Leaving the safety of the forest: The landscape-scale dynamics of a protected mobile species occupying areas with varying levels of protection

There is enormous interest surrounding the optimal ways to manage landscape mosaics that include protected and unprotected areas as well as gradients in productivity and mortality. The overall viability of spatially dispersed metapopulations depends on spatial variation in reproduction and survival and the movements of individuals across landscape mosaics. Much work considers marine protected areas and sustainable fish harvest, but our understanding of the contribution of protected area to the dynamics of mobile terrestrial species is fragmentary. Protected areas on land are often sited in relatively unproductive uplands areas, where survival may be high but reproductive output lower than in unprotected areas.
This project provides an outstanding multidisciplinary training opportunity for a PhD student to work with industry, the private, public and third sectors and unparalleled demographic data to develop spatially explicit management models for the goshawk, a charismatic forest bird that had effectively been eliminated as a breeding species by the hand of man. Goshawk numbers are now gradually recovering following reintroductions by falconers in the 1960s and despite residual illegal persecution in areas managed for game birds. It is a flagship species for the process of ecosystem restoration and rewilding in the UK.
Upland spruce forests managed by the Forestry Commission (FC) where the strict legal protection afforded to goshawk is rigorously enforced have contributed disproportionately to their recovery. Goshawk territories are monitored by contracted raptor specialists in the National Forest Estate and trees are not felled during the breeding season near known nest sites. Tree felling outside the breeding season and thinning often displaces breeding pairs. While staff from FC derive pride from their goshawks, closed canopy high forests with low disturbance favoured as nesting areas are becoming scarcer owing to i) the prevailing age structure of trees in the National Forest Estate, ii) the risk of wind throw dictating short rotation on the high ground and iii) increasing recreational activity in high amenity value valley bottom forests. It is not known whether the viability of the goshawk population beyond the FC Estate would be affected by a reduction in the availability of suitable nesting areas in protected areas.
The emerging dynamics of species occupying heterogeneous landscapes depend on local demography and the movement rules followed by individuals, but it is rarely possible to characterise dispersal rules. Large blocks of protected forestry areas have likely acted as demographic sources for goshawks, generating a surplus of juvenile that dispersed in the wider landscape. Juveniles settling in vacant territories in lowland forests probably experienced low survival but likely higher productivity, setting up a classical "low productivity source, attractive sink" dynamics. Over time, sufficient productive lowland territories might become settled, such that the wider population reliance on the original low productivity sources will reduce. Whether this or a different scenario unfolds critically depends on how dispersing individual select areas for settlement.
The student will work alongside public and private sector forest managers and dedicated amateur and professional ornithologists who monitor virtually the entire goshawk population inhabiting public and private land. He/she will use and contribute to exceptional data to rigorously evaluate the relative contributions of FC and privately owned forests to the dynamics and future viability of the goshawk population and provide evidence to shape landscape-scale conservation policy. The project will thereby train a new scientist in state of the art quantitative analytical approaches to shed light on the trade-offs that unavoidably arise between conservation and economic activities and the dynamic of a protected species in heterogeneous landscapes.