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Mapping and modeling human-black bear interactions in the Catskills region of New York using resource selection probability functions

Black bears (Ursus americanus) are an iconic and common species throughout much of the United States and people regularly interact with these large predators without conflict. However, negative interactions between people and bears can manifest in conflicts that can hinder conservation efforts. Blac...

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Autores principales: Hagani, Jason S., Kross, Sara M., Clark, Michael, Wynn-Grant, Rae, Blair, Mary
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8457482/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34551021
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0257716
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author Hagani, Jason S.
Kross, Sara M.
Clark, Michael
Wynn-Grant, Rae
Blair, Mary
author_facet Hagani, Jason S.
Kross, Sara M.
Clark, Michael
Wynn-Grant, Rae
Blair, Mary
author_sort Hagani, Jason S.
collection PubMed
description Black bears (Ursus americanus) are an iconic and common species throughout much of the United States and people regularly interact with these large predators without conflict. However, negative interactions between people and bears can manifest in conflicts that can hinder conservation efforts. Black bears are highly attracted to anthropogenic sources of food, and negative interactions with people are primarily a product of trash mismanagement. In the Catskills region of New York State, home to a large population of black bears, over 400 such conflicts are reported each year. While the New York Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) has seen progress recently in educating residents of the region on how to reduce unwanted interactions with bears, they have had less success educating the 12 million tourists that visit the Catskills each year. Understanding where conflict may occur in the future, and the environmental and anthropogenic factors that precede it, may help guide management strategies to reduce these unwanted interactions. Therefore, we designed resource selection probability functions (RSPFs) to examine the relationship between human-black bear conflicts in the Catskills with a suite of landscape and anthropogenic data, using conflicts reported to the DEC across the state of New York in 2018–2019. We found that human-black bear conflicts were more likely to occur in the residential areas of the Catskills on the urban-wildland interface; areas with relatively higher human population densities, away from dense forest, and further from heavily urbanized areas. While future work is needed to continuously validate our model predictions, our results will provide the DEC and other conservation managers in the Catskills the ability to create more targeted plans for mitigating unwanted human-black bear interactions, and provide a better understanding of the mechanisms driving human-carnivore interactions at an urban-wildland interface more generally.
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spelling pubmed-84574822021-09-23 Mapping and modeling human-black bear interactions in the Catskills region of New York using resource selection probability functions Hagani, Jason S. Kross, Sara M. Clark, Michael Wynn-Grant, Rae Blair, Mary PLoS One Research Article Black bears (Ursus americanus) are an iconic and common species throughout much of the United States and people regularly interact with these large predators without conflict. However, negative interactions between people and bears can manifest in conflicts that can hinder conservation efforts. Black bears are highly attracted to anthropogenic sources of food, and negative interactions with people are primarily a product of trash mismanagement. In the Catskills region of New York State, home to a large population of black bears, over 400 such conflicts are reported each year. While the New York Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) has seen progress recently in educating residents of the region on how to reduce unwanted interactions with bears, they have had less success educating the 12 million tourists that visit the Catskills each year. Understanding where conflict may occur in the future, and the environmental and anthropogenic factors that precede it, may help guide management strategies to reduce these unwanted interactions. Therefore, we designed resource selection probability functions (RSPFs) to examine the relationship between human-black bear conflicts in the Catskills with a suite of landscape and anthropogenic data, using conflicts reported to the DEC across the state of New York in 2018–2019. We found that human-black bear conflicts were more likely to occur in the residential areas of the Catskills on the urban-wildland interface; areas with relatively higher human population densities, away from dense forest, and further from heavily urbanized areas. While future work is needed to continuously validate our model predictions, our results will provide the DEC and other conservation managers in the Catskills the ability to create more targeted plans for mitigating unwanted human-black bear interactions, and provide a better understanding of the mechanisms driving human-carnivore interactions at an urban-wildland interface more generally. Public Library of Science 2021-09-22 /pmc/articles/PMC8457482/ /pubmed/34551021 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0257716 Text en https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/This is an open access article, free of all copyright, and may be freely reproduced, distributed, transmitted, modified, built upon, or otherwise used by anyone for any lawful purpose. The work is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) public domain dedication.
spellingShingle Research Article
Hagani, Jason S.
Kross, Sara M.
Clark, Michael
Wynn-Grant, Rae
Blair, Mary
Mapping and modeling human-black bear interactions in the Catskills region of New York using resource selection probability functions
title Mapping and modeling human-black bear interactions in the Catskills region of New York using resource selection probability functions
title_full Mapping and modeling human-black bear interactions in the Catskills region of New York using resource selection probability functions
title_fullStr Mapping and modeling human-black bear interactions in the Catskills region of New York using resource selection probability functions
title_full_unstemmed Mapping and modeling human-black bear interactions in the Catskills region of New York using resource selection probability functions
title_short Mapping and modeling human-black bear interactions in the Catskills region of New York using resource selection probability functions
title_sort mapping and modeling human-black bear interactions in the catskills region of new york using resource selection probability functions
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8457482/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34551021
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0257716
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