[MCN] Wolverines more relaxed in undeveloped, protected areas

[Lance Olsen]

Ecology & Evolution, Early View First published: 9 February 2016
DOI: 10.1002/ece3.1921

Original Research

Wolverine behavior varies spatially with 
anthropogenic footprint: implications for 
conservation and inferences about declines
Frances E. C. Stewart, Nicole A. Heim, Anthony P. 
Clevenger, John Paczkowski, John P. Volpe,
Jason T. Fisher
------------------------------------------------
As reported in the Calgary Herald
http://calgaryherald.com/news/local-news/wolverines-act-like-smash-and-grab-burglar-at-bait-sites-in-developed-areas

"Outside of the parks, where the landscape is 
developed, they develop an in-and-out behaviour 
at baited sites, grabbing what they can quickly 
and getting out quickly - like a smash-and-grab 
burglar," said Jason Fisher, senior research 
scientist with Alberta Innovates. "Inside the 
park, they linger for hours and hours, seemingly 
carefree.  "You can draw a line on a map where 
the behaviour changes."
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Abstract (OPEN ACCESS)
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ece3.1921/full

Understanding a species' behavioral response to 
rapid environmental change is an ongoing 
challenge in modern conservation. Anthropogenic 
landscape modification, or "human footprint," is 
well documented as a central cause of large 
mammal decline and range contractions where the 
proximal mechanisms of decline are often 
contentious. Direct mortality is an obvious 
cause; alternatively, human-modified landscapes 
perceived as unsuitable by some species may 
contribute to shifts in space use through 
preferential habitat selection. A useful approach 
to tease these effects apart is to determine 
whether behaviors potentially associated with 
risk vary with human footprint. We hypothesized 
wolverine (Gulo gulo) behaviors vary with 
different degrees of human footprint. We 
quantified metrics of behavior, which we assumed 
to indicate risk perception, from photographic 
images from a large existing camera-trapping 
dataset collected to understand wolverine 
distribution in the Rocky Mountains of Alberta, 
Canada. We systematically deployed 164 camera 
sites across three study areas covering 
approximately 24,000 km2, sampled monthly between 
December and April (2007-2013). Wolverine 
behavior varied markedly across the study areas. 
Variation in behavior decreased with increasing 
human footprint. Increasing human footprint may 
constrain potential variation in behavior, 
through either restricting behavioral plasticity 
or individual variation in areas of high human 
impact. We hypothesize that behavioral 
constraints may indicate an increase in perceived 
risk in human-modified landscapes. Although 
survival is obviously a key contributor to 
species population decline and range loss, 
behavior may also make a significant contribution.

-- 
===========================================================
  "The effects of climate change will be 'severe, 
pervasive and irreversible' within the next few 
decades if countries burn more than just 
one-quarter of the fossil fuel reserves already 
found, according to a major new U.N. draft report"

"It warns that companies and governments have 
'identified reserves of these [fossil] fuels at 
least four times larger than could safely be 
burned if global warming is to be kept to a 
tolerable level.' In short, 75 percent of the 
fossil fuels must remain in the ground to 
forestall devastating impacts."

http://www.newsweek.com/leaked-un-report-climate-change-impacts-already-inevitable-may-soon-be-irreversible-266860

===============================================================
"I believe humanity is making risky bets in the 
climate casino. Š.  But it is always possible 
that humanity will wake up .... If that happened, 
fossil fuel reserves would indeed be stranded. 
Investors beware: the risk of that cannot be 
zero."

Martin Wolf. A climate fix would ruin investors.
Financial Times. June 17, 2014
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/5a2356a4-f58e-11e3-afd3-00144feabdc0.html#axzz3C5hyxJyx


Bold emphases added
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://bigskynet.org/pipermail/missoula-community-news_bigskynet.org/attachments/20160218/73fb0508/attachment-0002.html>