Grassland versus Shrubland habitat and game management in Mediterranean ecosystems: an application for the Cervus elaphu
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Grassland versus Shrubland habitat and game management in Mediterranean ecosystems: an application for the Cervus elaphus species Ricardo Zamora Roberto Moreno
. Gonzalo Segado . Pablo Ferna´ndez-Salguero .
Received: 10 December 2019 / Accepted: 21 October 2020 Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract This work compares the net revenues of maintaining grasslands versus shrublands as part of the habitat of the Cervus elaphus big game species in Mediterranean agroforestry ecosystems. For this purpose, data published by the Regional Government of Andalusia (SW Spain) were used to analyze revenues and expenditures under two scenarios: an optimistic one and a pessimistic one. Revenue is generated from both the value of game trophies and the sale of meat. In the grasslands option, expenditure is associated with the need to supply supplemental food since, unlike shrublands, Mediterranean grasslands do not produce forage crops during the summer months. To analyze the expenditure of supplemental feeding, monthly market prices for corn grain in the province of Cordoba (this province covers an area of almost 1.4 million hectares) were obtained for the period 2015–2019. Our results show that, in net revenues
R. Zamora (&) G. Segado Department of Forest Engineering, University of Co´rdoba, Co´rdoba, Spain e-mail: [email protected] P. Ferna´ndez-Salguero Department of Agriculture, Regional Government of Andalusia, Co´rdoba, Spain R. Moreno Centro de Investigacio´n Multidisciplinario de La Araucanı´a (CIMA), Universidad Auto´noma de Chile, Temuco, Chile
terms, substituting shrublands for grasslands is not always the best option under the conditions analyzed. Keywords Red deer Game management Mediterranean grasslands Shrublands
Introduction In general, wildlife management requires habitat management. In agroforestry systems, there are several alternatives to manage habitat conditions, being ‘‘no habitat modification’’ one of the possible options. In order to adjust the management actions to the animals habitat requirements, it has to be considered that some groups of wildlife species, the so-called ‘‘edge effect species’’ (Shaw 1985), live better in ecotones with patch distribution of vegetational strata comprising trees, shrubs and grasslands (Guangzhi et al. 2003; Brazaitis et al. 2005). However, other groups of wildlife species are sensitive to changes in ecosystems and select more homogeneous ecosystems (Cox et al. 2003; Charles and Ang 2010; Toenies et al. 2018). There are also cases in which either this edge effect is not clear (Klein and Cameron 2012; Vetter et al. 2013; Lindemann et al. 2015) or has both positive and negative impacts on wildlife populations (Menzel et al. 1999; Brand and George 2001; Fischer and Lindemayer 2002). The Iberian lynx (Lynx pardinus) and Iberian eagle (Aquila adalberti) are examples of
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edge effect wildlife species in Mediterranean ecosystems (Palomares et al. 2000; Gonza´lez et al. 2008), while the goshawk (Accipiter
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