No abstract

The development of recreational activities imposes growing anthropogenic pressure on wilderness areas worldwide. Because anthropogenic disturbances may modify wildlife use of habitat, space use studies may be useful to identify wildlife response to recreational activities. Mountain goats (Oreamnos americanus) are highly sensitive to anthropogenic disturbances and are thus likely to modify their space use in response to recreational activities. From 2011 to 2013, we studied space use of mountain goats in Jasper National Park, Canada, one of the most popular wilderness areas in North America, and assessed how it was influenced by an alpine ski area. Comparison of predicted use from habitat selection models and observed use defined by global positioning system collar data revealed ski area avoidance. The immediate surroundings of the ski area were, however, not avoided by mountain goats, but the presence of a natural salt lick <1 km from the ski area may have contributed to the observed mountain goat use of these areas. Ski activities have the potential to exclude mountain goats from habitat with otherwise high probability of use. Thus, we recommend that future ski area developments generally consider the behavior of species sensitive to anthropogenic disturbances and that construction should not occur in habitat essential for sensitive species like mountain goats. Ó 2015 The Wildlife Society.

Plante et al.Mortality Risk of Migratory Caribou low level of human development. Our study highlights the importance of assessing effects of human disturbances at various spatiotemporal scales, and of considering the relative influence of other non-anthropogenic factors to fully understand drives of wildlife populations.

Monitoring survival of juveniles in wild populations of vertebrates is challenging because capture and marking of neonates may influence survival and induce biases. Camera collars have proven effective in resource and habitat selection studies, but their effectiveness to assess offspring survival is unknown. Our objective was to monitor the survival of neonates using camera collars installed on 24 preparturient female migratory caribou (Rangifer tarandus) of the Rivière‐aux‐Feuilles herd, from 2016 to 2018, in Nunavik, Canada. Females were captured with a net gun fired from a helicopter and pregnancy was confirmed by ultrasound. Cameras recorded a 10‐second video every 20 min from 1 June until 1 September 2017, when the collar detached automatically. We used Cormack‐Jolly‐Seber models to assess survival and resighting probabilities of calves based on their observation in the videos. Three collars failed, recording less than 30% of the expected videos, including one on a female that did not give birth. Among the 21 females wearing a functional collar, one gave birth to a stillborn calf. We analyzed 25,820 videos recorded from 20 collars. Calf sightings in videos were less frequent as the monitoring period advanced, but we estimated the probability of observing a live calf at 0.77 (SE = 0.42) over the sampling period. Videos indicated a survival rate of 0.67 (SE = 0.11) from birth to 1 September. Our results suggest that camera collars installed on adult females can be used to reliably assess offspring survival, and thus improve our understanding of caribou population dynamics. The application of camera collars should be useful for other large vertebrate species for which the assessment of neonate survival is lacking or difficult to obtain. © 2021 The Wildlife Society.