Ecological function losses caused by monotonous land use induce crop raiding by wildlife on the island of Yakushima, southern Japan

Abstract

Mass production is a logical outcome of price competition in a capitalist economy. It has resulted in the need for large‐scale logging and planting of commercial crops. However, such monotonous land use, or monoculture, has damaged various ecological functions of forests and eroded the beneficial public service provided by forests. In Japan, the most widespread monotonous land use is associated with coniferous plantations, the expansion of which was encouraged by Forest Agency policies from 1958 that were aimed at increasing wood production. By 1986, half of all forested lands had been transformed into single‐species conifer plantations. These policies may damage the ecological functions of forests: to provide stable habitats for forest wildlife. In particular, food supplies for wildlife have fluctuated greatly after several decades of logging. Some species have therefore changed their ecology and begun to explore novel environments proactively in order to adapt to such extreme fluctuations. Such species have started to use farmlands that neighbor the plantations. In this sense, crop raiding by wildlife can be regarded as a negative result of monotonous land use due to the loss of ecological functions. Therefore, habitat management to rehabilitate ecological functions and to reorganize the landscape will be required in order to resolve the problem of crop raiding by wildlife. This study examines crop raiding by Japanese deer (Cervus nippon) and monkeys (Macaca fuscata) on the island of Yakushima, which typifies crop‐raiding situations in Japan.

Assessing the diversity of dung beetle assemblages utilizing Japanese monkey feces in cool-temperate forests

“…Mature cedar-plantation with a closed canopy is generally of small value in providing feeding sites for monkeys (Hanya et al 2005;Agetsuma 2007), indicating that the supply of monkey feces could be small in this type of forest. Our results showed the biomass of the core species (i.e.…”

Activity-specific evaluation of winter habitat use by Japanese macaques in snow areas, northern Japan: Implications for conifer plantation management

“…In addition, Japanese macaques (Macaca fuscata), which are one of the large mammals that are commonly distributed from warm to cool temperate forests of Japan, have also been shown to generally avoid using conifer plantations as feeding sites, at least in warm-temperate forests (Agetsuma, 2007;Hanya, 2010). However, in cooltemperate forests, there have been some reported cases of macaques positively using plantations for other activities, such as sleeping sites (Wada and Tokida, 1981;Wada et al, 2007) or passages (Furuichi et al, 1982), during periods of snowfall in winter.…”

Change in habitat selection by Japanese macaques (Macaca fuscata) and habitat fragmentation analysis using temporal remotely sensed data in Niigata Prefecture, Japan

“…We selected elevation (m), maximum snow depth (m), mean temperature in winter ( • C), and distance to river (m) as topographical and meteorological factors (Honda, 2009). The ratio of broad-leaved deciduous forest, ratio of coniferous forest, ratio of grassland, distance to grass land (m), and amount of edge between broad-leaved deciduous forests and farmland (m) were selected as vegetation factors (Naughton-Treves et al, 1998;Agetsuma, 2007). As human-impact factors, the ratio of farmland, the ratio of urban land, distance to farmland, distance to urban land, and distance to road (m) were selected (Yamada and Muroyama, 2010;Honda, 2009).…”

“…The mean annual temperature is 12.5 • C, the mean annual precipitation is 1109 mm, and the maximum snow depth is 950 mm (snowfall typically occurs during December-March). Crops in this region have been damaged by macaques since the late 1970s (Agetsuma, 2007), and the area affected has expanded gradually. An investigation in Shibata City revealed 14-17 troops that included a total of up to 700-800 individual macaques.…”