As human population and subsequent ecological impact continues to grow, certain wildlife species are increasingly utilizing anthropogenic food sources to sustain and even increase population size. In particular, large carnivores can develop synanthropic behavior and rely on livestock, garbage and other resources instead of a natural prey base. We conducted a multi-year camera trap study in Sarıkamış-Allahuekber Mountains National Park and surrounding forest in eastern Turkey to document presence and estimate occupancy for medium-large mammals in a geographically isolated and heavily degraded forest. Preliminary camera trap efforts began in 2009 with opportunistic sampling and during 2013-2015 we used a 2 km2 sampling grid to sample approximately 326 km2 of forested area, dominated by Scots pine. Camera traps were deployed for a minimum of 90 consecutive days each year during the summer field season.
Results/Conclusions
We obtained more than 50,000 images of vertebrates and detected 12 species of wild mammals during a total sampling effort of 8,832 camera trap days. Human activity was the most common event captured by cameras and was one order of magnitude more common than the second most common animal, which was domestic cow. Gray wolves and Eurasian brown bears were the most frequent wildlife event. Modeled occupancy estimates for wolves, bears, and lynx are 0.40, 0.46, and 0.17 respectively. Natural prey species were rarely captured and capture rates imply that these species may be functionally extinct as a natural prey base. Wild boar was the only natural prey species with sufficient data for occupancy modeling, estimated to be 0.16. Our results suggest that large carnivores can exist in the absence of natural prey and at a higher density in human dominated agrarian landscapes compared to more pristine landscapes.