The value of forest restoration for habitat occupancy of a Mediterranean carnivore community

Abstract Considerable amounts of farmland in Mediterranean European landscapes have been abandoned and undergone natural regeneration or planted with trees in the last few decades, resulting in mixed forest and farmland mosaics. This study aimed to evaluate the effects of forest restoration on the composition and relative abundance of a carnivore community in the mixed farmland-forest landscape of Campo de Montiel (central Spain). We predicted that forest restoration, either natural regeneration following land abandonment or by tree planting, resulted in a new heterogenous landscape that supports a diverse carnivore community; consequently, we used two reference sites with non-planted Mediterranean trees. We assessed (1) the structure of woody vegetation, (2) the occurrence and relative abundance of carnivores, and (3) the environmental factors that explain carnivore occupancy patterns controlling for differences in detectability. Tree planting led to lower diversity of woody species than that found in the naturally regenerated forests. Woody vegetation cover in the reforested plots and in the natural vegetation plots did not differ significantly. The carnivores detected were, in decreasing order of abundance, red fox, Egyptian mongoose, badger, stone marten, and wildcat, which were also present at the reference sites except the mongoose. We did not detect differences in community composition and relative abundance between the reforested site and the two reference sites. We also found similar patterns of species detectability among sites. Overall, the results revealed that reforestation can provide new habitats for carnivores in previous agricultural land and can be a useful tool for rewilding initiatives.