Fawn bedsite selection by a large ungulate living in a peri-urban area

Abstract

Human populations continue to grow at an unprecedented pace, alongside the anthropogenic footprint on wildlife habitats. As a result, human-wildlife conflict in expanding peri-urban and urban areas is of increasing concern. Empirical data from wildlife research carried out within human dominated landscapes are key to understanding the effects of human pressures on wildlife ecology and behaviour, appreciate wildlife behavioural flexibility (or phenotypic plasticity), and inform wildlife management decisions. Here, we studied how female fallow deer (Dama dama) and their fawns adapted their behaviour during the birthing period in the largest urban park of Europe, which receives 10 million visitors along with their dogs every year. We collected data on 481 bedsites utilised by 285 neonate fawns across three consecutive fawning seasons, gathered fine-scale data on humans (and dogs) access, and built Resource Selection Functions at multiple spatial scales. We found that, when choosing the bedsites to give birth and leave fawns unattended, fallow deer mothers significantly avoided hotspots of park visitors on foot (and their dogs) along the hiking trail network, maintaining a distance of at least ~200m. Bedsites were unlikely to be in close proximity, within 50 meters, of paved roads used by vehicle traffic. Fallow deer mothers also were found to select for dense understory vegetation for their fawns bedsites, providing low visibility to conceal them. Our results give a very detailed overview of the behavioural adaptations of fallow deer mothers during fawning, and provide clear indications to wildlife managers to preserve traditional fawning sites and alleviate human-wildlife conflict during a critical period of the deer annual biological cycle.