Survival and cause-specific mortality rates are vital for evidence-based population forecasting and conservation, particularly for large carnivores, whose populations are often vulnerable to human-caused mortalities. It is therefore important to know the relationship between anthropogenic and natural mortality causes to evaluate whether they are additive or compensatory. Further, the relation between survival and environmental covariates could reveal whether specific landscape characteristics influence demographic performance.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe estimation of foraging parameters is fundamental for understanding predator ecology. Predation and feeding can vary with multiple factors, such as prey availability, presence of kleptoparasites and human disturbance. However, our knowledge is mostly limited to local scales, which prevents studying effects of environmental factors across larger ecological gradients.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFLarge carnivores promote crucial ecosystem processes but are increasingly threatened by human persecution and habitat destruction. Successful conservation of this guild requires information on long-term population dynamics obtained through demographic surveys. We used camera traps to monitor Eurasian lynx between 2009 and 2018 in a strictly protected area in the Bohemian Forest Ecosystem, located in the core of the distribution of the Bohemian-Bavarian-Austrian lynx population.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFHigh human-caused mortality due to wildlife-vehicle-collisions and illegal killing leads to frequent cases of orphaned Eurasian lynx juveniles. Under natural conditions, this would result in starvation of the young. To avoid this, wildlife managers conventionally rear animals in captivity and release them later.
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