Human activity influences wildlife populations and activity patterns: implications for spatial and temporal refuges.

As natural environments become increasingly modified by humans, land managers should devise plans to protect sensitive species from human activities that disturb these species. We explored behavioral responses of nesting ferruginous hawks (Buteo regalis) to an approaching human in areas where the level of human activity on the landscaped varied. Contrary to other reports, hawks were aggressive in nest defense and female hawks defended nests more aggressively than male hawks. Adult hawks decreased nest‐defense intensity as nestling age increased but increased intensity with consecutive human visits to the nest. Flushing distance was considerably higher than that documented in other studies and was negatively related to degree of urbanization. We found that a distance of 650 m prevented 95% of nest‐attending ferruginous hawks from flushing in response to human intruders; thus we recommend establishing a spatial buffer of this distance or greater to minimize adverse effects of human activities on hawks nesting in New Mexico. © 2011 The Wildlife Society.

As the sport of outdoor rock climbing rapidly grows, there is increasing pressure to understand how it can affect communities of organisms in cliff habitats. To that end, we surveyed 32 cliff sites in Boulder, Colorado, USA, and assessed the relative roles of human recreation and natural habitat features as drivers of bird diversity and activity. We detected only native avian species during our observations. Whereas avian abundance was not affected by climbing, avian species diversity and community conservation value were higher at low-use climbing formations. Models indicated that climber presence and cliff aspect were important predictors of both avian diversity and avian cliff use within our study area, while long-term climbing use frequency has a smaller, but still negative association with conservation value and cliff use by birds in the area. In contrast, the diversity of species on the cliff itself was not affected by any of our measured factors. To assess additional community dynamics, we surveyed vegetation and arthropods at ten site pairs. Climbing negatively affected lichen communities, but did not significantly affect other vegetation metrics or arthropods. We found no correlations between avian diversity and diversity of either vegetation or arthropods. Avian cliff use rate was positively correlated with arthropod biomass. We conclude that while rock climbing is associated with lower community diversity at cliffs, some common cliff-dwelling birds, arthropods and plants appear to be tolerant of climbing activity. An abiotic factor, cliff aspect strongly affected patterns of both avian diversity and cliff use, suggesting that the negative effects of rock climbing may be mitigated by informed management of cliff habitat that considers multiple site features.

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