Tourists? Who cares: A striking example of chamois habituation in northern Czechia

Result code in IS VaVaI

<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F00027014%3A_____%2F25%3A10006422" target="_blank" >RIV/00027014:_____/25:10006422 - isvavai.cz</a>

Result on the web

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DOI - Digital Object Identifier

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Result language

angličtina

Original language name

Tourists? Who cares: A striking example of chamois habituation in northern Czechia

Original language description

The introduced chamois (Rupicapra rupicapra) population in northern Czechia has markedly declined over the past two decades. To date, no clear drivers or potential threats have been identified that explain this decline. Thus, we investigated the role of anthropogenic disturbance on this small population (90 individuals, with an observed mean herd size of 14.4 +- 10.1 (SD)). We conducted 360 hrs of direct observations over 59 days between April and October 2023. We applied two complementary methods in two meadows within two protected landscape areas: (i) scan sampling of chamois behaviour, and (ii) systematic recording of tourist groups (size, composition, presence of dogs, distance from chamois, etc.) passing through the monitored sites. We also collected concurrent weather data, including wind speed, direction, and precipitation. Data were analysed in SAS 9.4 using generalised linear mixed models (GLMM, PROC MIXED). Model selection was based on Akaike&apos;s Information Criterion, with 60 a priori hypotheses constructed for the dependent variable &quot;Percentage of vigilant individuals&quot; (i.e., the percentage of individuals within a herd scanning their surroundings during each scan sample recording). Location and date were random effects. The best model (AIC difference between the best and second best models Δ = 3.82) included fixed effects of herd size (β = -0.22, 95 % CI [-0.39, -0,0]), presence of tourists (LSMEANs +- SE, 95 % CI, Present 8.08+-2.03, Absent 6.75+-0.92, -5.76, 3.10), location (Filipov 8.42+-1.42, Studenec 6.41+-1.30, -5.76, 3.10), presence of offspring (Present 6.56+-1.55, Absent 8.27+-1.55, -2.21, 5.62), and month (not presented). Weather, red deer (Cervus elaphus) hunting season, or detailed descriptions of tourist groups did not appear to be influential. The key finding was that the presence of tourists had virtually no effect on the vigilance behaviour of chamois, as the difference between the percentage of vigilant individuals in the presence and absence of tourists did not differ considerably. In fact, only the herd size showed a consistent effect; vigilance decreased with increasing group size. Chamois faced no hunting pressure during the study period, and only minimal outside of it. Our results indicate an extreme degree of habituation to human disturbance in this population, as well as a negligible impact of current tourism levels on chamois in the region. Thus, implementing conservation strategies to address tourist impact may not be warranted.

Czech name

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Czech description

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Type

O - Miscellaneous

CEP classification

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OECD FORD branch

40201 - Animal and dairy science; (Animal biotechnology to be 4.4)

Project

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Continuities

I - Institucionalni podpora na dlouhodoby koncepcni rozvoj vyzkumne organizace

Publication year

2025

Confidentiality

S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů