Habitat selection and spatiotemporal interactions of a reintroduced mesocarnivore

Abstract

Habitat quality and quantity are key factors in evaluating the potential for success of a wildlife translocation. However, because of the difficulty or cost of evaluating these factors, habitat assessments may not include valuable information on important habitat attributes including the abundance and distribution of prey, predators, and competitors. Fishers (Pekania pennanti) are one of the most commonly reintroduced carnivores in North America, and they are a species of conservation concern in their western range. We examined the relative importance of landscape features and species interactions in determining habitat use of a reintroduced population of fishers in the southern Cascade Mountains, Washington, USA. We used detections of prey and predators at 134 remote camera stations, remotely sensed forest structure data, and telemetry locations of fishers in a resource selection function to assess the relative importance of prey, predators, and forest structure in fisher habitat selection. Fishers selected habitats based on forest conditions and activity levels of snowshoe hares (Lepus americanus), whereas bobcat (Lynx rufus) and coyote (Canis latrans) activity levels did not directly affect habitat selection. The probability of fisher use increased in older stands, close to recently disturbed stands, and in areas with intermediate levels of hare activity. Bobcat and hare activity levels were positively correlated, and fishers avoided areas with the greatest hare activity, suggesting that fishers may experience a food‐safety tradeoff in the study area. Temporal activity patterns in photo detections indicate that fishers may mediate this danger by avoiding bobcats temporally. Our findings suggest that fishers in Washington prefer habitat mosaics of old and recently disturbed stands where they have greater access to resting structures and hares. Management that maintains mosaics of young and old forest across large landscapes is likely to support fisher recovery. Future reintroduction efforts would benefit from an assessment of prey and predator abundance in proposed reintroduction areas before project initiation. © 2019 The Wildlife Society.

Field surveys can improve predictions of habitat suitability for reintroductions: a swift fox case study

“…Our findings support their hypotheses, and we add that other factors influencing habitat quality, such as resource availability, should be considered. Other studies have found that low prey densities influenced reintroduction success of mesocarnivores (Moehrenschlager et al, 2004; Jachowski et al, 2011; Scrivner et al, 2016; Parsons et al, 2019).…”

“…Reintroduced American marten Martes americana had low survival rates in the presence of a sympatric carnivore, the fisher Pekania pennanti (Manlick et al, 2017). Another post-reintroduction study found that reintroduced fishers typically selected habitats in conjunction with the relative abundance of their prey, snowshoe hares Lepus americanus (Parsons et al, 2019), and selected marginal habitat in the presence of a sympatric carnivore, the bobcat Lynx rufus . These studies showed that mesocarnivores select habitats based on both prey and predator distributions, and that predictions could be improved if these habitat quality variables are considered when creating habitat suitability models (Parsons et al, 2019).…”

Seasonality drives the survival landscape of a recovering forest carnivore in a changing world

“…[53]). Moreover, other putative specialists of old growth—northern flying squirrels ( Glaucomys sabrinus [54]), spotted owls ( Strix occidentalis [55]) and fishers [56,57]—have also been associated with a variety of serial stages as well as heterogeneity. While attributes of old-growth forests are beneficial to meet some life-history needs (e.g.…”

Habitat and climatic associations of climate‐sensitive species along a southern range boundary

“…This dataset was validated for spatial accuracy by comparing modelled data to observed data from Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) plots and comparing accuracy metrics (Riemann & Wilson, 2014).We created separate layers for each forest cover type by summing the basal areas for all representative species within each cell (Figure S1). Basal area is a common measure of tree density used in forestry to represent aboveground biomass (Bettinger et al, 2017) as it contains information on number of trees and size (Balderas Torres & Lovett, 2013), and is often used to represent forest structure in resource selection models (Irwin et al, 2020;Parsons et al, 2019).…”