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Compound effects of anthropogenic disturbances on wildlife emerge through a complex network of direct responses and species interactions. Land‐use changes driven by energy and forestry industries are known to disrupt predator–prey dynamics in boreal ecosystems, yet how these disturbance effects propagate across mammal communities remains uncertain. Using structural equation modeling, we tested disturbance‐mediated pathways governing the spatial structure of multipredator multiprey boreal mammal networks across a landscape‐scale disturbance gradient within Canada's Athabasca oil sands region. Linear disturbances had pervasive direct effects, increasing site use for all focal species, except black bears and threatened caribou, in at least one landscape. Conversely, block (polygonal) disturbance effects were negative but less common. Indirect disturbance effects were widespread and mediated by caribou avoidance of wolves, tracking of primary prey by subordinate predators, and intraguild dependencies among predators and large prey. Context‐dependent responses to linear disturbances were most common among prey and within the landscape with intermediate disturbance. Our research suggests that industrial disturbances directly affect a suite of boreal mammals by altering forage availability and movement, leading to indirect effects across a range of interacting predators and prey, including the keystone snowshoe hare. The complexity of network‐level direct and indirect disturbance effects reinforces calls for increased investment in addressing habitat degradation as the root cause of threatened species declines and broader ecosystem change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rapid growth in outdoor recreation may have important and varied effects on terrestrial mammal communities. Few studies have investigated factors influencing variation in observed responses of multiple mammal species to recreation. We used data from 155 camera traps, in western Alberta (Canada), and a hierarchical Bayesian community modelling framework to document 15 mammal species responses to recreation, test for differential responses between predators and prey, and evaluate the influence of local context. Factors characterizing context were trail designation (i.e., use by motorized vs non-motorized), management type, forest cover, landscape disturbance, and season. We used three measures to characterize variation in recreation pressure: distance to trail, trail density, and an index of recreation intensity derived from the platform Strava. We found limited evidence for strong or consistent effects of recreation on mammal space use. However, mammal space use was better explained by an interaction between recreation and the influencing factors than by either on their own. The strongest interaction was between trail density and management type; mammals were more likely to avoid sites near a higher density of trails in areas with more restrictive management. We found that responses to recreation varied with the trail designation, although there were not clear or consistent differences between responses to trails designated for motorized vs. non-motorized use. Overall, we found that responses were species- and context-dependent. Limiting the density of trails may be important for reducing negative impacts to mammals within conservation areas. We show that using multiple measures of recreation yields more insight into the varied effects of human disturbances on wildlife. We recommend investigating how different characteristics of recreation (noise, speed, and visibility) influence animal behaviors. Multispecies monitoring and modelling across multiple landscapes that vary in recreation pressure can lead to an adaptive management approach to ensuring outdoor recreation coexistence with wildlife. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Growing white‐tailed deer populations in Canada's boreal forest are linked to declines of threatened boreal caribou populations. Recent work by Dickie et al. (2024) shows that climate plays a stronger role than anthropogenic habitat alteration in impacting deer white‐tailed deer density, however we contend that these findings are not robust due to insufficient data and the analysis used is sensitive to data scaling approach. We demonstrate approximately equal but opposite effects of climate and alteration on white‐tailed deer population density, and emphasize the importance of robust analyses involving contentious conservation issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Protected areas (PAs) are a cornerstone of global efforts to shield wildlife from anthropogenic impacts, yet their effectiveness at protecting wide-ranging species prone to human conflict--notably mammalian carnivores--is increasingly in question. An understanding of carnivore responses to human-induced and natural changes in and around PAs is critical not only to the conservation of threatened carnivore populations, but also to the effective protection of ecosystems in which they play key functional roles. However, an important challenge to assessing carnivore communities is the often infrequent and imperfect nature of survey detections. We applied a novel hierarchical multi-species occupancy model that accounted for detectability and spatial autocorrelation to data from 224 camera trap stations (sampled between October 2006 and January 2009) in order to test hypotheses about extrinsic influences on carnivore community dynamics in a West African protected area (Mole National Park, Ghana). We developed spatially explicit indices of illegal hunting activity, law enforcement patrol effort, prey biomass, and habitat productivity across the park, and used a Bayesian model selection framework to identify predictors of site occurrence for individual species and the entire carnivore community. Contrary to our expectation, hunting pressure and edge proximity did not have consistent, negative effects on occurrence across the nine carnivore species detected. Occurrence patterns for most species were positively associated with small prey biomass, and several species had either positive or negative associations with riverine forest (but not with other habitat descriptors). Influences of sampling design on carnivore detectability were also identified and addressed within our modeling framework (e.g., road and observer effects), and the multi-species approach facilitated inference on even the rarest carnivore species in the park. Our study provides insight for the conservation of these regionally significant carnivore populations, and our approach is broadly applicable to the robust assessment of communities of rare and elusive species subject to environmental change.

Livestock depredation by wild carnivores threatens carnivore populations and livestock-dependent human communities globally. Understanding local attitudes towards carnivores can inform strategies to improve coexistence. In Sri Lanka, the dairy industry is expanding, creating a need for proactive conflict mitigation. Livestock depredation by the Endangered Sri Lankan leopard Panthera pardus kotiya occurs, but little is known about these incidents or the attitudes of those whose livelihoods may be threatened by this. We surveyed people in two rural communities, Palatupana and Maskeliya, that differed in the scale of livestock ownership, livestock management practices and socio-ecological factors, to characterize attitudes towards leopards and understand their determinants. In Palatupana, an area with extensive cattle rearing, depredation incidents were frequent, and attitudes towards leopards were positively related to respondents' age, number of dependants, years spent rearing livestock and a greater overall support for wildlife conservation. Attitudes were negatively related to respondents' knowledge of leopard ecology and awareness of leopard-related tourism, from which cattle owners do not benefit. In Maskeliya, where cattle rearing is secondary to other agricultural work, depredation did not occur. Here, attitudes were positively related to a desire for increased government assistance with cattle rearing. The inability to develop land for cattle husbandry was a common barrier experienced in both communities. Considering local attitudes can inform strategies to improve human–carnivore coexistence. Approaches that could improve attitudes towards leopards include involvement of cattle owners in tourism programmes, exploring potential alternative land ownership schemes, and improving infrastructure and access to veterinary care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]