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Impacts of feral horses on a desert environment

BACKGROUND: Free-ranging horses (Equus caballus) in North America are considered to be feral animals since they are descendents of non-native domestic horses introduced to the continent. We conducted a study in a southern California desert to understand how feral horse movements and horse feces impa...

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Autores principales: Ostermann-Kelm, Stacey D, Atwill, Edward A, Rubin, Esther S, Hendrickson, Larry E, Boyce, Walter M
Formato: Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2009
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2781800/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19903355
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1472-6785-9-22
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author Ostermann-Kelm, Stacey D
Atwill, Edward A
Rubin, Esther S
Hendrickson, Larry E
Boyce, Walter M
author_facet Ostermann-Kelm, Stacey D
Atwill, Edward A
Rubin, Esther S
Hendrickson, Larry E
Boyce, Walter M
author_sort Ostermann-Kelm, Stacey D
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Free-ranging horses (Equus caballus) in North America are considered to be feral animals since they are descendents of non-native domestic horses introduced to the continent. We conducted a study in a southern California desert to understand how feral horse movements and horse feces impacted this arid ecosystem. We evaluated five parameters susceptible to horse trampling: soil strength, vegetation cover, percent of nonnative vegetation, plant species diversity, and macroinvertebrate abundance. We also tested whether or not plant cover and species diversity were affected by the presence of horse feces. RESULTS: Horse trailing resulted in reduced vegetation cover, compacted soils, and in cases of intermediate intensity disturbance, increased plant species diversity. The presence of horse feces did not affect plant cover, but it did increase native plant diversity. CONCLUSION: Adverse impacts, such as soil compaction and increased erosion potential, were limited to established horse trails. In contrast, increased native plant diversity near trails and feces could be viewed as positive outcomes. Extensive trailing can result in a surprisingly large impact area: we estimate that < 30 horses used > 25 km(2 )of trails in our study area.
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spelling pubmed-27818002009-11-25 Impacts of feral horses on a desert environment Ostermann-Kelm, Stacey D Atwill, Edward A Rubin, Esther S Hendrickson, Larry E Boyce, Walter M BMC Ecol Research article BACKGROUND: Free-ranging horses (Equus caballus) in North America are considered to be feral animals since they are descendents of non-native domestic horses introduced to the continent. We conducted a study in a southern California desert to understand how feral horse movements and horse feces impacted this arid ecosystem. We evaluated five parameters susceptible to horse trampling: soil strength, vegetation cover, percent of nonnative vegetation, plant species diversity, and macroinvertebrate abundance. We also tested whether or not plant cover and species diversity were affected by the presence of horse feces. RESULTS: Horse trailing resulted in reduced vegetation cover, compacted soils, and in cases of intermediate intensity disturbance, increased plant species diversity. The presence of horse feces did not affect plant cover, but it did increase native plant diversity. CONCLUSION: Adverse impacts, such as soil compaction and increased erosion potential, were limited to established horse trails. In contrast, increased native plant diversity near trails and feces could be viewed as positive outcomes. Extensive trailing can result in a surprisingly large impact area: we estimate that < 30 horses used > 25 km(2 )of trails in our study area. BioMed Central 2009-11-10 /pmc/articles/PMC2781800/ /pubmed/19903355 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1472-6785-9-22 Text en Copyright ©2009 Ostermann-Kelm et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Research article
Ostermann-Kelm, Stacey D
Atwill, Edward A
Rubin, Esther S
Hendrickson, Larry E
Boyce, Walter M
Impacts of feral horses on a desert environment
title Impacts of feral horses on a desert environment
title_full Impacts of feral horses on a desert environment
title_fullStr Impacts of feral horses on a desert environment
title_full_unstemmed Impacts of feral horses on a desert environment
title_short Impacts of feral horses on a desert environment
title_sort impacts of feral horses on a desert environment
topic Research article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2781800/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19903355
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1472-6785-9-22
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