Title
Occupancy and habitat use by the Andean bear are negatively affected by human presence and forest loss
Author(s)
Castrillón-Hoyos, Laura;Rincón, Luisa;Carlos Troncoso-Saavedra, Juan;Elena Giraldo-Rojas, María;Jesús Hernández-Rincón, Javier;Antonio Velásquez-Vázquez, Aldemar;Enrique Gallego-López, Luis;Carolina Guzmán-Valencia, Diana;Guillermo Gallego-Patiño, Luis;Eduar Rojas-Osorio, Jhon;Narciso Gómez-González, José;Osorio-Parra, Libaniel;Marquez, Ronald;Bianchi, Guillermo;Goldstein, Isaac;Márquez, Robert
Published
2023
Publisher
Journal for Nature Conservation
Abstract
Protected areas require methodologies to monitor the status and effectiveness of species management strategies. In this work, single-species, single-season occupancy models were employed to estimate the occupancy and habitat use of the Andean bear in the Tatamá National Natural Park through a nested design of 1 km2 cells inserted in 16 km2 cells. The occupancy at 16 km2 was ψ16 = 0.89 (E.E. = 0.06), with a detectability p = 0.405 (E.E. = 0.039). When examining the factors influencing the habitat use of the Andean bear at the 1 km2 scale, the four most suitable models for calculating use indicated a most negative relationship between use and the percentage of human activities in the cell (βHA = -1.46 [E.E. 0.61]). Additionally, bear use was found to have the most positive relationship with the forest proportion in the cell (βF = 16.59 [E.E. 13.55]) and Euclidean distance to population centers (βDPC = 1.05 [E.E. 0.82]). These findings allowed for adjusting the Prevention, Surveillance, Control, and Monitoring programs and identifying areas requiring forest cover restoration. The sampling design and effort implemented is able to detect a 25% reduction in occupancy with a statistical significance of α = 0.2 and a statistical power of 1-β = 0.8.
Keywords
National Natural Parks of Colombia; Monitoring; Occupancy modeling; Anthropic alterations; Species management
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PUB35989