior, Habitat Suitability, and Translocation Success, with Special Reference to Large Mammalian Herbivores
PART III. Wildlife Management
Chapter 8. Variation in Life History Traits and Realistic Population Models for Wildlife Management: The Case of Ungulates
Chapter 9. Through the Eyes of Prey: How the Extinction and Conservation of North America's Large Carnivores Alter Prey Systems and Biodiversity
Chapter 10. Behavioral Aspects of Conservation and Management of European Mammals
Chapter 11. Implications of Sexually Selected Infanticide for the Hunting of Large Carnivores
Chapter 12. Exploitative Wildlife Management as a Selective Pressure for the Life-History Evolution of Large Mammals
PART IV. Genetic Diversity and Individual Differences
Chapter 13. Social Groups, Genetic Structure, and Conservation
Chapter 14. Pathogen-Driven Sexual Selection for "Good Genes" versus Genetic Variability in Small Populations
Chapter 15. Measuring Individual Quality in Conservation and Behavior
Chapter 16. Individual Quality, Environment, and Conservation
PART V. Conclusion
Chapter 17. Where Do We Go from Here?
Literature Cited
List of Contributors
Index