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Electric vehicles minimize disturbance to mammals

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Abstract

Anthropogenic sounds are pollution that is not always evaluated in the environment in general and near wildlife in particular. Non-electric off-road vehicles (ORVs) are used in most wildlife reserves of India for ecotourism purposes in the form of wildlife-viewing safaris. We hypothesized that the e-vehicles would allow a closer approach to wildlife, reducing the flight-initiation distance (FID) to their normal behaviors. In order to understand the effects of noise, we evaluated the difference between the safari-ORVs regulated by the Indian Forest Department and six electric ORVs in the Jhalana Reserve Forest in Jaipur, Rajasthan. We used a mixed model approach. We found that mammals showed longer escape behavior when approached by non-electric cars (Gypsy ORVs) than by electric cars, even considering the effects of the initial distance. The level of noise produced by the two types of cars used in the experiment was different, with the Gypsy ORVs (non-electric) significantly louder than the Mahindra e-vehicles. FID was positively correlated with initial and alarm distances in all animal species. We commend this novel idea of the Rajasthan Forest Service and encourage them to further acquire and replace all of the non-electric ORVs with the e-vehicles for recreational wildlife viewing. An implication of this study is better management of wildlife watching for ecotourists with reduced disturbance and stress to the wild animals.

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Availability of data and material

The data set has been deposited with Mendeley: https://data.mendeley.com/submissions/evise/edit/dhhpwv79n8?submission_id=S0006-3207(19)31789-6&token=6bda200d-0903-4c5a-8a21-65f9897a0325.

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Acknowledgements

We thank A. Tomar, G. V. Reddy, and the staff of JRF for their help with the project. Fernando Ascensão, three other reviewers, and the editor greatly improved previous versions of the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Contributions

RY, SK, and SS conceptualized the study; RY and SK conducted the field research; RY and FM did the analyses and writing of the first draft; and all authors contributed to finalizing the final paper.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Reuven Yosef.

Ethics declarations

Ethics

None required, under research permit no. 3(05)/2017/171 of the Rajasthan Forest Department to SK and RY.

Consent to participate

All authors have agreed for RY to be the corresponding author on their behalf.

Consent for publication

All authors have agreed to publish this paper together.

Conflict of interest

None. SS is appointed as DCF by Rajasthan Forest Department as a professional.

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Impact statement

We show that electric ORVs are better for wildlife viewing than those at present required by the Indian Forest Service.

This article is part of the Topical Collection on Road Ecology - Guest Editor: Marcello D’Amico

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Yosef, R., Kumbhojkar, S., Sharma, S. et al. Electric vehicles minimize disturbance to mammals. Eur J Wildl Res 67, 74 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10344-021-01516-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10344-021-01516-z

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