Mitigation of bark stripping on spruce: the need for red deer population control
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Mitigation of bark stripping on spruce: the need for red deer population control Romain Candaele1 · Philippe Lejeune1 · Alain Licoppe2 · Céline Malengreaux2 · Yves Brostaux1 · Kevin Morelle3 · Nicolas Latte1 Received: 14 November 2019 / Revised: 1 October 2020 / Accepted: 7 October 2020 © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Norway spruce (Picea abies (L.) Karst.) is a major production tree species for the European wood industry. However, it is highly sensitive to bark stripping (BS) by red deer (Cervus elaphus L.), which causes large timber losses. Because the red deer population has increased over the last decades, a better understanding of the underlying causes driving BS is urgently needed. BS outbreaks are multifactorial: winter food shortage, local and regional deer abundance and stand properties (thermal and visual cover, and scarcity of herbaceous layers) have been found to drive BS rates. Although the influence of each of these factors is well studied, there is still no consensus on their relative contributions to BS or what mitigation strategy is best. In this study, we made use of a long-term, large-scale BS inventory (13 years over 2570 k m2) to fill these gaps. We modeled winter and summer BS rates in response to the most explanatory variables, selected from a large set of environmental variables. Our results highlight the prevalence of deer abundance combined with high sensitivity of coniferous thickets and pronounced habitat selection by deer for these stands. Our findings show that the control of red deer populations is a key measure for reducing BS in Norway spruce stands. Keywords Cervus elaphus · Picea abies · Coniferous stands · Damage prevention · Wallonia · Generalized additive models
Introduction Coniferous forest production accounts for more than half of the world’s industrial roundwood and 70% of its sawnwood. European forests are the biggest industrial roundwood producers (FAO. 2020), and 70% of this production comes from conifer forests comprising half of the total forest area on the continent (Timbal et al. 2005). Norway spruce (Picea abies (L.) Karst.) and Douglas fir (Pseudotsuga mensiesii (Mirb.) Franco) are species of prime Communicated by Gediminas Brazaitis. * Romain Candaele [email protected] 1
Gembloux Agro-Bio Tech (ULiège), TERRA - Forest Is Life, Gembloux, Belgium
2
Département de L’Etude du Milieu Naturel Et Agricole, Service Public de Wallonie, Gembloux, Belgium
3
Department of Game Management and Wildlife Biology, Faculty of Forestry and Wood Sciences, Czech University of Life Sciences, Prague, Czech Republic
importance for European wood production. Norway spruce is the prime species in boreal and subalpine regions and became an important production species outside its natural distribution area during the nineteenth century, especially in North Atlantic, Central European and Mediterranean mountain areas, where its productivity is especially high (Timbal et al. 2005; EUFORGEN 2013; Caudullo et
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