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Compromise between seabird enjoyment and disturbance: the role of observed and observers

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 August 2008

ALEJANDRO MARTÍNEZ-ABRAÍN ,
DANIEL ORO ,
DAVID CONESA  and
JUAN JIMÉNEZ
ALEJANDRO MARTÍNEZ-ABRAÍN
Affiliation:
IMEDEA (CSIC-UIB), C/Miquel Marquès 21, 07190 Esporles, Majorca, Spain
DANIEL ORO*
Affiliation:
IMEDEA (CSIC-UIB), C/Miquel Marquès 21, 07190 Esporles, Majorca, Spain
DAVID CONESA
Affiliation:
Departamento de Estadística e Investigación Operativa, Grupo de Estadística Espacial y Temporal en Epidemiología y Medio Ambiente, C/ Dr. Moliner 50, 46100 Burjassot València, Spain
JUAN JIMÉNEZ
Affiliation:
Conselleria de Medio Ambiente, Generalitat Valenciana, C/Francisco Cubells 7, 46011 València, Spain
*
*Correspondence: Dr Daniel Oro e-mail: d.oro@uib.es
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Summary

Natural areas are increasingly visited by people, and urban human visitors expect to watch wildlife as close as possible, but this may have associated disturbance costs. Here, effects of number of visitors and bird density on flight initiation distance (FID) as a proxy of disturbance vulnerability were evaluated in the large ground-nesting yellow-legged gull, Larus michahellis. Mean FID decreased with increasing number of visitors and with increasing gull densities, suggesting that (1) ground-nesting gulls habituate to massive human presence, while retaining their antipredatory mechanisms, and (2) dense groups of gulls were more reluctant to fly away. This density effect may be due to the increased risk of clutch predation by conspecifics at high densities and, if so, FID is a reliable metric of disturbance vulnerability in ground-nesting gulls. In conclusion, set-back distances are specific to local populations and it is unnecessary to ban or restrict human visits to ground-nesting gull colonies; redistributing visits, taking into account both the number of visitors and gull density, is preferable.

Keywords

disturbanceevidence-based decision makingflight initiation distanceground-nesting gullshabituationmanagementwildlife observation
Type
Papers
Information
Environmental Conservation , Volume 35 , Issue 2 , June 2008 , pp. 104 - 108
Copyright
Copyright © Foundation for Environmental Conservation 2008

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