School of the Environment, Washington State University, Pullman, Washington, USA.
Ecol Appl. 2023 Oct;33(7):e2916. doi: 10.1002/eap.2916. Epub 2023 Sep 13.
Outdoor recreation is increasing rapidly on public lands, with potential consequences for wildlife communities. Recreation can induce shifts in wildlife activity and habitat use, but responses vary widely even within the same species, suggesting mitigating factors that remain poorly understood. Both the type of recreation-motorized or nonmotorized-and the distance of wildlife from human disturbance may be important in developing a general understanding of recreation impacts on wildlife and making more informed management decisions. We conducted a camera-trapping survey in the Colville National Forest (CNF) of northeastern Washington in the summers of 2019 and 2020. We collected ~11,000 trap nights of spatially extensive data on nine mid-large mammalian species, simultaneously recording the presence and activity patterns of motorized (primarily vehicles on roads) and nonmotorized (primarily hikers on trails) recreation and wildlife both along trails and roads and off trails and off roads (away from most recreation). We used diel overlap analysis, time lag analysis, and single-season single-species occupancy modeling to examine the impact of recreation on the focal species. Species temporally avoided recreationists either by shifting to more nocturnal hours or delaying return to recently used recreation sites. Most species also responded spatially by altering the use or the intensity of use of camera sites due to recreation, although both positive and negative associations with recreation were documented. Species responded to nonmotorized recreation (e.g., hikers on trails) more often than motorized recreation (e.g., vehicles on roads). Most effects of recreation extended off the trail or road, although in three instances the spatiotemporal response of species to recreation along trails/roads disappeared a short distance away from those features. Our work suggests that a better understanding of landscape-scale impacts of recreation, including fitness consequences, will require additional work to disentangle the effects of different types of recreation and estimate the effective distance at which wildlife responds. Moreover, these results suggest that quiet, nonconsumptive recreation may warrant increased attention from land managers given its potential to influence the spatiotemporal ecology of numerous species.
户外活动在公共土地上迅速增加，这可能对野生动物群落产生影响。娱乐活动会引起野生动物活动和栖息地利用的变化，但即使在同一物种内，反应也差异很大，这表明仍有一些缓解因素尚未被充分理解。娱乐活动的类型（机动的或非机动的）以及野生动物与人为干扰的距离，可能对于全面了解娱乐活动对野生动物的影响以及做出更明智的管理决策非常重要。我们在华盛顿州东北部的科尔维尔国家森林（CNF）进行了一项相机陷阱调查，该调查于 2019 年和 2020 年的夏季进行。我们收集了约 11000 个夜间的样本，这些样本来自九个中大型哺乳动物物种，同时记录了机动（主要是道路上的车辆）和非机动（主要是徒步旅行者在小径上）娱乐活动以及野生动物在小径和道路上以及远离大多数娱乐活动的小径和道路外的存在和活动模式。我们使用日长重叠分析、时间滞后分析和单季节单物种占有模型来研究娱乐活动对焦点物种的影响。物种通过转移到更夜间的时间或延迟返回最近使用的娱乐场所来暂时避免娱乐者。大多数物种还通过改变相机位置的使用或使用强度来对娱乐活动做出空间响应，尽管记录了与娱乐活动的正相关和负相关。与非机动娱乐活动（例如，小径上的徒步旅行者）相比，大多数物种对机动娱乐活动（例如，道路上的车辆）的反应更为频繁。大多数娱乐活动的影响延伸到了小径或道路之外，尽管在三个情况下，物种对小径/道路沿线娱乐活动的时空反应在距离这些特征很短的距离处消失了。我们的工作表明，要更好地了解娱乐活动的景观尺度影响，包括对适应性的影响，需要进一步的工作来厘清不同类型娱乐活动的影响，并估计野生动物做出反应的有效距离。此外，这些结果表明，安静的、非消耗性的娱乐活动可能需要得到土地管理者的更多关注，因为它可能会影响众多物种的时空生态。
