Allocating active conservation measures using species distribution models: a case study of red‐footed falcon breeding site management in the Carpathian Basin

Abstract

The red-footed falcon Falco vespertinus is an enigmatic colonial raptor of high international conservation concern. One of the identified threatening factors responsible for the recent worldwide population decline is the shortage of suitable colonial nesting sites. In theory, this problem can easily be resolved by establishing artificial colonies. However, the key to a successful large scale nest-box scheme is to provide these artificial colonies in habitats suitable for the species. A Hungarian-Serbian project aimed to establish such nesting facilities in northern Serbia, although the lack of recent full-scale habitat surveys hindered the designation of the locations of these artificial nesting sites. We used five different species distribution models to model the distribution of nest sites on a 10 ¥ 10 km grid in Hungary and in Romania. We then used the ensemble predictions of the best performing models to project the probability of red-footed falcon nest site presence in northern Serbia (predicted area). The models showed that three variables (grasslands, pastures and broad-leaved forests) had the highest importance in describing the spatial pattern of nest sites in the modelling area. The extent of grasslands and pastures had positive effects, while broad-leaved forests had negative impact on the probability of nest site presence. The predictions classified all the currently known colonies in the predicted area correctly. Our results suggest that the potential breeding distribution in Serbia is similar to that of two decades ago, thus large-scale land use changes are presumably not responsible for the reported population decline. We have also reduced the extent of conservation target areas to 11.5%, allowing to pinpoint locations for these future nest box colonies, and also provided a basis for future conservation measures like allocating monitoring efforts and designating future Natura 2000 sites in Serbia. bs_bs_banner Animal Conservation. Print ISSN 1367-9430 648 Animal Conservation 15 (2012) 648-657

Breeding population trends and pre-migration roost site survey of the Red-footed Falcon in Hungary

“…Long-term monitoring of species speci fic distribution and abundance patterns provides a fundamental information source for nature conservation efforts (Nichols & Williams 2006, Gruber et al 2012. Understanding the factors that play a role in shaping these patterns are crucial to assess the impact of human induced environmental changes (Eglington & Pearce-Higgins 2012), to help formulate national and international conservation policy (Gruber et al 2012, Henle et al 2013, or aid designating specific pin-point conservation measures (Fehérvári et al 2009(Fehérvári et al , 2012. Albeit avian monitoring in Hungary has a long tradition, systematic or robust design monitoring schemes have only been implemented in the past two decades (Szép et al 2012).…”

History and current status of Red-footed Falcon population size and conservation activities in Voivodina

“…However, as in Hungary, the frequency of rookeries shifting to urban settlements is increasing (Fehérvári et al 2009), making active conservation measures necessary to maintain the falcon population. We have erected over 350 nest-boxes in various locations, primarily choosing sites that had historic breeding records, or were pin-pointed by landscape scale habitat modelling as suitable breeding sites (Fehérvári et al 2012). Predominantly we used 2 nest-box designs; 1) the box most often used in Hungary (see Kotymán et al 2015): 2.C.B.…”

Demography, breeding success and effects of nest type in artificial colonies of Red-footed Falcons and allies

“…Conservation of grassland type habitats (or so called 'puszta') entails two general approaches, 1) management of landscape level habitat composition and quality through regulations and subsidies (Ángyán et al 2002) and 2) active, often species or plant association specific conservation mea sures (e.g. Fehérvári et al 2012). In the latter case, measures may include habitat reconstruction, eradication of invasive species and supplementing breeding possibilities like nesting islands, artificial twig nests or nest-boxes.…”