Open Collections

Wrazej, Madeleine Claire

University of British Columbia

Although parks and protected areas provide essential refuges for wildlife from spreading anthropogenic disturbance, intensifying recreational pressure can have negative impacts on protected landscapes. Mountain goats (Oreamnos americanus) are sensitive to human disturbance relative to other ungulates, but the effects of recreation on mountain goats are still not well understood. Mountain goats inhabit mountainous regions of western North America, including Banff and Yoho National Parks. With visitation to these parks increasing, there is a need to quantify the potential impacts of recreation on local goat herds. My research investigated the impacts of recreation on mountain goat behaviour and stress. I used camera traps to test three main hypotheses framed by the concepts of landscape of fear, habituation and human shield. Each hypothesis predicted how recreation might differently influence goat activity patterns and habitat use, proposing negative, neutral, or positive effects respectively. Additionally, I used hair cortisol concentrations (HCC) in shed hair to assess if goats exposed to high levels of recreation pressure were more stressed than those exposed to minimal human disturbance. The results of my study found a mix of support for the landscape of fear and habituation hypotheses with regards to diel activity and habitat use. Recreation had minimal influence on goat diel activity patterns. Conversely, high weekly numbers of recreationists had an overall negative effect on goat space use with goats tending to select sites closer to escape terrain when in high human use areas. Furthermore, my results supported the prediction that goats in high human use areas are more stressed, as they had higher mean HCC levels than those exposed to minimal human disturbance. Overall, my results suggest that high levels of recreation may have subtle negative impacts on the mountain goats in these flagship national parks, highlighting the need for careful monitoring of these populations over the long term. I also demonstrated a novel use of shed mountain goat hair as a non-invasive method to measure stress in mountain goats. Furthermore, I showed how using camera traps and stress hormone sampling can provide a more comprehensive understanding of human impacts on wildlife behaviour and health.

Text

2024-06-27

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/88530

Forestry

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/