Abstract
Abstract
Understanding the relationship between wildlife and their environment is important to wildlife management. Factors such as human disturbance that influence the behavior of animals have implications for management decisions and are critical to consider in evaluations of wildlife habitat selection. In Montana, there is concern regarding the status of mountain goats (
Oreamnos americanus
), and more information regarding mountain goat ecology is needed to guide management decisions. We used GPS locations from 14 mountain goats in the Bridger Range of southwest Montana collected from 2021 to 2024 to evaluate summer habitat selection and the effects of trail‐based recreation. Recreation covariates representing the intensity of recreational use were developed based on trail use counts obtained from trail counters and categorized into four categories (no, low, medium, and high recreation). First, we developed a summer habitat selection model that identified habitat selection within the Bridger Mountains. Next, we added recreation covariates to the most supported model to evaluate the effects of trail‐based recreation on mountain goat habitat selection. Finally, interactions with time of day for all covariates and day of week with recreation‐associated covariates were added to assess evidence for temporal (diel and weekly) variation in habitat selection. We found that mountain goats strongly selected steep and rugged terrain with low canopy cover during the summer. At the population level, we found a lower relative probability of selection for areas of medium recreation intensity compared to areas of no or low recreation intensity. The relative probability of selection for high recreation intensity was similar to those of other recreation intensities, which did not provide strong evidence of avoidance, suggesting potential tolerance among some individuals. We found evidence for temporal variation in mountain goat selection of most covariates. Our results provided evidence of substantial individual variation in responses to recreation intensity. This information should help guide future management decisions related to timber management and suggest a cautious approach to the future development of recreation infrastructure given the varied responses of mountain goats to recreation and the potential for increased human–mountain goat conflict created by tolerance of human disturbance in high‐quality mountain goat habitat by some individuals.