Anthropogenic predation risk alters waterfowl habitat selection

Anthropogenic disturbance, such as land conversion, recreation, and predation, can affect how wildlife select resources across the landscape. Prey species are thought to rely on both a cognitive map of risks (‘landscape of fear’) and a schedule of risks (‘schedule of fear’) to navigate their environment and make trade-offs among resources and habitats.

Using a popular game species, the Canada goose (Branta canadensis), we aimed to expand our understanding of the landscape of fear by evaluating how resource selection and home range changed in response to predation threats during the hunting season.

We used GPS receivers to track the movements of resident geese in Pennsylvania throughout two hunting seasons across two study sites. We fit resource selection functions and estimated home ranges at four different spatial and temporal scales.

We found that the geese did not change their landscape use to avoid the predation threat at a coarse spatiotemporal scale but did modify their habitat use and resource selection at a finer spatiotemporal scale. Our results indicate that the geese perceived both a landscape of fear and a schedule of fear and used spatial and temporal partitioning to minimize their exposure to predation.

When managing a heterogeneous landscape for both animal and human use, providing sufficient spatial refuge for prey species may help buffer the effects of predation threats.