Data from: A landscape of coexistence for a large predator in a human dominated landscape

Human related mortality is a major threat for large carnivores all over
the world and there is increasing evidence that large predators respond to
human related risks in a similar way as prey respond to predation risk.
This insight recently led to the conceptual development of a landscape of
coexistence that can be used to identify areas which can sustain large
predator populations in human dominated landscapes. In this study we
applied the landscape of coexistence concept to a large predator in
Europe. We investigated to what extent Eurasian lynx (Lynx
lynx) habitat selection is affected by human disturbance in a
human dominated landscape. More specifically, we were interested in the
existence of a tradeoff between the availability of roe deer, one of their
main prey and avoidance of human disturbance and how this affects the
spatio-temporal space use patterns of lynx. We found that lynx face a
tradeoff between high prey availability and avoidance of human disturbance
and that they respond to this by using areas of high prey availability
(but also high human disturbance) during the night when human activity is
low. Furthermore our analysis showed that lynx increase their travelling
speed and remain more in cover when they are close to areas of high human
disturbance. Despite clear behavioral adjustments in response to human
presence, prey availability still proved to be the most important
predictor of lynx occurrence at small spatial scale, whereas human
disturbance was considerably less important. The results of our study
demonstrate how spatio-temporal adaptations in habitat selection enable
large carnivores to persist in human dominated landscapes and demonstrate
the usefulness of the concept of a landscape of coexistence to develop
adaptive management plans for endangered populations of large carnivores.