Landscape of fear or landscape of food? Moose hunting triggers an antipredator response in brown bears.

ABSTRACT: Hunters can affect the behavior of wildlife by inducing a landscape of fear, selecting individuals with specific traits, or altering resource availability across the landscape. Most research investigating the influence of hunting on wildlife resource selection has focused on target species and less attention has been devoted to nontarget species, such as scavengers that can be both attracted or repelled by hunting activities. We used resource selection functions to identify areas where hunters were most likely to kill moose (Alces alces) in south-central Sweden during the fall. Then, we used step-selection functions to determine whether female brown bears (Ursus arctos) selected or avoided these areas and specific resources during the moose hunting season. We found that, during both day an

SUBMITTER: Brown L 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10909462 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature