IUCN / SSC Cat Specialist Group - Digital Cat Library |
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| Klar, N. | |
| Windthrow areas and stream valleys: habitat preferences of wildcats (Felis silvestris silvestris) in the Eifel region | |
| 2003 Full Book | |
Wildcats are amongst the rarest mammals of Central Europe. In Germany there are only 1500-5000 individuals left. There is still information lacking about their way of living. From January 2001 to September 2003, 12 feral wildcats (6 males, 6 females) were caught, equipped with radio transmitters and tracked for about one year each. This was done in the course of a monitoring project on a wildcat-proof veterinary fence along the motorway A 60 Bitburg-Wittlich. About 10,000 localisations were taken. Home ranges (100% MCP-Method) varied between 353 and 1070 ha for females and between 379 and 3331 ha for males. There were large overlaps between and within sexes. Habitat preferences were assessed by comparing use and availability for the active periods at night and day as well as for the inactive periods at daytime. On the basis of a habitat mapping 13 habitat categories were built and brought into a hierarchical order of preference using the method of Johnson (1980). All twelve wildcats showed a preference for windfall and early successional stages (regeneration areas). In the study area windfall is abundant after the hurricane Wiebke 1990, while mature forest is almost absent. With their rich and dense composition windfalls provide good cover as well as a lot of food in terms of small mammals. There was a trend that windfalls with natural regeneration were preferred to afforestated windfalls. Wildcats significantly preferred extensively used and bushy meadows to intensively used meadows and farmland. 8 of 12 wildcats were located significantly more often near creeks than expected. Furthermore the use of forest and open habitats was compared. All wildcats spent most of their active period within forest (66-98 % of localisations). Female wildcats spent significantly more time within forest than male wildcats. Most localisations in open habitats were within 100 m distance of forest edge (53-100 % of open-habitat-localisations). The farthest a male wildcat moved away from the forest edge was 1.3 km. A maximum distance of 200 m to cover in terms of coppices or hedges was never exceeded. It seems that most males prefer to hunt on extensively used meadows near forest edges, while especially females with a lot of windfall within their home ranges prefer to hunt within those patches and hardly ever come out of the forest. This could be due to a stronger need of cover (females are smaller than males and have their kittens to care for), a different alimentary spectrum or intraspecific dominance. |
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