Biodiversity impacts of ungulates in Swedish production forests

Biodiversity Impacts of Ungulates in Swedish Production Forests

Ungulates impact the vegetation structure, microclimate and biodiversity directly and indirectly through grazing, browsing, trampling, defecating and urinating. An increasing body of evidence suggests that there are both positive and negative effects on biodiversity from these impacts and that biodiversity may be maximised at intermediate levels of disturbance. However, this is rarely taken into consideration in game management in Sweden, possibly as the ecological relationships between ungulates and biodiversity neither are well studied nor understood. Changing ungulate communities and land use practices due to climate change complicate interpretations further. We will combine data on forage availability, ungulate densities and forage utilisation with data on biodiversity for four functionally important groups of taxa: palatable deciduous trees, ground vegetation, ground living arthropods and soil fauna. We will elucidate how changing ungulate communities impact the biodiversity in changing Swedish forest ecosystems across spatial and temporal scales throughout rotation periods. Our approach combines observational data with data from experimental exclosures across Sweden, enabling us to infer causality from observed relationships. The results will be instrumental for finding trade-offs in co-management of ungulates and forests, while including conservation aspects for the first time. Our results will be instrumental in achieving the ambition of the SEPA Wildlife Strategy: “knowledge of the ecological context wildlife species inhabit is a basic prerequisite for a functioning management”.

Fredrik Widemo, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences

3 420 000 SEK