Increases in residential and energy development are associated with reductions in recruitment for a large ungulate

Abstract

Land‐use change due to anthropogenic development is pervasive across the globe and commonly associated with negative consequences for biodiversity. While land‐use change has been linked to shifts in the behavior and habitat‐use patterns of wildlife species, little is known about its influence on animal population dynamics, despite the relevance of such information for conservation. We conducted the first broad‐scale investigation correlating temporal patterns of land‐use change with the demographic rates of mule deer, an iconic species in the western United States experiencing wide‐scale population declines. We employed a unique combination of long‐term (1980–2010) data on residential and energy development across western Colorado, in conjunction with congruent data on deer recruitment, to quantify annual changes in land‐use and correlate those changes with annual indices of demographic performance. We also examined annual variation in weather conditions, which are well recognized to influence ungulate productivity, and provided a basis for comparing the relative strength of different covariates in their association with deer recruitment. Using linear mixed models, we found that increasing residential and energy development within deer habitat were correlated with declining recruitment rates, particularly within seasonal winter ranges. Residential housing had two times the magnitude of effect of any other factor we investigated, and energy development had an effect size similar to key weather variables known to be important to ungulate dynamics. This analysis is the first to correlate a demographic response in mule deer with residential and energy development at large spatial extents relevant to population performance, suggesting that further increases in these development types on deer ranges are not compatible with the goal of maintaining highly productive deer populations. Our results underscore the significance of expanding residential development on mule deer populations, a factor that has received little research attention in recent years, despite its rapidly increasing footprint across the landscape.

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