Human-Cougar interactions in the wildland-urban interface of Colorado's front range
Human-Cougar interactions in the wildland-urban interface of Colorado's front range
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DOI：
10.1002/ece3.5559
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发表时间：
2019-08-20
影响因子：
2.6
通讯作者：
Blecha, Kevin A.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Alldredge, Mathew W.;Buderman, Frances E.;Blecha, Kevin A.
随着世界范围内人口的不断增长，了解和管理野生动物种群在荒地-城市界面中的需求变得越来越普遍。对于大型食肉动物来说尤其如此，因为这些物种并不总是被公众所容忍，并可能对人类安全构成威胁。不幸的是，关于荒地-城市界面内野生动物物种的信息很少，而且来自荒地生态系统的知识并不总是很好地转化为人类主导的系统。在整个北美西部，美洲狮（美洲狮）经常利用荒地-城市栖息地，而人类对这些地区的住宅和娱乐使用正在增加。2007 - 2015年，在美国科罗拉多州北部Front Range野地-城市景观中研究了美洲狮资源选择、人-美洲狮互动和美洲狮冲突管理。在这一景观中，美洲狮的资源选择在更偏远的环境中是典型的，但美洲狮与人类的互动往往发生在美洲狮通常选择反对的地方，特别是那些靠近人类建筑的地方。在住房密度较高的地区，83%的美洲狮在晚上使用，这表明美洲狮通常通过划分时间来避免人类活动。在监测的美洲狮中，只有24%报告了某种类型的冲突行为，但在GPS项圈数据的喂食地点调查中，39%的美洲狮被发现食用家养猎物。厌恶条件反射很难实施，通常对改变美洲狮的行为无效，但被认为可能有长期的好处，在人类占主导地位的地区，美洲狮对人类的恐惧增强，经历很少的美洲狮狩猎压力。美洲狮能够有效地利用荒地-城市景观，与美洲狮的使用比例相比，冲突相对罕见。在这些地区，美洲狮的个体特征和行为变化很大；因此，冲突管理对每种情况都是独特的，应该针对个人行为。美洲狮个体学习利用这些环境的能力，与美洲狮之间的互动最少，这表明维持较老的年龄结构，特别是雌性，并提供栖息地矩阵，包括大型连接的开放空间区域，将有利于美洲狮，有效地减少冲突的可能性。
As human populations continue to expand across the world, the need to understand and manage wildlife populations within the wildland-urban interface is becoming commonplace. This is especially true for large carnivores as these species are not always tolerated by the public and can pose a risk to human safety. Unfortunately, information on wildlife species within the wildland-urban interface is sparse, and knowledge from wildland ecosystems does not always translate well to human-dominated systems. Across western North America, cougars (Puma concolor) are routinely utilizing wildland-urban habitats while human use of these areas for homes and recreation is increasing. From 2007 to 2015, we studied cougar resource selection, human-cougar interaction, and cougar conflict management within the wildland-urban landscape of the northern Front Range in Colorado, USA. Resource selection of cougars within this landscape was typical of cougars in more remote settings but cougar interactions with humans tended to occur in locations cougars typically selected against, especially those in proximity to human structures. Within higher housing density areas, 83% of cougar use occurred at night, suggesting cougars generally avoided human activity by partitioning time. Only 24% of monitored cougars were reported for some type of conflict behavior but 39% of cougars sampled during feeding site investigations of GPS collar data were found to consume domestic prey items. Aversive conditioning was difficult to implement and generally ineffective for altering cougar behaviors but was thought to potentially have long-term benefits of reinforcing fear of humans in cougars within human-dominated areas experiencing little cougar hunting pressure. Cougars are able to exploit wildland-urban landscapes effectively, and conflict is relatively uncommon compared with the proportion of cougar use. Individual characteristics and behaviors of cougars within these areas are highly varied; therefore, conflict management is unique to each situation and should target individual behaviors. The ability of individual cougars to learn to exploit these environments with minimal human-cougar interactions suggests that maintaining older age structures, especially females, and providing a matrix of habitats, including large connected open-space areas, would be beneficial to cougars and effectively reduce the potential for conflict.