Spatial patterns and ecological processes of depredation by large carnivores : the case of Brown bear and domestic herds in Western Europe

• Main Author: Gastineau, Adrienne
• Other Authors: Centre d'Ecologie et des Sciences de la COnservation (CESCO), Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle (MNHN)-Sorbonne Université (SU)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Sorbonne Université, François Sarrazin, Alexandre Robert
• Format: Doctoral or Postdoctoral Thesis
• Language: French
• Published: HAL CCSD 2019
• Subjects: Human-Wildlife Conflict; Human-Large Carnivore Coexistence; Brown Bear; Depredation; Depredation Hotspots Analysis (DHA); Depredation Risk Probability Analysis (DRPA); Conflit homme-faune sauvage; Coexistence humain-Grand carnivore; Ours brun; Déprédation; Analyse des points chauds de déprédation (DHA); Analyse de la probabilité du risque de déprédation (DRPA); [SDV.SA]Life Sciences [q-bio]/Agricultural sciences; [SDV.EE]Life Sciences [q-bio]/Ecology; environment; Ursus arctos
• Online Access: https://tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-02944711; https://tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-02944711/document; https://tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-02944711/file/GASTINEAU_Adrienne_2019.pdf

Conflicts between humans and wildlife pose a threat to endangered species, which threatens their conservation worldwide. In particular, preserving large carnivores challenges the coexistence with humans. In Europe, the overlap between human activities and natural habitats is mandatory. This overlap leads sometimes to negative interactions with large carnivores. Predation on domestic herds, or depredation, is one of the main factors limiting their acceptance. Depredation is a widespread global conflict and seems particularly intense in recolonization areas. In order to reduce damage to herds, it is necessary to understand how depredation varies over space and time. The conservation of the brown bear (Ursus arctos) in the Pyrenees and the Italian Alps, populations reinforced by the translocation of Slovenian individuals, offer relevant case studies to illustrate this issue. In this thesis, I first focused on the spatial aggregation of depredation events in the French Central Pyrenees using a Getis-Ord test of spatial dependence. This analysis revealed the presence of significant brown bear depredation hotspots and the absence of cold areas. Depredation hotspots are self-correlated over time, which means that a hot spot in one year is likely to exist in subsequent years. At a finer scale, this analysis allowed the identification of inter- and intra-pasture hotspots and a simple method to rescale these results at a larger scale is proposed. Depredation has been identified as being concentrated in hotspots and linked to certain environmental characteristics ("site effect"). The objective was to identify the main landscape factors where domestic herds were most vulnerable to brown bears. The transferability of the results developed in a specific local context was assessed by comparing the Pyrenean and Alpine populations. In both populations, we analyzed brown bear activity, terrain, human infrastructure and habitat variables for the period 2010 - 2017. The results indicated that brown bear activity, grassland ...