Forest ecosystems are threatened by different natural disturbances. Among them, the irruption of large herbivores represents one of the most alarming issues. Several local-scale studies have been carried out to clarify the mechanisms governing ungulate–forest interactions, to understand the effect of wild ungulates overabundance, and to apply conservation plans. However, information at large scales, over long periods of observation and from unmanipulated conditions is still scarce. This study aims to improve our knowledge in this field by using repeated inventories to investigate: the types of damage produced by ungulate populations on young trees, the drivers that stimulate browsing activity and its consequences on the specific composition of seedlings and saplings. To reach these goals, we used data collected during a twenty-year monitoring program (1994–2014) in the forests of Paneveggio-Pale di San Martino Nature Park (Italy). We applied descriptive statistics to summarize the data, GLMs to identify the drivers of browsing activity and Non-Metric Multidimensional Scaling (nMDS) ordinations to investigate the changes in specific composition of young trees across 20 years. We detected increasing browsing activity from 1994 to 2008 and a decline in 2014. Ungulates browsed preferentially in mature stands, and fed mostly on seedlings and saplings under 150 cm of height. The analysis of the environmental drivers of browsing pressure on the smallest size classes of plants suggests that foraging behavior is influenced by snowpack conditions, ungulate density and seasonality. Moreover, results underline the fact that ungulates feed mostly on palatable species, especially European rowan, but can also use unpalatable plants as emergency food under high competition levels. nMDS results suggest that rowan seed dispersion might be promoted by deer movements, however, saplings of this species were not able to exceed 30 cm of height because of heavy browsing. This bottleneck effect led to the dominance of unpalatable species, mostly Norway spruce, reducing diversity during forest regeneration. If prolonged, this effect could lead to a reduction of tree species richness, with cascading effects on many parts of the ecosystem, and threatening the resilience of the forest to future disturbances.

Since 1995, the Alpine chamois (Rupicapra r. rupicapra) population of the Dolomites has been affected by sarcoptic mange with considerable management concerns. In this study, 15 years (2006–2020) of passive surveillance and demographic data were analyzed in order to describe a mange outbreak. Furthermore, an enhanced passive surveillance protocol was implemented in order to evaluate the efficiency of ordinary vs. enhanced surveillance protocol in identifying dead chamois in the field and in reaching a correct diagnosis. Our results confirm the role of mange as a determining factor for chamois mortality, while stressing the importance of a wider view on the factors affecting population dynamics. The enhanced passive surveillance protocol increased the probability of carcass retrieval and identification of the cause of death; however, its adoption may be too costly if applied for long periods on a wide scale. Passive surveillance, in both ordinary and enhanced surveillance protocol, should encompass the use of other strategies in the future to study the eco-epidemiology of the disease in wild Caprinae.

Obtaining reliable estimates of population abundance is of utmost importance for wildlife research and management. To this aim, camera-traps are increasingly used, as this method has the advantage of being noninvasive and allows for continuous monitoring. Camera traps can be used to estimate abundance in combination with traditional capture-recapture techniques, as well as with estimators that do not require marked individuals. Here, we investigated the use of camera-based mark-recapture methods applied to an Alpine marmot (Marmota marmota) population in the Paneveggio-Pale di San Martino Natural Park (eastern Italian Alps). We compared abundance estimates derived from a traditional capture-mark-recapture (CMR) framework and camera trap mark-resight (CTMR) over three consecutive years. CMR models estimated a population size of n = 19 individuals (95% CI = 18-27), n = 15 (14-22) and n = 24 (22-32) in 2019, 2020 and 2021 respectively. CTMR returned an estimated population size of n = 24 (95% CI = 18-30), n = 20 (17-24) and n = 22 (21-24) for the same years. The difference between the estimate of these two methods was significant only in 2020, with CMR returning a lower estimate than CTMR (95% CI = –9.4–0.6). This difference was not significant for 2019 (95% CI = –10.9-0.9) and 2021 (95% CI = –1.8-5.9). Based on our results, the use of CTMR techniques is promising in the estimation of absolute population size of marmots, and the estimator was slightly more precise than CMR. Further studies are needed to evaluate the effectiveness of CTMR with reduced capture effort.