Increasing forest disturbance enhances habitat suitability for Europe’s large herbivores

Increasing forest disturbance enhances habitat suitability for Europe’s large herbivores | Research Square window.SnipcartSettings = { analytics: { enabled: false } }; (function() { var accessVector = localStorage.getItem('access_vector') || ''; window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || []; if (accessVector) { window.dataLayer.push({ user: { profile: { profileInfo: { snid: accessVector } } } }); } })(); (function(w,d,s,l,i){w[l]=w[l]||[];w[l].push({'gtm.start':new Date().getTime(),event:'gtm.js'});var f=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],j=d.createElement(s),dl=l!='dataLayer'?'&l='+l:'';j.async=true;j.src='https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtm.js?id='+i+dl;f.parentNode.insertBefore(j,f);})(window,document,'script','dataLayer','GTM-K279D39R'); Browse Preprints In Review Journals COVID-19 Preprints AJE Video Bytes Research Tools Research Promotion AJE Professional Editing AJE Rubriq About Preprint Platform In Review Editorial Policies Our Team Advisory Board Help Center Sign In Submit a Preprint Cite Share Download PDF Article Increasing forest disturbance enhances habitat suitability for Europe’s large herbivores Julian Oeser, Rafał Kowalczyk, Dries Kuijper, Wiebke Neumann, and 59 more This is a preprint; it has not been peer reviewed by a journal. https://doi.org/ 10.21203/rs.3.rs-7824896/v1 This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 License Status: Under Review Version 1 posted You are reading this latest preprint version Abstract Forest disturbances have increased substantially over the last decades in many regions, but how they impact wildlife habitats often remains poorly understood. We combine an animal tracking dataset comprising 3,069 individuals from four large herbivore species (European bison, moose, red deer, roe deer) with satellite-based forest disturbance time series to explore this question for Europe at the continental scale. All species showed an increased selection of disturbed areas for 30+ years post-disturbance. Selection patterns closely reflected species-specific foraging strategies, suggesting food availability as the main driver. Selection was also related to characteristics of the disturbed area (e.g., patch size), predator presence, human pressure, and climatic gradients (e.g., winter temperature), indicating that large herbivores navigate trade-offs between resource acquisition and risk avoidance. Across Europe, forest disturbances between 2000 and 2023 had positive but regionally varying effects on habitat suitability for large herbivores. Our findings suggest that higher levels of disturbance increases carrying capacity and concentrate large herbivores in disturbed areas. Both may amplify conflicts with forestry, but could also contribute to restoring large herbivores and their ecological roles in forests. Overall, our study highlights the importance of considering disturbance-related habitat dynamics in wildlife and forest management under intensifying disturbance regimes. Biological sciences/Ecology/Forest ecology Biological sciences/Ecology Ungulates forest disturbance climate change forest management regeneration restoration European bison moose red deer roe deer Full Text Additional Declarations There is NO Competing Interest. Supplementary Files oeseretalSN1.docx Environmental clustering of animals oeseretalSN2.docx Tuning of random forest hyperparameters Cite Share Download PDF Status: Under Review Version 1 posted You are reading this latest preprint version Research Square lets you share your work early, gain feedback from the community, and start making changes to your manuscript prior to peer review in a journal. As a division of Research Square Company, we’re committed to making research communication faster, fairer, and more useful. We do this by developing innovative software and high quality services for the global research community. Our growing team is made up of researchers and industry professionals working together to solve the most critical problems facing scientific publishing. Also discoverable on Platform About Our Team In Review Editorial Policies Advisory Board Help Center Resources Author Services Accessibility API Access RSS feed Manage Cookie Preferences © Research Square 2026 | ISSN 2693-5015 (online) Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information {"props":{"pageProps":{"initialData":{"identity":"rs-7824896","acceptedTermsAndConditions":true,"allowDirectSubmit":false,"archivedVersions":[],"articleType":"Article","associatedPublications":[],"authors":[{"id":530713693,"identity":"1c449161-4070-449c-9657-174eafa3b634","order_by":0,"name":"Julian 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herbivores","fulltext":[],"fulltextSource":"","fullText":"","funders":[],"hasAdminPriorityOnWorkflow":false,"hasManuscriptDocX":false,"hasOptedInToPreprint":true,"hasPassedJournalQc":"","hasAnyPriority":true,"hideJournal":false,"highlight":"","institution":"","isAcceptedByJournal":true,"isAuthorSuppliedPdf":true,"isDeskRejected":"","isHiddenFromSearch":false,"isInQc":false,"isInWorkflow":false,"isPdf":true,"isPdfUpToDate":true,"isWithdrawnOrRetracted":false,"journal":{"display":true,"email":"[email protected]","identity":"nature-portfolio","isNatureJournal":true,"hasQc":false,"allowDirectSubmit":false,"externalIdentity":"","sideBox":"","snPcode":"","submissionUrl":"","title":"Nature Portfolio","twitterHandle":"","acdcEnabled":false,"dfaEnabled":false,"editorialSystem":"ejp","reportingPortfolio":"","inReviewEnabled":true,"inReviewRevisionsEnabled":false},"keywords":"Ungulates, forest disturbance, climate change, forest management, regeneration, restoration, European bison, moose, red deer, roe deer","lastPublishedDoi":"10.21203/rs.3.rs-7824896/v1","lastPublishedDoiUrl":"https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-7824896/v1","license":{"name":"CC BY 4.0","url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"},"manuscriptAbstract":"Forest disturbances have increased substantially over the last decades in many regions, but how they impact wildlife habitats often remains poorly understood. We combine an animal tracking dataset comprising 3,069 individuals from four large herbivore species (European bison, moose, red deer, roe deer) with satellite-based forest disturbance time series to explore this question for Europe at the continental scale. All species showed an increased selection of disturbed areas for 30+ years post-disturbance. Selection patterns closely reflected species-specific foraging strategies, suggesting food availability as the main driver. Selection was also related to characteristics of the disturbed area (e.g., patch size), predator presence, human pressure, and climatic gradients (e.g., winter temperature), indicating that large herbivores navigate trade-offs between resource acquisition and risk avoidance. Across Europe, forest disturbances between 2000 and 2023 had positive but regionally varying effects on habitat suitability for large herbivores. Our findings suggest that higher levels of disturbance increases carrying capacity and concentrate large herbivores in disturbed areas. Both may amplify conflicts with forestry, but could also contribute to restoring large herbivores and their ecological roles in forests. 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