Individual responses to novel predation risk and the emergence of a landscape of fear

A study on moose in Gros Morne National Park, Canada, revealed that while individual moose did not adjust fine-scale habitat selection to increased hunting risk over time, they did shift their home range preferences toward hunter-free areas. Researchers tracked 19 GPS-collared moose during a large-scale reduction experiment involving hunting in a previously naïve population. Contrary to predictions, moose avoided high-risk areas associated with hunters but showed no diurnal variation in avoidance and no strengthening of avoidance responses over successive years for survivors in riskier home ranges. Instead, they increasingly selected non-hunted refuge areas, suggesting that broader-scale habitat selection may reflect behavioral responses to the most significant limiting factors, such as hunting pressure, which are not apparent at finer scales.

Perry, T. A., Laforge, M. P., Vander Wal, E., Knight, T. W., & McLoughlin, P. D. (2020). Individual responses to novel predation risk and the emergence of a landscape of fear. Ecosphere, 11(8). Portico. https://doi.org/10.1002/ecs2.3216