Diet and breeding habitat preferences of White-tailed Eagles in a northern inland environment
- PDF / 1,452,247 Bytes
- 14 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 15 Downloads / 141 Views
ORIGINAL PAPER
Diet and breeding habitat preferences of White‑tailed Eagles in a northern inland environment Camilla Ekblad1 · Hannu Tikkanen2 · Seppo Sulkava3 · Toni Laaksonen1 Received: 6 March 2020 / Revised: 15 October 2020 / Accepted: 3 November 2020 / Published online: 13 November 2020 © The Author(s) 2020
Abstract Many apex predator populations are recolonizing old areas and dispersing to new ones, with potential consequences for their prey species and for livestock. An increasing population of the White-tailed Eagle (Haliaeetus albicilla) has settled north of the Arctic Circle in northern Finland, mainly at two big water reservoirs but also in areas with mainly terrestrial habitat. We examined nesting habitat preferences and prey use of White-tailed Eagles in this environment, where reindeer husbandry is a traditional livelihood and concerns are rising that the growing White-tailed Eagle population poses a threat to reindeer calves. Lakes, peat bogs, and marshlands were preferred habitats in the nesting territories. Fish constituted 64.3% of the identified prey items, with birds accounting for 28.5% and mammals 7.2%. The nesting territory habitat within a 10 km radius and the latitude influenced the prey composition at both the group and species level. The occurrence of reindeer calves as prey increased with latitude but was not associated with any habitat. Knowledge of the diet and territory preferences can be used to predict future dispersal and local prey use of this species. Nesting White-tailed Eagles do not seem to pose a threat to traditional reindeer herding, but further research is needed regarding non-breeding sub-adults and whether the White-tailed Eagles actually kill reindeer calves or simply exploit their carcasses. Keywords Bird of prey · Breeding territory · Human-wildlife conflict · Lapland · Raptor
Introduction Apex predators play a key role in top-down regulation of ecosystems, often with cascading effects when an apex predator leaves or enters a system (Estes et al. 2011). In the past century, many apex predator populations crashed (Prugh et al. 2009; Estes et al. 2011), but some populations have recovered recently; for example large carnivores in Europe Seppo Sulkava Deceased on 27 Jan 2019. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:https://doi.org/10.1007/s00300-020-02769-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Camilla Ekblad [email protected] 1
Section of Ecology, Department of Biology, University of Turku, 20014 Turku, Finland
2
Ecology and Genetics Research Unit, University of Oulu, 90014 Oulu, Finland
3
Espoo, Finland
and wolves (Canis lupus), sea otters (Enhydra lutris), and alligators (Alligator mississippiensis) in different parts of the USA (Chapron et al. 2014; Ripple et al. 2014; Silliman et al. 2018). Following the ban of organochloride pesticides and reduced persecution, the populations of apex raptors, such as Peregrine Falcons (Falco peregrinus) and Ospreys (Pandion Haliaeetu
Data Loading...
