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Human hunters are described as ‘superpredators’ with a unique ecology.
Chronic Wasting Disease among cervids and African swine fever among wild
boar are emerging wildlife diseases in Europe with huge economic and
cultural repercussions. Understanding hunter movements at broad scales has
implications for how to control their spread. Here we show, based on the
analysis of the settlement patterns and movements of reindeer (n = 9,685),
red deer (n = 47,845), moose (n = 60,365), and roe deer (n = 42,530)
hunters from across Norway (2001-2017), that hunter density was more
closely linked to human density than prey density, that hunters were
largely migratory, aggregated with increasing regional prey densities and
often used dogs. Hunter movements extended across Europe and to other
continents. Our results provide extensive evidence that the broad-scale
movements and residency patterns of post-industrial hunters relative to
their prey differ from those of large carnivores.
268 views reported since publication in 2020.