Andrea Corradini

• PhD
• Researcher at Fondazione Edmund Mach - Istituto Agrario San Michele All'Adige

Brown bears across Europe are responding to the human footprint, with space use and movement behaviour strongly influenced by limited habitat connectivity. While natural food availability and habitat suitability remain important for bears, growing human pressure is increasingly constraining their ecological role. The picture was drawn by Andrea Gaz...

Prey species can display antipredation movement behaviours to reduce predation risk including proactive responses to chronic or predictable risk, and reactive responses to acute or unpredictable risk. Thus, at any given time, prey movement choice may reflect the trade-off between proaction and reaction. In previous studies, proaction and reaction h...

In human‐dominated landscapes, rebounding bear populations share space with people, which may lead to bear–human conflicts and, consequently, a decrease in acceptance and an increase in bear mortality linked to human causes. Previous analyses of brown bear (Ursus arctos) movement data have shown that bears adopt a security‐food trade‐off strategy i...

An ambitious conservation programme to save the Iberian lynx from extinction conducted several reintro-ductions aiming to restore its historical range. The urgency due to the delicate conservation status prompted translocating captive-born and wild individuals, while preventing an early assessment of how both groups combined their space-use and dif...

The Carpathian Mountains have been constantly inhabited by grey wolves and present one of the largest distribution areas in Europe, comprising between 2300 and 2700 individuals in Romania. To date, however, relatively little is known about the Romanian wolf population. We aimed to provide a first assessment of genetic diversity, population structur...

Large mammal populations are rapidly recovering across Europe, yet people have not readapted to living with wild animals, resulting in human–wildlife conflict. We believe that society should unite to make the most of the instances of nature recovery, and propose science and education as the key to success.

Human activity and associated landscape modifications alter the movements of animals with consequences for populations and ecosystems worldwide. Species performing long-distance movements are thought to be particularly sensitive to human impact. Despite the increasing anthropogenic pressure, it remains challenging to understand and predict animals'...

Understanding the density-dependent processes that drive population demography in a changing world is critical in ecology, yet measuring performance-density relationships in long-lived mammalian species demands long-term data, limiting scientists' ability to observe such mechanisms. We tested performance-density relationships for an opportunistic o...

Biotic interactions are expected to influence species' responses to climate change, but they are usually not included when predicting future range shifts. We assessed the importance of biotic interactions to understand future consequences of climate and land use change for biodiversity using as a model system the brown bear (Ursus arctos) in Europe...

Kill rates are a central parameter to assess the impact of predation on prey species. An accurate estimation of kill rates requires a correct identification of kill sites, often achieved by field‐checking GPS location clusters (GLCs). However, there are potential sources of error included in kill‐site identification, such as failing to detect GLCs...

Simple Summary In the last decades, a significant recovery and natural expansion of the wolf (Canis lupus) populations has occurred across Europe. This remarkable recolonisation was made possible by the high plasticity of the species, which was crucial in such a human-altered environment. Despite re-establishing within their former distribution ran...

Background Human disturbance alters animal movement globally and infrastructure, such as roads, can act as physical barriers that impact behaviour across multiple spatial scales. In ungulates, roads can particularly hamper key ecological processes such as dispersal and migration, which ensure functional connectivity among populations, and may be pa...

Recent events related to the measures taken to control the spread of the Coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) reduced human mobility (i.e. anthropause), potentially opening connectivity opportunities for wildlife populations. In the Italian Alps, brown bears have recovered after reintroduction within a complex anthropogenic matrix, but failed to establish a me...

The global lockdown to mitigate COVID-19 pandemic health risks has altered human interactions with nature. Here, we report immediate impacts of changes in human activities on wildlife and environmental threats during the early lockdown months of 2020, based on 877 qualitative reports and 332 quantitative assessments from 89 different studies. Hundr...

Humans profoundly affect animal distributions by directly competing for space, not only transforming, but actively using their habitat. Anthropogenic disturbance is usually measured via structural proxies such as infrastructure and land use that overlook the impact of human presence, or functional disturbance. In this study, we propose a methodolog...

Since the first reintroductions in the early 2000s, the Alpine bear population has been continuously monitored and genetically sampled through the joint effort of various authorities. This long-term monitoring, combined with the advent of new technologies, has produced a comprehensive and ecologically diverse dataset. However, the high amount of da...

Temporal segregation is common amongst coexisting species, but rarely studied in multi-predator – multi-prey systems in Europe. The Romanian Carpathians provide a good opportunity for studying such mechanisms, as three apex predators and several wild ungulate species naturally co-occur. Our study aimed to assess diel activity overlap of i) wolf vs....

The study of habitat selection of a given species, in a different environmental context, represents a major step to enhance the knowledge of that species ecology. Although grey wolf (Canis lupus) and Eurasian lynx (Lynx lynx) ecology has been largely studied across Europe, to date, no systematic study has been done in Romania. This study, entirely...

Camera trapping requires extensive effort to gather meaningful data, especially for large carnivores. Understanding which factors affect capture rates can have a positive effect on the amount of information collected. In the present pilot study, as part of the WOLFLIFE project (LIFE13 NAT/RO/000205), we aimed to describe the effects of camera place...

The wolf has one of the widest distributions among terrestrial mammals. Flexible and opportunist, it is well adapted to the different types of habitats, therefore, complex predator-prey interactions occur throughout its entire range. Understanding the extent of these interactions can be achieved through an exhaustive analysis of an adequate number...

Modern molecular genetic methods have revolutionized wildlife research and monitoring within past years. High-resolution marker systems such as microsatellites and SNP-genotyping technology in combination with the use of non-invasively collected environmental samples allow to count individuals, assess population connectivity, reconstruct family str...

The grey wolf (Canis lupus) is probably one of the most studied species in Europe. To date, despite the large number of projects that have been addressed to it, few studies have actually been carried out in the Romanian Carpathian. This pioneering study, entirely developed within the WOLFLIFE project (LIFE13 NAT/RO/000205), aimed to assess the ecol...

Large carnivores can represent a threat to livestock and traditional farming methods if there are not effective management strategies to cope with potential encounters. In our study area (1200 km2), located in the Central Eastern Carpathian Mountains, we investigate both the husbandry practices and ecological variables that could affect such confli...

Currently, because of the rapid environmental changes, one of the biggest challenges in Nature Conservation is to decrease the loss of biodiversity and to prevent the extinction of species whose dynamic is strongly influenced by human activities. Conservation objectives can be difficult to reach if the management measures are not supported by robus...

The relationship between wolf (Canis lupus) and lynx (Lynx lynx) in the Romanian Carpathians is still unclear. To date, no studies have been made but, due to the high cost of radio tracking, preliminary studies based on signs of presence can provide useful information. This study, located in the Eastern Carpathian Mountains (Romania), was carried o...

The aim of this study is to present preliminary results achieved during a winter session of camera trapping carried out by the WOLFLIFE project (LIFE13NAT/RO/000205). The study area is 1200 km2 and located in the Eastern Carpathians, Romania. 14 camera trapping stations were chosen opportunistically and determined by the spatial distribution of wol...

Eurasian lynx (Lynx lynx), one of the large carnivores present in Europe together with wolf (Canis lupus) and bear (Ursus arctos), was exterminated in several part of Europe during the 18th and 19th centuries by human persecution and environmental changes. Afterwards, with a widespread reintroduction program, it has recolonized part of the old area...