Forest management affects individual and population parameters of the hazel dormouse Muscardinus avellanarius

Abstract

Several studies have shown that forest management (e.g. for timber production) affects mammal com-munities. Nevertheless, we still lack a detailed understanding on how different management practicesinfluence individuals and populations. The overarching goal of our work was to investigate the demo-graphic response of the hazel dormouse (Muscardinus avellanarius) to forest management. We focusedon a set of key individual (survival and litter size) and population (abundance of individuals) parame-ters to test whether forest management affects dormice and which habitat variables are responsible forsuch effects. We surveyed a dormice population for 3 years in a continuous forest in central Italy includ-ing sites subjected to different management regimes: 5 coppiced stands (2 recently coppiced and 3 oldcoppice stands), 2 abandoned stands with regrowing forest and 3 high forest stands. We found a strongeffect of forest management on hazel dormice, acting mainly through the variation in food resources.Regrowing forests were the most suitable stands for dormice, whereas recent coppices were the mostunsuitable, with an ephemeral presence of a few individuals. Old coppices and high forest stands wereboth able to sustain local populations but at lower densities and with a higher mortality and/or emi-gration of younger and/or weaker individuals than the regrowing forest. Through our detailed analyseswe were able to uncover the demographic mechanism underlying the effects of forest management onhazel dormice populations; our findings strongly suggest that maintaining an heterogeneous successionalcomposition may be the most effective strategy for the conservation of this species.