Presence of pastoral fields in mountain landscapes influences prey consumption by European wildcats

© 2022 The Authors. Journal of Zoology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Zoological Society of London. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.

Traditional agro-pastoral practices are more beneficial for biodiversity than intensified agricultural systems. Promotion of the growth of natural herbaceous vegetation in pastoral fields can enhance rodent populations and consequently influence ecological aspects of carnivores with rodent-based diets, like prey consumption in the European wildcat (Felis silvestris). In this article, we investigated the effects of pastoral field extent, season and prey abundance on wildcat consumption of several prey species in the Cantabrian Mountains (NW Spain). Prey consumption in areas with presence of pastoral fields (even in low proportions) was dominated by profitable field-dwelling rodent species such as Arvicola monticola. Consumption of Arvicola was not correlated with its abundance and was higher during summer and autumn. Apodemus dominated the wildcat diet in areas with higher forest proportion and far from pastoral fields, particularly during spring. Our results suggest that varying habitat use and seasonal changes in prey accessibility may determine wildcat prey consumption in pastoral landscapes. Our results can contribute to highlight the potential benefits of traditional and sustainable pastoral activities for the conservation of the European wildcat across its distribution range.

We thank the Regional Governments of Castilla y León and the Principality of Asturias for the permits to capture wildcats and collect wildcat scat samples (EP/P/128/2019 for CyL; AUTO/19/34, AUTO/2020/593 and AUTO/2019/3267 for Asturias). We thank the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities as well as TRAGSATEC S.A. for sharing the GPS spatial data of several intensive 24-h tracking periods of European wildcats. We thank M. Torres Diseños Industriales SAU and Land Rover Spain for their partial economic and logistic support.

Peer reviewed