Helping smooth New Zealand sea lions' road home

Date:
November 8, 2021
Source:
Michigan State University
Summary:
A team creates a new way of redefining New Zealand sea lions'
habitat.

The work will help take the surprise out of coming across sea
lions on a forest hike.



FULL STORY ========================================================================== Majestic flippers instead of legs put the "sea" in sea lions, yet in
New Zealand, the endangered beasts are dragging their bulky way back to
forests and back yards in a story of conservation success and complicated opportunities.


========================================================================== Michigan State University (MSU) PhD student Veronica Frans and colleagues
have come up with a new way of redefining the endangered New Zealand
sea lions' habitat in the face of expanding populations. The work will
help take the surprise out of coming across sea lions on a forest hike
or on a back porch.

Which is already happening there.

The work appears in this month's journal Methods in Ecology and Evolution.

Frans and colleagues from New Zealand, Germany and Belgium worked to
supersize the information that comprises species distribution models
to include much more information that more realistically reflects where
the sea lions are going.

Conservation managers have long complained these models don't reflect
reality, so creating a better tool can identify barriers to appealing
habitat and help people prepare to welcome conservation success.

"It's one thing for wildlife rangers to look out for sea lions on sandy beaches, but it's another challenge for them to tromp through forests to
find baby sea lions hiding under the trees," said Frans, who is a member
of MSU's Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability. "While we
can't know for sure where female sea lions will go on the mainland, we
can use models to make helpful predictions." Humans drove New Zealand
sea lions off the mainland to nearby islands over 200 years ago. There
are an estimated 12,000 left, and New Zealand's sea lions are among
the rarest in the world. Conservation efforts to protect the creatures
have created populations large enough to return to the mainland. Mother
sea lions are protective of their young and have been found up to 2km
(a little over a mile) into the forest.

While encountering a baby sea lion under a pine tree is, well, adorable,
there are many perils to both the animals and to people. Their potential habitat includes barriers such as roads, livestock fencing and commercial
pine forests.

Sea lions there have been hit by cars and killed deliberately. Moreover,
sea lion mothers, which weigh up to 180 kg (about 400 pounds), are
ferociously protective of their pups.

Frans and her colleagues developed a framework to create an integrated
species distribution model database. It uses several models to capture
female sea lions' breeding habitat requirements and inland movement --
sand, grass, and forest for different times in the season, slopes and
cliffs to check access, inland water, and other land features, as well as
data that showed human impact -- roads, farms, residences. These models
were informed using tracking data from sea lion colonies on nearby islands
and working closely with the New Zealand Department of Conservation.

New Zealand have the most success.

"There is currently only one official breeding colony on the mainland
right now, and only a few other spots where they've had pups, but the populations are still small," Frans said. "Nearly 400 sites seem like an incredible potential for a bright future for these sea lions. All signs
point to many more sea lion pups in the future, if we do our best to
welcome them." The maps the team created are available to the public
to be used to identify potential hazards and explore new habitats as
the charismatic animals hedge their way home.

========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by Michigan_State_University. Note:
Content may be edited for style and length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Veronica F. Frans, Ame'lie A. Auge', Jim Fyfe, Yuqian Zhang, Nathan
McNally, Hendrik Edelhoff, Niko Balkenhol, Jan O. Engler. Integrated
SDM database: Enhancing the relevance and utility of species
distribution models in conservation management. Methods in Ecology
and Evolution, 2021; DOI: 10.1111/2041-210X.13736 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/11/211108081655.htm

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