Aida Parres Lluch, Institute of Nature Conservation, Polish Academy of Sciences

Protected areas (PAs) are a key tool for wildlife conservation, yet many are small and increasingly permeated by human pressure, raising concerns about their capacity to safeguard natural behaviours, particularly in wide-ranging species whose movements often extend beyond PA boundaries. Using high-resolution GPS-data from 28 brown bears (Ursus arctos) in the northern part of the Carpathians, we assessed the effectiveness of PAs to preserve natural spatial behaviours by studying the dynamical character of brown bears’ space use and its relationship with environmental seasonality, through changes in photoperiod, temperature, and vegetation productivity, across a gradient of human footprint inside and outside PAs. We measured brown bear space use dynamics as day-to-day changes in the home range displacement during the bear active season (April–November). More than two-thirds of the daily home ranges were fully located within PAs; yet more than 60% of these were exposed to moderate to high human pressure. Only inside PAs, bears exhibited a clear seasonal pattern in their home range dynamics, strongly synchronised with changes in environmental seasonality, particularly in females, with home range displacements increasing in late spring and declining towards autumn. Outside PAs, these patterns were lost. Increasing human pressures within PAs altered the timing and amplitude of the seasonal pattern in bears’ home range dynamics and weakened its association with environmental cues, particularly in females. This suggests that although PAs can help preserve natural spatial behaviours of wide-ranging species, their effectiveness declines as human pressure intensifies within their boundaries. Conservation strategies should therefore prioritise not only expanding the coverage of PAs but also limiting infrastructure development and reducing human pressures within their boundaries to preserve the behavioural integrity of species and their role in ecosystem functioning.