Human access constrains optimal foraging and habitat availability in an avian generalist

Abstract

Animals balance costs of antipredator behaviors with resource acquisition to minimize hunting and other mortality risks and maximize their physiological condition. This inherent trade‐off between forage abundance, its quality, and mortality risk is intensified in human‐dominated landscapes because fragmentation, habitat loss, and degradation of natural vegetation communities is often coupled with artificially enhanced vegetation (i.e., food plots), creating high‐risk, high‐reward resource selection decisions. Our goal was to evaluate autumn–winter resource selection trade‐offs for an intensively hunted avian generalist. We hypothesized human access was a reliable cue for hunting predation risk. Therefore, we predicted resource selection patterns would be spatiotemporally dependent upon levels of access and associated perceived risk. Specifically, we evaluated resource selection of local‐scale flights between diel periods for 426 mallards (Anas platyrhynchos) relative to wetland type, forage quality, and differing levels of human access across hunting and nonhunting seasons. Mallards selected areas that prohibited human access and generally avoided areas that allowed access diurnally, especially during the hunting season. Mallards compensated by selecting for high‐energy and greater quality foraging patches on allowable human access areas nocturnally when they were devoid of hunters. Postseason selection across human access gradients did not return to prehunting levels immediately, perhaps suggesting a delayed response to reacclimate to nonhunted activities and thus agreeing with the assessment mismatch hypothesis. Last, wetland availability and human access constrained selection for optimal natural forage quality (i.e., seed biomass and forage productivity) diurnally during preseason and hunting season, respectively; however, mallards were freed from these constraints nocturnally during hunting season and postseason periods. Our results suggest risk‐avoidance of human accessible (i.e., hunted) areas is a primary driver of resource selection behaviors by mallards and could be a local to landscape‐level process influencing distributions, instead of forage abundance and quality, which has long‐been assumed by waterfowl conservation planners in North America. Broadly, even an avian generalist, well adapted to anthropogenic landscapes, avoids areas where hunting and human access are allowed. Future conservation planning and implementation must consider management for recreational access (i.e., people) equally important as foraging habitat management for wintering waterfowl.