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European red deer are known to show a conspicuous phylogeographic pattern with three distinct mtDNA lineages (western, eastern and North-African/Sardinian). The western lineage, believed to be indicative of a southwestern glacial refuge in Iberia and southern France, nowadays covers large areas of the continent including the British Isles, Scandinavia and parts of central Europe, while the eastern lineage is primarily found in southeast-central Europe, the Carpathians and the Balkans. However, large parts of central Europe and the whole northeast of the continent were not covered by previous analyses. To close this gap, we produced mtDNA control region sequences from more than 500 red deer from Denmark, Germany, Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine and western Russia and combined our data with sequences available from earlier studies to an overall sample size of almost 1,100. Our results show that the western lineage extends far into the European east and is prominent in all eastern countries except for the Polish Carpathians, Ukraine and Russia where only eastern haplotypes occurred. While the latter may actually reflect the natural northward expansion of the eastern lineage after the last ice age, the present distribution of the western lineage in eastern Europe may in large parts be artificial and a result of translocations and reintroduction of red deer into areas where the species became extinct in historical times.

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Forests provide important ecosystem services, and protected areas around the world are intended to reduce human disturbance on forests. The question is how forest cover is changing in different parts of the world, why some areas are more frequently disturbed, and if protected areas are effective in limiting anthropogenic forest disturbance. The Carpathians are Eastern Europe's largest contiguous forest ecosystem and are a hotspot of biodiversity. Eastern Europe has undergone dramatic changes in political and socioeconomic structures since 1990, when socialistic state economies transitioned toward market economies. However, the effects of the political and economic transition on Carpathian forests remain largely unknown. Our goals were to compare post-socialist forest disturbance and to assess the effectiveness of protected areas in the border triangle of Poland, Slovakia, and Ukraine, to better understand the role of broadscale political and socioeconomic factors. Forest disturbances were assessed using the forest disturbance index derived from Landsat MSS/TM/ETM+ images from 1978 to 2000. Our results showed increased harvesting in all three countries (up to 1.8 times) in 1988-1994, right after the system change. Forest disturbance rates differed markedly among countries (disturbance rates in Ukraine were 4.5 times higher than in Poland, and those in Slovakia were 4.3 times higher than in Poland), and in Ukraine, harvests tended to occur at higher elevations. Forest fragmentation increased in all three countries but experienced a stronger increase in Slovakia and Ukraine (approximately 5% decrease in core forest) than in Poland. Protected areas were most effective in Poland and in Slovakia, where harvesting rates dropped markedly (by nearly an order of magnitude in Slovakia) after protected areas were designated. In Ukraine, harvesting rates inside and outside protected areas did not differ appreciably, and harvests were widespread immediately before the designation of protected areas. In summary, the socioeconomic changes in Eastern Europe that occurred since 1990 had strong effects on forest disturbance. Differences in disturbance rates among countries appear to be most closely related to broadscale socioeconomic conditions, forest management practices, forest policies, and the strength of institutions. We suggest that such factors may be equally important in other regions of the world.

Habitat loss threatens large mammals worldwide, and their survival will depend on habitat in human-dominated landscapes. Conservation planners thus face the challenge to identify areas of least conflict with land use, yet broadscale species distribution models rarely incorporate real landscape patterns nor do they identify potential conservation conflicts. An excellent example of such conservation challenges is provided by European bison (Bison bonasus). Almost extinct by the early 20th century, bison can only survive in the wild if large metapopulations are established, but it is unclear where new herds can be reintroduced. Using European bison as an example we conducted a continental-scale habitat assessment based on real landscape patterns. Our specific aims here were to (1) map European bison habitat throughout the species' former range, (2) examine whether broadscale habitat suitability factors differ from previously reported fine-scale factors, and (3) assess where suitable habitat occurs in areas with low potential for conflict with land use. We assessed habitat suitability using herd range maps for all 36 free-ranging European bison herds as habitat use data. Habitat suitability maps were compared with maps of land cover, livestock density, agricultural constraints, and protected areas to assess potential conservation conflicts. Our models had high goodness of fit (AUC = 0.941), and we found abundant potential bison habitat. European bison prefer mosaic-type landscapes, with a preference for broad-leaved and mixed forests. European bison metapopulations do not appear to be limited by habitat availability. However, most potential habitat occurred outside protected areas and has substantial potential for conservation conflicts. The most promising areas for establishing large bison metapopulations all occur in Eastern Europe (i.e., the Carpathians, the Belarus-Ukraine borderlands, and several regions in European Russia). The future of European bison and that of other large mammals in the wild thus clearly lies in Eastern Europe, because habitat there is most abundant and least fragmented, and because the potential for conflict with land use is lower. More generally we suggest that broadscale habitat assessments that incorporate land use can be powerful tools for conservation planning and will be key if large herbivore and carnivore conservation is to succeed in a human-dominated world.

1. The European bison Bison bonasus went through a severe bottleneck and became extinct in the wild 90 years ago. The lowland subspecies B. b. bonasus is the only one of three original subspecies that exists today. The entire species derives from only 12 founders, including a bull of the Caucasian subspecies B. b. caucasicus. Due to its presence among founders, there are two geographically separated genetic lines of European bison: the pure lowland (Białowież a) line and the hybrid lowlandCaucasian line. 2. The lowland line of the European bison originates from only seven founders with an extremely varying genetic contribution. Approximately 80% of the genes in contemporary populations come from just two founders. 3. A variety of genetic markers (mtDNA, microsatellites, single nucleotide polymorphism microchips) were applied to studies of the level of depletion of genetic variability in European bison. 4. The lowland line of the European bison, the most extensively studied, shows very low levels of genetic variation, and has just half the microsatellite heterozygosity of the closely related American bison Bison bison. The effective population size (Ne) for the highly genetically homogenous lowland line in the Polish part of the Białowieża Forest is estimated to be 23.5, far less than the census population size of 450. 5. The average inbreeding level in lowland bison is almost 50%, although no signs of inbreeding depression have been observed. In contrast, inbreeding effects have been noticed in the lowland-Caucasian line, which has a much lower average inbreeding level (28%). In spite of the apparently high fitness of the lowland bison, the lack of genetic variation and high level of inbreeding may present substantial threats in the future, especially in the context of potential epizootics.

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