Characterization of the carnivore community in the EIN Massís de les Salines

Abstract

The Area of N atural Interest (EIN, from the Catalan abbreviation) of the Massís de les Salines is one of the most unknown areas of the Alt Empordà region, due to its location and orography. It is a cross-border mountain range with Pyrenean and Mediterranean habitats where we find the distribution limit of many species. One of the most unknown taxonomic groups in the area, due to its nocturnal habits and the large forest mass present in the territory, is the carnivore community. This order of mammals plays a key role in ecosystems, as it acts as a regulator of its prey (Terborgh et al., 2013) and certain species, despite being considered carnivores, act as seed dispersers (Rosalino et al. , 2010). The aim of this study is to collect all the data generated by the author himself with the camera trapping technique from 2017 to 2022, which also includes data obtained in the Massís de les Salines plot collected within the «Pla de seguiment del gat fer i altres mesocarnívors» monitoring system (FELIS Group, ICHN). Based on all this information, a list of carnivore species present in the EIN has been generated, as well as the abundances of all detected species and, especially that of carnivores. A remarkable result is the presence of the european polecat (Mustela putorius Linnaeus, 1758), a species threatened and listed as «in danger of extinction» in Catalonia, and of the pine marten (Martes martes Linnaeus, 1758), that in recent years has been observed to be a species that is not only specialized to high mountain forests but can be found more frequently than previously though at lower altitudes (Sayol et al., 2015; Federico, 2019; Guixé et al., 2020).