ABSTRACT The Annamite striped rabbit (Nesolagus timminsi) is a forest‐dwelling lagomorph endemic to the Annamite Mountains of Vietnam and Laos. Herein, we report the first detailed observations of its burrowing and reproductive behavior from information gathered via camera traps. From May to October 2024, six camera traps were deployed at suspected burrow sites identified through semi‐structured interviews and field surveys. The active burrows were recorded at multiple sites within broadleaf wet evergreen forests between 359 m and 775 m asl. The camera traps were active for 864 camera trap nights, recording 1293 videos of the species. The videos showed first observations of the Annamite striped rabbit performing a sequence of burrow opening, closing and concealment, including placing compacted soil and small rocks over the entrance. Furthermore, a single behavioral event lasting 190 min was recorded and interpreted as being suggestive of parturition. Forty‐six days after this event, the female was recorded leaving the burrow accompanied by two juveniles. These findings represent the first documentation of such behavior in the species. Our results provide new behavioral information on this little known and endangered animal.

The recovery of wolf populations across Europe has reignited human–wildlife conflicts, particularly in countries such as Austria, where wolves have been absent for more than a century. Livestock depredation remains one of the primary sources of tension, and effective management requires a solid spatial basis for planning. In this study, we laid the groundwork for evidence‐based management by prioritizing areas for wolf management through spatially explicit modelling of habitat suitability and livestock depredation. We developed a species distribution model (SDM) to predict potential wolf habitat and a depredation susceptibility model (DSM) to identify areas of potential livestock predation. Both models were built using the MaxEnt algorithm, based on extensively filtered wolf presence records (n = 124) and depredation cases (n = 109) together with a comprehensive set of 37 environmental, topographic, anthropogenic and livestock‐related variables. The SDM indicated that approximately 47% of Austria constitutes suitable wolf habitat, predominantly in forested areas. The DSM identified 23% of Austria as areas of significant depredation susceptibility, driven primarily by livestock presence and proximity to forests. Combining the SDM and DSM, we developed an asymmetrical prioritization index (sustainability‐adjusted risk index, SARI), to pinpoint areas of higher management focus. The SARI revealed ~ 8000 km 2 (9.5% of Austria) of overlapping habitat suitability and depredation susceptibility, with the top 10th percentile indicating areas requiring urgent management intervention. These areas are concentrated at alpine pastures and open landscapes adjacent to or surrounded by forests, particularly in Tyrol and Carinthia. Our findings emphasize the need for spatial planning of targeted management strategies, including livestock protection measures and coexistence initiatives, to mitigate conflicts in hotspot areas and support sustainable wolf population recovery. By providing spatially explicit data, this research offers a valuable tool for resource allocation and evidence‐based decision‐making, paving the way for effective coexistence between humans and wolves.

The genus Lepus is considered a model to investigate ongoing evolutionary processes, as it diverged only 8.61 million years ago. The Alpine mountain hare (L. timidus varronis) is a specialist, and the European hare (L. europaeus) a generalist. In the European Alps, they occur mostly in parapatry, with reported hybridisation. Hybrids can influence evolutionary trajectories, either promoting genetic homogenisation or contributing to the emergence of novel lineages. Differences in foraging behaviour between the two lagomorph species exist, but resource competition appears to occur in overlapping elevations. We investigated dietary ecology of both species and their hybrids, focusing on seasonal and altitudinal differences, in faecal samples collected along altitudinal gradients in Grisons, Switzerland. Dietary composition was inferred for 90 European hares, 59 Alpine mountain hares and 52 hybrids using a DNA metabarcoding approach. We identified 25 orders, 41 families, 93 genera and 88 plant species. Alpine mountain hares showed a selective feeding behaviour selecting plant species typical of the respective elevation. European hares confirmed a more generalist pattern, feeding on different plant taxa irrespective of the elevation, without evidence for dietary restriction toward the end of the vegetation period. Our findings are consistent with the idea that European hares can successfully inhabit Alpine ecosystems and may compete with Alpine mountain hares. In some cases, hybrids exhibited distinct dietary ecology relative to their parental species, resulting in greater overall variability. Hybrids in the Alps might influence evolutionary processes, especially under climate warming, when the parental species gain advantageous dietary traits through backcrossing.

BACKGROUND:Many animals disperse to find their own territory, mates to reproduce or suitable environments to live. Dispersal can be described as a three-phase process consisting of two stationary phases (S1 and S2) at the beginning and the end of a dispersal event. These stationary phases are temporally separated by a transient phase (T), where the animal moves from S1 to a new area S2 in space. The net squared displacement (NSD) is a frequently used metric to identify these phases from animal tracking data. METHODS:We tested whether early warning signals (EWSs) on time series of the NSD, can be used to predict dispersal events. To identify EWSs we conducted a rolling window approach and evaluated the dispersal events by performing a spatial cluster analysis with the mechanistic range shift analysis (MRSA). We used data from 22 GPS-collared red foxes (Vulpes vulpes) as an example of a mammal species in which the juvenile (sub-) adult transition usually involves dispersal. RESULTS:Applying EWSs resulted in the identification of both transitions from S1 to T and from T to S2. For 10 individuals we detected EWSs. For 8 out of these 10 individuals (80%) we identified a spatial shift between S1 and S2 via a MRSA. Accordingly, for 8 out of 22 individuals (36%) we observed a transient phase (T) which led to a major and persistent transformation of red fox locations. CONCLUSION:Even though the identification of dispersal events based on movement data is challenging using well known techniques such as state space models or the MRSA, our results suggested that EWS in combination with MRSA is appropriate to detect and identify dispersal events in radio-collared mammals. Thus, in the context of identifying dispersal events using EWSs we recommend to evaluate the existence of stationary and transient phases using the MSRA. The benefit of using EWSs is the calculation of the NSD and simple statistics (standard deviation, autocorrelation) and no requirement of high resolution tracking data. Additionally, transitions to the stationary or transient phase might be detected where home range calculations are not possible.

European forests face severe challenges due to climate change, highlighting the importance of tree species diversity for regeneration. The management of browsing species such as red deer ( Cervus elaphus ) is therefore crucial. An important metric for managing population size is the adult sex ratio (ASR), for example, derived from camera trap data. In our study, we address 2 issues specific to camera trap methods separately: avoiding the loss of information contained in the proportion of unknown‐sex sightings and accounting for sex‐specific detection probabilities. Our hypothesis was that these advanced statistical methods reveal a potential bias in the estimation of red deer ASR in a naive approach directly from raw camera trap data. We conducted research in an alpine area of Austria from January 2020 to May 2022. We chose weeks 9 to 17 in spring to obtain pre‐hunting and pre‐birth data. We included unknown‐sex sightings (8.9% of all sightings) with predicted sex (precision of 75%) in the ASR estimation after conducting a model selection process with the goal of the highest precision in prediction. These predicted ASRs showed a non‐significant slight shift towards males, indicating a more balanced ASR than a naive ASR. To include sex‐specific detection probabilities, we ran a Royle Nichols occupancy model for both sexes and calculated ASR from estimated latent abundances. Contrary to our expectations, there were no significant differences between the occupancy‐based ASRs and the naive or predicted ASRs. This suggests that, under the conditions of our study, both the naive approach and more advanced statistical methods yield comparable results in terms of ASR. In the future, this could enable wildlife managers to make informed decisions with minimal effort and cost using tools that do not require complex analysis. If desired, additional ecological information can be derived from advanced statistical methods, such as occupancy modeling, allowing more nuanced interpretations of spatiotemporal behavior.

Many animals must adapt their movements to different conditions encountered during different life phases, such as when exploring extraterritorial areas for dispersal, foraging or breeding. To better understand how animals move in different movement phases, we asked whether movement patterns differ between one way directed movements, such as during the transient phase of dispersal or two way exploratory-like movements such as during extraterritorial excursions or stationary movements. We GPS collared red foxes in a rural area in southern Germany between 2020 and 2023. Using a random forest model, we analyzed different movement parameters, habitat features—for example landclasses and distances to linear structures—and time variables (season and time of day) within red fox exploratory, transient and stationary movement phases to characterize phase specific movement patterns and to investigate the influence of different variables on classifying the movement phases. According to the classification model, the movement patterns in the different phases were characterized most strongly by the variables persistence velocity, season, step length and distance to linear structures. In extraterritorial areas, red foxes either moved straight with high persistence velocity, close to anthropogenic linear structures during transient movements, or more tortuously containing a higher variance in turning angles and a decrease in persistence velocity during exploratory-like movements. Transient movements mainly took place during autumn, whereas exploratory-like movements were mainly conducted during winter and spring. Movement patterns of red foxes differ between transient, exploratory and stationary phases, reflecting displacement, searching and resident movement strategies. Our results signify the importance of the combined effect of using movement, habitat and time variables together in analyzing movement phases. High movement variability may allow red foxes to navigate in extraterritorial areas efficiently and to adapt to different environmental and behavioral conditions.

Prey species such as red deer (Cervus elaphus) select their habitats according to their requirements for landscape features and adapt this selection to the presence of predators and humans. We tested how networks of different types of protected areas-the Swiss National Park (SNP) without hunting but with additional regulations for humans, and smaller-scale hunting ban areas (all types together = HBAs)-influenced diurnal and nocturnal habitat selection in red deer compared with unprotected areas.Using integrated step selection functions, we compared habitat selection of 243 GPS-collared individuals from six study areas across the Central Alps during day and night, during the year and specifically during the short autumnal hunting season.During the day, red deer avoided habitats where encounters with humans were likely, i.e., they selected for denser tree cover, greater distances to trails, steeper slopes, and for most of the year, for higher elevation. Importantly, in summer and autumn, they selected HBAs. At night, they showed the opposite selection. This daily pattern was absent in the study area centred on the SNP, where habitat selection was less specific overall. During the main hunting season, they selected HBAs over areas without protection during both day and night, and concurrently, habitat selection was less specific inside compared with outside HBAs.HBAs allow red deer to select habitat largely independently of human impact. Accordingly, compensating habitat selection at night due to human disturbance during the daytime was observed in all study areas, except for the region centered on the SNP. Our results suggest that in human-dominated landscapes, networks of small-scale HBAs can support more natural habitat selection of the animals, especially when providing additional regulations to humans.

The habitat use of wild ungulates is determined by forage availability, but also the avoidance of predation and human disturbance. They should apply foraging strategies that provide the most energy at the lowest cost. However, due to data limitations at the scale of movement trajectories, it is not clear to what extent even well-studied species such as red deer (Cervus elaphus) trade-off between forage quality and quantity, especially in heterogeneous alpine habitats characterized by short vegetation periods. We used remote sensing data to derive spatially continuous forage quality and quantity information. To predict relative nitrogen (i.e. forage quality) and biomass (i.e. forage quantity), we related field data to predictor variables derived from Sentinel-2 satellite data. In particular, our approach employed random forest regression algorithms, integrating various remote sensing variables such as reflectance values, vegetation indices and optical traits derived from a radiative transfer model. We combined these forage characteristics with variables representing human activity, and applied integrated step selection functions to estimate sex-specific summer habitat selection of red deer in open habitats within and around the Swiss National Park, an alpine Strict Nature Reserve. The combination of vegetation indices and optical traits greatly improved predictive power in both the biomass (R2 = 0.60, Root mean square error (RMSE) = 88.55 g/m2) and relative nitrogen models (R2 = 0.34, RMSE = 0.28

The Swedish brown bear Ursus arctos population is protected, but managed with legally defined hunting seasons. Management decisions (e.g., hunting quotas) are frequently changed and should be based on knowledge about demographic parameters, but collecting sufficient data in the field is time consuming and expensive. An efficient method to collect data on reproductive output could be counting placental scars in the uteri of female brown bears, because hunters in Sweden are required to collect samples (including reproductive organs) of harvested bears and submit them to the authorities. We assessed the reliability of placental scar counts to determine reproductive performance by counting the number of young with female radio-collared brown bears and comparing that with placental scar counts after those females had been harvested. We found that staining uteri improved the detection of placental scars. The differences between number of scars detected before and after staining the uteri, increased significantly with female age. The number of placental scars and number of observed cubs-of-the-year accompanying females corresponded well 2 and 3 years after birth; relatively small deviations between them might have occurred because of early cub mortality prior to the observations after leaving the den. Placental scar counts can provide accurate information on age of primiparity, evidence for reproductive aging (senescence), and reproductive productivity, and therefore inform decisions regarding adaptive management, sustainable hunting, and conservation.

Climatic variation along the elevation gradient promotes the natural parapatric occurrence of the European hare (Lepus europaeus) and Alpine mountain hare (Lepus timidus varronis) in the Alps. Recent data indicate a displacement of mountain hares caused by competition with the European hare. Competitive exclusion might take place at a fine spatial scale and hybrids may sharpen competition. Genetic non-invasive sampling (gNIS) demonstrates to be effective to retrieve information from wild animals. However, based on the accuracy of the differing genetic analysis methods, the selection of the method might decisively influence results. To examine habitat preferences of Alpine mountain hares, European hares and their hybrids with particular interest in the influence of the accuracy of the genetic analysis method on the results, we performed gNIS in Grisons (Switzerland) for four years and compared habitat associations of the genotyped samples. We recorded 137 individuals (i.e., 35 hybrids, 49 European hares, 53 Alpine mountain hares). Combined nuclear and mitochondrial DNA analysis including individual identification revealed to be the most accurate indirect method for the study of habitat preferences of hares. Alpine mountain hares had a narrow habitat breadth and used little habitat diversity. Hybrids showed great similarities in their habitat preferences to European hares. Hybrids might increase the competition in favour of European hares and the displacement of Alpine mountain hares, since they show similar patterns of habitat use to European hares. Ongoing climate change potentiate the niche overlap between species, increasing the risk of Alpine hare decline due to hybridisation and displacement.

In wildlife management, differing perspectives among stakeholders generate conflicts about how to achieve disparate sustainability goals that include ecological, economic, and sociocultural dimensions. To mitigate such conflicts, decisions regarding wildlife management must be taken thoughtfully. To our knowledge, there exists no integrative modeling framework to inform these decisions, considering all dimensions of sustainability. We constructed a decision-support tool based on stakeholder workshops and a Bayesian decision network to inform management of wild ruminants in the federal state of Lower Austria. We use collaborative decision analysis to compare resource allocations while accounting for trade-offs among dimensions of sustainability. The tool is designed for application by non-technical users across diverse decision-making contexts with particular sets of wildlife management actions, objectives, and uncertainties. Our tool represents an important step toward developing and evaluating a transparent and replicable approach for mitigating wildlife-based conflicts in Europe and beyond.

Abstract Public opinion can have a decisive influence on conservation actions leading to a need to understand how public opinion is formed. In a survey with a representative sample of the German population, participants answered questions about foxes in two consecutive years. Different versions of a leaflet about foxes were distributed to 2448 participants before the second interview. We compared a narrative text presentation to a non‐narrative list of facts and examined the use of photographs and schematic graphs. We assessed how the presentation format and socio‐demographic factors affected the probability that participants read the leaflet. Using a before‐after/control‐impact design, we examined whether the leaflet affected people's fox‐related knowledge, attitude, and risk perception. The results show that participants were more likely to read the leaflet with increasing age and a higher educational level. Reading probability also increased with attitude toward foxes. Participants who read the leaflet completely gained more knowledge about foxes than those who read it only partly. Photographs also contributed to a higher knowledge gain, but schematic graphs did not. Moreover, participants who read a fact list gained more knowledge compared to the control condition. Furthermore, the combination of visual and textual features had an effect on attitude toward foxes. However, we found no evidence that any treatment affected risk perception. We discuss implications and derivations for science communication to improve conservation actions.

Population viability analyses (PVA) are important tools for decision-making and planning of adaptive wildlife management actions. While earlier approaches on individual based PVAs have often been age-based, analyses of species with strong social structure might benefit from a stage-based model approach. In this study, we designed an individual-based and stage-based PVA within the software Vortex. As a case study, we applied our model to the German part of the European wolf population, making use of comprehensive data sets originating from the German monitoring regime including individual genotypes. Genetic diversity and inbreeding were important considerations in our analysis, as they could greatly impact population dynamics. We aimed to assess the population's trajectory, extinction risk, and genetic integrity under different scenarios while analyzing factors that could affect its survival. We found that mortality rates at different life cycle stages had varying effects on population growth. Higher mortality rates among pups and dispersers led to negative growth and increased the risk of extinction. In comparison, higher mortality rates among yearlings and subdominant wolves still resulted in positive growth but at a slower rate. Mortality among the breeding individuals within the pack (territorials) had the highest impact on population trajectory. Although the German wolves represent a rather recently founded population, our simulations predicted generally good genetic diversity as long as the population was not held at artificially low numbers.Ultimately, we present a generic, easy-to-use-and-adapt model built within the Vortex environment, that after appropriate modification, calibration and testing could be used within conservation practice and management in collaboration with scientific research. Our study highlights the importance of stage-based modeling for understanding the demographic traits of social species like wolves.

The Alpine mountain hare (Lepus timidus varronis) and the European hare (Lepus europaeus) live parapatrically along the elevation gradient in the Alps with areas of overlap. Indications suggest competition between the two lagomorph species in overlapping areas. Resource partitioning in form of feeding niche differentiation may reduce competition and enable coexistence. The two hare species hybridise and produce fertile hybrids. To examine foraging behaviour of Alpine mountain hares, European hares and their hybrids in the Alps with particular interest in indications of competition between the two lagomorph species, we performed genetic analysis of hare faecal samples collected on five transects along the altitudinal gradient in the Alps in Grisons (Switzerland) at the middle and the end of the vegetation growth period in the year 2021. We then investigated visually foraging ecology using Fourier-Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIRS). We recorded 32 European hares, 50 Alpine mountain hares, and 18 hybrids. Foraging behaviour of the Alpine mountain hares was different from foraging behaviour of European hares and hybrids. Alpine mountain hares displayed a specialist’s foraging behaviour, whereas European hares and hybrids a generalist’s foraging behaviour. Some Alpine mountain hares inhabiting overlapping elevations with European hares showed feeding niche differentiation, whereas others showed similar feeding behaviour as European hares suggesting competition between the two species about food. Our study underlines that European hares living in the Alps might be a competitor to the Alpine mountain hare. As a specialist, the Alpine mountain hare will be susceptible to future environmental change due to climate change.

A species’ diet niche is shaped by the evolutionary processes of adaptation to the available food resources in its habitat and by competition with ecologically similar species. In the European Alps, Alpine mountain hares (Lepus timidus varronis) and European hares (Lepus europaeus) occur parapatrically along the elevation gradient and hybridise with each other in overlapping areas. Evidence that the areas of overlap are not stable suggests that interspecific competition between the two congeneric hare species is strong. Competitive exclusion might take place at a fine spatial scale and influence the feeding behaviour of the two hare species. In this study, we investigated diet ecology of Alpine mountain hares, European hares and their hybrids in the Alps in the middle and at the end of the plant vegetation growth period by collecting hare faeces along the altitudinal gradient in Grisons (Switzerland). We performed genetic analysis to identify the hare species and analysed the faeces microscopically to determine dietary composition. Plant components at the level of dicotyledons/monocotyledons, plant family and plant species in faeces of 49 European hares, 16 Alpine mountain hares and 22 hybrids (with discordant nuclear and mitochondrial genetic backgrounds) were identified. Alpine mountain hares used significantly more Ericaceae as food plants than European hares and hybrids. As mountain hares support phenolics in the nutrition better than European hares, our results suggest that the diet of the two lagomorph species are affected by phenolics content in the Alpine ecosystem. Our findings underline the Alpine mountain hare’s adaptation to the Alpine ecosystem by using characteristic Alpine vegetation as food plants. The phenolics tolerance and specialist feeding strategy might be a decisive advantage of the Alpine mountain hare in the competition between the two lagomorph species in the Alps.

The reed vole Alexandromys fortis is a small herbivorous species primarily inhabiting open meadows in northern and central Eurasia. While the reed vole population in Mongolia is classified as least concern, there are limited information available about this species. To address this knowledge gap, a s urvey was conducted in the Khonin Nuga region of West Khentey, along the Yeroo River in Northern Mongolia, to assess the physical characteristics and population structure of reed voles. Over the course of a 12-year study, the reed vole population exhibited significant oscillations. Notably, the species demonstrated strong sexual dimorphism, with males consistently displaying larger size than females among all individuals measured. Fur-thermore, an imbalanced sex ratio was observed, with a greater number of males present both in the captured individuals (male-to-female ratio of 1.19:1) and the adult samples (male-to-female ratio of 1.45:1).

Wolf populations are recovering and expanding across Europe, causing conflicts with livestock owners. Here we compiled incident-based livestock damage data across 21 countries for the years 2018, 2019 and 2020, during which 39,262 wolf-caused incidents were reported from 470 administrative regions. We found substantial regional variation in all aspects of the data, including the primary target species, the density of damages, their seasonal distribution, and their temporal trend. More than half of the variation in damage densities across regions was explained by the area of extensively cultivated habitats occupied by wolves, namely natural grasslands and broad-leaved forests. Regional variation in husbandry practices and damage prevention, while difficult to quantify at a continental scale, appear important factors to further modulate these incidents. As illustrated with detailed data from Germany, a relationship between the number of wolf units and damages diminished over time, suggesting some adaptation of livestock owners and local authorities to their presence, for example by increasing prevention efforts. As we argue, temporal trends of damage incidents, which are robust to variation in data collection across regions, are thus informative about the local intensity of the wolf-human conflict. We estimated increasing trends for the majority of regions, reflecting the current expansion of wolves across the continent. Nonetheless, many of these increases were moderate and for more than one third of all regions, trends were negative despite growing wolf populations, thus indicating that wolf-livestock conflicts can be successfully mitigated with proper management.

A comprehensive investigation of small mammal populations was conducted at the ecological research station situated in Khonin Nuga, located in the upper reaches of the Eroo River within the West Khentey Mountains, spanning a duration of 14 years, from 2000 to 2013. The methodology employed encompassed both pitfall trapping and mark-recapture live trapping techniques. The findings documented the presence of seven distinct species, comprising six soricids and one Crocidura. Noteworthy among the soricids were Sorex caecutiens, Sorex daphaenodon, and Sorex isodon, which exhibited the highest levels of abundance, with Sorex roboratus also being frequently captured. Conversely, species such as Sorex minutissimus, Sorex tundrensis, and Crocidura shantungensis were comparatively less abundant, with sporadic or singular occurrences. Estimates of species diversity, derived through the rarefaction method, revealed a species richness of 7, aligning closely with the empirical data amassed throughout the survey period. The analysis further revealed that three predominant shrew species were consistently observed across all major habitats under scrutiny. Specifically, S. caecutiens, S. daphaenodon, and S. isodon exhibited heightened capture rates within the floodplain meadows and both dark and light coniferous forest plots, respectively. Among the less common species, discernible habitat preferences emerged; for instance, S. roboratus demonstrated a propensity for open grass bog plots, while S. minutissimus exhibited a preference for rocky slopes. Additionally, Crocidura shantungensis displayed a predilection for southern steppe slopes. Sparse instances of S. tundrensis were documented within the confines of small floodplain meadows along tributaries of the Eroo River.

Zusammenfassung Feldhasen sind auf reich strukturierte Offenlandflächen angewiesen, die ganzjährige Deckung und Äsung bieten. In derartigen Lebensräumen wird die Zuwachsrate der Population durch negative Effekte der Prädation, der ungünstigen Witterung oder von Krankheiten weniger stark beeinflusst. Zur Erhöhung der Feldhasendichte ist daher vor allem die Erhaltung bzw. Verbesserung des Lebensraums durch Anlegen von Brachen, Blühstreifen, Hecken und Feldrainen anzustreben. Prädatorenbejagung erhöht die Junghasenüberlebensrate zusätzlich, ist aber ohne begleitende Lebensraumverbesserungsmaßnahmen nur von kurzem Erfolg gekrönt. Nicht zuletzt sollte eine mögliche Bejagung der Feldhasen den Prinzipien der nachhaltigen Jagd folgen, die sich insbesondere am Zuwachs des Feldhasenbestandes orientiert. Das Monitoring der Feldhasenpopulation und der diese beeinflussenden Faktoren stellt die Grundlage für ein adaptives Management dar. Abstract European hares depend on richly structured open areas that provide year-round cover and food. In such habitats, the rate of population increase is less affected by negative effects of predation, adverse weather or diseases. Therefore, to increase the density of European hares, the main goal is to maintain or improve the habitat by creating set-asides, flower strips, hedges and field margins. Predator hunting additionally increases the survival rate of young hares, but without accompanying habitat improvement measures it is only crowned with short success. Last but not least, possible hunting of European hares should follow the principles of sustainable hunting, which is especially based on the recruitment of the hare population. Monitoring of European hare population and the factors affecting it provides the basis for adaptive management.

Increasing numbers of wild ungulates in human-dominated landscapes in Europe could lead to negative effects, such as damages to forests through browsing. To prevent those effects and, thus, mitigate wildlife-based conflicts while ensuring viable ungulate populations, sustainable management is required. Roe deer, as the most abundant cervid species in Europe, is primarily managed via hunting to decrease population densities through harvesting. Besides direct mortality, non-lethal effects of hunting activities further affect the spatial habitat selection for this species. Accordingly, the spatial distribution of hunting locations might influence game impact on forest vegetation. To examine these relationships in more detail, we linked the spatial distribution of hunting locations for roe deer with forest damage through browsing in 20 regions in Upper Austria. Consistent with our hypothesis, an avoidance of forests by hunters was found in regions with <20% forest cover and intolerable browsing impact. When hunters in certain regions, however, used forests according to their availability, game impact on forest vegetation was tolerable. Although forest damage by ungulates depends on numerous factors, we conclude that careful consideration of hunting locations might be an additional approach to reduce browsing intensity by roe deer, at least in regions with low forest cover.