Large carnivore expansion in Europe is associated with human population density and land cover changes

By M. Cimatti, N. Ranc, Ana Benítez‐López, Luigi Maiorano, L. Boitani, Francesca Cagnacci, M. Čengić, P. Ciucci, Mark A. J. Huijbregts, Miha Krofel and 14 more. Diversity and Distributions: A journal of biological invasions and biodiversity, 2021

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The recent recovery of large carnivores in Europe has been explained as resulting from a decrease in human persecution driven by widespread rural land abandonment, paralleled by forest cover increase and the consequent increase in availability of shelter and prey. We investigated whether land cover and human population density changes are related to the relative probability of occurrence of three European large carnivores: the grey wolf (Canis lupus), the Eurasian lynx (Lynx lynx) and the brown bear (Ursus arctos).

Subfields: Ecological Modeling, Ecology, Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/3e0bc35d70207fcec05f06e677694c60c1632001