When is a small park big enough? Effects of size, isolation and human disturbance on mammal species relaxation in Canadian national parks.

摘要

Parks Canada's legislation calls for the maintenance of ecological integrity, which by definition includes the historic composition of species. Consistent with research that has used island biogeography theory as a framework for examining faunal relaxation in parks, I found that 23 of 24 (96%) of the national parks studied had lost disturbance-sensitive mammals. Unlike previous research, however, park area was not significantly correlated with species loss. An examination of landscape attributes using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) quantified the amount of human development and habitat within the boundaries, and in a 50 km zone around each of the parks to see whether these correlated with species loss. The areas of impact of human development were estimated using a buffering analysis on built features. Habitat analysis was based on satellite imagery. These variables, together with data on human population and visitor density were significantly correlated (p 0.05) with loss of disturbance-sensitive mammals.