Guest or pest? Spatio-temporal occurrence and effects on soil and vegetation of the wild boar on Elba island
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ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Guest or pest? Spatio‑temporal occurrence and effects on soil and vegetation of the wild boar on Elba island Ilaria Greco1 · Ettore Fedele2 · Marco Salvatori1,3 · Margherita Giampaoli Rustichelli1 · Flavia Mercuri1 · Giacomo Santini1 · Francesco Rovero1,3 · Lorenzo Lazzaro1 · Bruno Foggi1 · Alessandro Massolo4 · Francesco De Pietro5 · Marco Zaccaroni1 Received: 26 May 2020 / Accepted: 26 October 2020 © The Author(s) 2020
Abstract Where allochthonous large mammals, such as the wild boars, occur in high density, human-wildlife conflicts may arise. Thus, assessing their spatio-temporal patterns is paramount to their management. We studied the wild boars on Elba island, Italy, where they have been introduced and are perceived as pests to address their occurrence and impact of foraging on natural habitat. We surveyed the western island with three camera trapping surveys within one year. We found that the species’ estimated occupancy probability was higher in summer-autumn (0.75 ± 0.14) and winter-early spring (0.70 ± 0.10) than in spring–summer (0.53 ± 0.15), whereas detection probability did not vary. Occupancy was significantly associated with lower elevation and woodland cover. Lower site use of wild boars during spring–summer might reflect lower food availability in this season and/or boars’ movements towards landfarms outside the sampled area. Detectability increased with proximity to roads during spring–summer and decreased with humans’ relative abundance in other periods. Boars were mainly nocturnal, with decreasing overlap with human activity when human presence was higher in the park. Soil degradation caused by wild boars was higher in pine plantations, which is the cover with a lower conservation interest. The spatio-temporal activity of wild boars on the island appears driven by seasonal preferences for food-rich cover and avoidance of human disturbance. The lowered site use in months with lower resources could partially reflect increased proximity to settled and farmed areas, which may trigger crop-raiding and the negative perception by residents. Keywords Camera trapping · Sus scrofa · Occupancy modelling · Allochthonous species · Islands · Italian archipelago
Introduction Handling editor: Juan Carranza. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s42991-020-00083-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Marco Zaccaroni [email protected] 1
Department of Biology, University of Florence, Madonna del Piano 6, 50019 Sesto Fiorentino, Italy
2
Department of Genetics, University of Leicester, University Road, Leicester LE1 7RH, United Kingdom
3
Tropical Biodiversity Section, MUSE - Museo Delle Scienze, Corso del Lavoro e della Scienza 3, 38122 Trento, Italy
4
Department of Biology, University of Pisa, Via Volta 6, 56126 Pisa, Italy
5
Tuscan Archipelago National Park, Locality Enfola, 57037 Livorno, Portoferraio, Italy
The wild boar (Sus scrofa) is an ungulate that often trigger
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