In Canada, plains bison was assessed by The Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada as threatened. While bison are no longer at risk of demographic extinction, conservation programs remain challenged by the rarity of large populations and most bison are found in small, isolated, and confined herds. In this context, proper assessment of ecological carrying capacity is critical to inform habitat management and conservation efforts for species recovery. Although estimated food-limited carrying capacity is influenced by forage availability, forage requirements, and offtake proportion, it should also consider habitat selection by animals, especially inside confined settings to help avoid overgrazing. To support bison management in Grasslands National Park of Canada, we integrated remote sensing, geographic information systems, and resource selection functions (RSFs) to examine variables that were potentially associated with bison habitat selection and return a comprehensive estimate of bison carrying capacity. Relevant variables were then integrated with estimates of forage availability using remote sensing and extrapolated to the bison containment scale. Factors of relevance to the RSFs include vegetation landscape units, slope, distance to water, fence, and road. In particular, bison selected for upland and sloped grasslands, which were characterized by the highest forage availability (1 064.5 kg ha and 1 238.5 kg ha), while avoiding water in both growing and dormant seasons. The top-performing RSFs models in growing and dormant seasons were assessed using k-fold cross validation and achieved good predictive capacity (Spearman rank correlation [r] ≥ 0.83, < 0.01). Application of traditional clipping biomass samples and remote sensing derived variables is helpful in estimating annual forage quantity for bison ( = 0.75, < 0.05). When accounting for bison resource selection, our model resulted in a carrying capacity estimate of about 0.0424 bison ha or 764−770 bison (each requiring 12.2 kg forage/d), compared with 0.0587 bison ha or 1 062 animals estimated when considering only the availability of forage. Such potential to increase carrying capacity to more than 1 000 individuals stresses the importance of testing management tools to shape bison grazing and increase forage utilization across a greater proportion of the 18 000-ha containment area. By improving our understanding of the interaction of this species with the mixed-grass prairie ecosystem, the integration of RSFs with estimates of carrying capacity can help inform conservation management of bison and multi-species at-risk habitat.

中文翻译：

---

资源选择函数调整承载力为濒危混合草原生态系统中的野牛保护管理提供信息

在加拿大，加拿大濒危野生动物状况委员会将平原野牛评估为受威胁。虽然野牛不再面临种群灭绝的风险，但保护计划仍然面临着数量稀少的挑战，而且大多数野牛都生活在小型、孤立和有限的牛群中。在这种情况下，正确评估生态承载力对于为物种恢复的栖息地管理和保护工作提供信息至关重要。尽管估计的食物限制承载能力受到饲料供应、饲料需求和取食比例的影响，但还应考虑动物的栖息地选择，特别是在有限的环境中，以帮助避免过度放牧。为了支持加拿大草原国家公园的野牛管理，我们集成了遥感、地理信息系统和资源选择功能 (RSF)，以检查可能与野牛栖息地选择相关的变量，并返回野牛承载能力的综合估计。然后将相关变量与利用遥感对饲料可用性的估计进行整合，并外推至野牛遏制规模。与 RSF 相关的因素包括植被景观单元、坡度、距水源的距离、围栏和道路。特别是，野牛选择高地和斜坡草地，其特点是草料利用率最高（1 064.5 公斤公顷和 1 238.5 公斤公顷），同时在生长季节和休眠季节避免浇水。使用 k 倍交叉验证对生长季节和休眠季节表现最好的 RSF 模型进行评估，并取得了良好的预测能力（Spearman 等级相关性 [r] ≥ 0.83，< 0.01）。应用传统的生物量采集样本和遥感衍生变量有助于估算野牛的年饲草量（= 0.75，< 0.05）。在考虑野牛资源选择时，我们的模型得出的承载能力估计约为 0.0424 野牛公顷或 764−770 头野牛（每头需要 12.2 千克草料/天），而仅考虑可用性时估计为 0.0587 野牛公顷或 1 062 头动物的饲料。这种将承载能力增加到 1000 头以上的潜力凸显了测试管理工具的重要性，以塑造野牛放牧并提高 18000 公顷遏制区域中更大比例的饲料利用率。通过提高我们对该物种与混草草原生态系统相互作用的理解，将 RSF 与承载能力估计相结合，有助于为野牛和多物种濒危栖息地的保护管理提供信息。