Effect of Roadside Vegetation Cutting on Moose Browsing
Moose (Alces americanus ) vehicle collisions (MVCs) are an issue throughout the distribution of moose. Many mitigation strategies have been tested and implemented to reduce the number of MVCs, but there have been few empirical analyses of the effectiveness of roadside vegetation cutting. The goal of...
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ftpubmed:oai:pubmedcentral.nih.gov:4526696 2023-05-15T17:22:45+02:00 Effect of Roadside Vegetation Cutting on Moose Browsing Tanner, Amy L. Leroux, Shawn J. 2015-08-05 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4526696/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26244576 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0133155 en eng Public Library of Science http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4526696/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26244576 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0133155 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited CC-BY Research Article Text 2015 ftpubmed https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0133155 2015-08-16T00:06:45Z Moose (Alces americanus ) vehicle collisions (MVCs) are an issue throughout the distribution of moose. Many mitigation strategies have been tested and implemented to reduce the number of MVCs, but there have been few empirical analyses of the effectiveness of roadside vegetation cutting. The goal of this study was to determine if roadside vegetation cutting attracted moose into roadside areas to browse on the vegetation regrowth. We hypothesized that moose would be attracted to roadside areas with cut vegetation. Consequently, we predicted that there would be higher levels of browsing in cut areas compared to uncut areas. To determine if moose were browsing more in cut or uncut areas, we measured the number of plants browsed by moose in paired treatment (cut on or after 2008) and control (not cut since at least 2008) sites, along with a suite of potential environmental covariates. Using a model selection approach, we fit generalized linear mixed-effects models to determine the most parsimonious set of environmental variables to explain variation in the proportion of moose browse among sites. In contrast to our hypothesis, our results show that the proportion of moose browse in the uncut control areas was significantly higher than in the cut treatment areas. The results of this study suggest that recently cut roadside areas (7 years or less based on our work) may create a less attractive foraging habitat for moose. The majority of the variance in the proportion of moose browse among sites was explained by treatment type and nested plot number within site identification (34.16%), with additional variance explained by traffic region (5.00%) and moose density (4.35%). Based on our study, we recommend that vegetation cutting be continued in roadside areas in Newfoundland as recently cut areas may be less attractive browsing sites for moose. Text Newfoundland PubMed Central (PMC) PLOS ONE 10 8 e0133155 |
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Research Article Tanner, Amy L. Leroux, Shawn J. Effect of Roadside Vegetation Cutting on Moose Browsing |
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Research Article |
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Moose (Alces americanus ) vehicle collisions (MVCs) are an issue throughout the distribution of moose. Many mitigation strategies have been tested and implemented to reduce the number of MVCs, but there have been few empirical analyses of the effectiveness of roadside vegetation cutting. The goal of this study was to determine if roadside vegetation cutting attracted moose into roadside areas to browse on the vegetation regrowth. We hypothesized that moose would be attracted to roadside areas with cut vegetation. Consequently, we predicted that there would be higher levels of browsing in cut areas compared to uncut areas. To determine if moose were browsing more in cut or uncut areas, we measured the number of plants browsed by moose in paired treatment (cut on or after 2008) and control (not cut since at least 2008) sites, along with a suite of potential environmental covariates. Using a model selection approach, we fit generalized linear mixed-effects models to determine the most parsimonious set of environmental variables to explain variation in the proportion of moose browse among sites. In contrast to our hypothesis, our results show that the proportion of moose browse in the uncut control areas was significantly higher than in the cut treatment areas. The results of this study suggest that recently cut roadside areas (7 years or less based on our work) may create a less attractive foraging habitat for moose. The majority of the variance in the proportion of moose browse among sites was explained by treatment type and nested plot number within site identification (34.16%), with additional variance explained by traffic region (5.00%) and moose density (4.35%). Based on our study, we recommend that vegetation cutting be continued in roadside areas in Newfoundland as recently cut areas may be less attractive browsing sites for moose. |
format |
Text |
author |
Tanner, Amy L. Leroux, Shawn J. |
author_facet |
Tanner, Amy L. Leroux, Shawn J. |
author_sort |
Tanner, Amy L. |
title |
Effect of Roadside Vegetation Cutting on Moose Browsing |
title_short |
Effect of Roadside Vegetation Cutting on Moose Browsing |
title_full |
Effect of Roadside Vegetation Cutting on Moose Browsing |
title_fullStr |
Effect of Roadside Vegetation Cutting on Moose Browsing |
title_full_unstemmed |
Effect of Roadside Vegetation Cutting on Moose Browsing |
title_sort |
effect of roadside vegetation cutting on moose browsing |
publisher |
Public Library of Science |
publishDate |
2015 |
url |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4526696/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26244576 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0133155 |
genre |
Newfoundland |
genre_facet |
Newfoundland |
op_relation |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4526696/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26244576 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0133155 |
op_rights |
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited |
op_rightsnorm |
CC-BY |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0133155 |
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PLOS ONE |
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10 |
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