The effects of moose and pine density on browsing damage in Swedish pine forests

21404 6 113190 2 341844 document 113190 Wildlife Biology - 2026 - Franklin - The effects of moose and pine density on browsing damage in Swedish pine forests.pdf application/pdf 6edf99ca8659052b4c3f89ae48227c95 MD5 2155565 2026-03-19 09:15:32 https://pure.iiasa.ac.at/id/eprint/21404/1/Wildlife%20Biology%20-%202026%20-%20Franklin%20-%20The%20effects%20of%20moose%20and%20pine%20density%20on%20browsing%20damage%20in%20Swedish%20pine%20forests.pdf 21404 1 1 application/pdf text en public cc_by_4

Wildlife Biology - 2026 - Franklin - The effects of moose and pine density on browsing damage in Swedish pine forests.pdf

published 113198 1 341869 document 113198 indexcodes.txt text/plain 22aab2c90954668f2c49d4b492f52b3f MD5 10575 2026-03-19 09:25:08 https://pure.iiasa.ac.at/id/eprint/21404/2/indexcodes.txt 21404 2 2 text/plain other Generate index codes conversion from text to indexcodes en public

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http://eprints.org/relation/isVersionOf https://pure.iiasa.ac.at/id/document/113190 http://eprints.org/relation/isVolatileVersionOf https://pure.iiasa.ac.at/id/document/113190 http://eprints.org/relation/issmallThumbnailVersionOf https://pure.iiasa.ac.at/id/document/113190 archive 353 disk0/00/02/14/04 2026-03-19 09:16:33 2026-03-19 09:16:33 2026-03-19 09:16:33 article show Franklin O. 1791 0000-0002-0376-4140 Kalén C. Felton A.M. Wallgren M. The effects of moose and pine density on browsing damage in Swedish pine forests inpress BNR AFE Moose Alces alces is a culturally and economically important game species in Sweden, but their browsing on regenerating Scots pine trees Pinus sylvestris often causes extensive damage to the production and quality of timber. Forest and wildlife managers are faced with the dilemma of how to reduce damage to timber trees while also supporting moose populations and hunting opportunities. The proportion of damaged trees can be reduced by decreasing the number of moose, but also by increasing the number of pines. However, the relative effectiveness of these two approaches is debated and has not been conclusively determined. Here, we addressed this question by analyzing the effects of moose and pine density on pine damage based on yearly data from almost all of Sweden's moose management areas (MMAs) over a 10‐year period (2015–2024; 718 observations). We developed a mechanistic model to realistically represent the browsing process and used regression with mixed models to account for variable vulnerability (variation in damage risk at a fixed moose per pine ratio) among MMAs in the statistical analysis. The model explained 53% of the variation in the proportion of damaged trees and showed that, on average, the relative damage reduction effect of a decreased moose population was ~ 1.5× larger (25%) than the effect of increased pine density (17%). Vulnerability to browsing varied substantially among MMAs and between years within each MMA, especially in areas with low pine density. This variability prevents reliable predictions of management effects at the individual MMA level for most MMAs. Such local predictions may be improved in the future by incorporating longer time series of observations and additional variables, such as alternative forage sources, browsing by other deer species, and snow cover and duration. 2026-03-07 published Nordic Board for Wildlife Research doi:10.1002/wlb3.01614 95 public Wildlife Biology TRUE 0909-6396 info:eu-repo/semantics/article