DOI: 10.5061/dryad.nk98sf7xw
title: Data for: Direct and indirect effects of food, fear and management on crop damage by ungulates

description: Foraging on crops by wild ungulates may create human-wildlife conflicts
 through reducing crop production. Ungulates interact with and within
 complex socio-ecological systems, making the reduction of crop damage a
 challenging task. Aside from ungulate densities, crop damage is influenced
 by different drivers affecting ungulate foraging behavior: food
 availability and food quality in the landscape (i.e. the foodscape) as
 well as fear from hunting and scaring actions (i.e. the landscape of fear)
 may together affect the degree of damage via both direct and indirect
 effects. A better understanding of the individual effects of these
 potential drivers behind crop damage is needed, as is an appreciation of
 whether the effects are dependent on ungulate density. We investigated
 this by applying path analysis to test indirect and direct links between
 ungulate density, foodscape, landscape of fear and, human management goals
 on crop damage of oats and grass, respectively. Our results suggest that
 crop type is the major driver behind crop damage, with more damage to oats
 than to leys, implying that human decisions (i.e changing crop type)
 influence the level of crop damage. We found that management goals and
 actions influenced the foodscape and the landscape of fear, by affecting
 the amount of forage produced in the agricultural landscape and the amount
 of scaring actions. Additionally, we found that supplementary feeding
 influenced the local ungulate densities in the area. Our results highlight
 the importance of including human actions on multiple levels when
 assessing drivers behind damage by ungulates in managed landscapes. We
 suggest that more studies using path analysis on multiple scales are
 needed in order to tackle complex issues such as crop damage and other
 human-wildlife conflicts.
description: The ecological data varirables was collected as the following:
 crop damage: the biomass inside an exclosure and outside of the exclosure
 was cut using electric scissors, the difference in biomass betweent the
 exclosure and the plot outside was compared to generate a biomass loss
 (crop damage) variable. This was processed into an average % biomass loss
 of the 3 pais of grazed and un-grazed plots on the
 fields. <br>Forage availability in the surrounding was measured
 along transects surrunding the field as an absent/presence inventory. This
 was processed into a propotion of forage species per transect (average of
 4 transects). Biomass on fields was a measure of the biomass inside
 exclosures on fields in gram per field. Unuglate density was a measure of
 the number of pellet groups of all ungulate species measured along
 transects surrounidng the fields.This was processed into the number of
 pellet groups of all unuglate species from the entire area sampled. The
 social data was collected using surveys, giving information about if
 supplementray feeding, hunting, and scaring had been conducted on the
 fields. Furthermore, there was also one suervey question about what
 management goal the farm had, whether it was hunting/game keeping or
 agricutlure.
description: Excel is necessary in order to open the data file.