Науковий вісник НЛТУ України (Feb 2017)
Formation of the Paths by Hunting Fauna Near the Sdditional Feeding Sites on the Hunting Territories of the Left Bank Forest Steppe of Ukraine
Abstract
Although the tracks formation on the snow cover by the animals has been studied quite enough, the question of formation of animal's paths to the additional feeding sites hasn't been examined and studied until the present moment. So, the goal of our reseach is to analyze the peculiarities of paths formation on the additional feeding sites for hunting animals in different forest types of hunting farms in Kharkiv region. The researches were carried out on the hunting territories of "Safari XXI" company, private enterprise of hunting farm "Gremiachyi kluch", and "Vedmid – M" company which are situated in the forest – steppe part of Kharkiv region in Vovchansk, Pechenigy and Chuguiv districts. Our study provides the following results. First of all, depending on the degree of snow thickness, the width and the length of the path, the number of traces of different animals' species and the place of the path in a general web, all paths are divided into the orders. Herewith the additional feeding site was considered to be the beginning of the path, and the place where this path was connected with the other, was accepted as its end. The place of the path fan forking or a single trace of one species of animals with low thickness of trampled snow cover was also accepted as the end of the path. Secondly, we proposed to introduce the coefficient (the correlation of the path width with the snow cover thickness) that would characterize the path order not only depending on its length but also on the number of the biological species and the direct number of animals that go to the path. The conclusions suggest that, formation of the paths near the additional feeding sites depends on the animals' behavior, which is stipulated by the edatop features, namely the composition of the forest-stand, undergrowth and underbrush, their density, thickness, etc., different influence of snow cover and ice crust on the forest-stand. In different edatops the paths systems vary according to their structure. It is determined that the width of the path and the thickness of the snow cover increase in the direction of the additional feeding site. The width of the paths is not the same for different biological species.
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