Despite its central role in many ecological applications, wildlife habitat is poorly defined in operational terms. Consequently it is difficult to assess the extent to which human activities, including forestry, may affect habitat quality to animals. Forestry has the potential to impact vast areas of land across ecological time frames, strongly affecting the long-term capacity of an area to provide resources for wildlife. To enhance our knowledge on the functional relationship between wildlife and forestry practices, and therefore to inform forestry planning as to which are the silvicultural practices best suited to enhance habitat quality for wildlife, we will focus on the highly endangered Apennine brown bear. The Apennine bear is a strictly forest-dependent species, and represents an excellent flagship to tackle with the issue of improving habitat quality for wildlife while allowing for compatible forestry practices, an issue rarely addressed in Italy. Especially within protected areas, the traditional approach of leaving forests unmanaged does not necessarily translate in enhanced habitat quality. Bears, in addition to large patches of old-growth forests where they locate dens and retreat sites, also tend to favor clearing, edges, and young forest stands where food resources are plentiful. By extending our previous research on bear ecology and conservation, and taking advantage of a rich dataset of bear movement data we collected through satellite telemetry in the Abruzzo National Park, our aim is twofold: (i) to enhance our knowledge regarding selection patterns of bears towards forest structural variables (i.e., DBF and tree density), and (ii) based on modeled bear-forest relationship and landscape forest dynamics, to project habitat suitability for bears in the next 100 years according to alternative forestry regimes. This will prove critical to inform forest planning to enhance habitat productivity for bears while allowing for timber use by local residents.
