Identifying habitat suitability for hazel grouse Bonasa bonasia at the landscape scale

Abstract The hazel grouseBonasa bonasia is declining in many areas within its European distribution, particularly in managed forests. Adequate habitat management may thus be crucial for the regional survival of the species. So far management activities have tended to focus on the local scale. However, for the sustainable managementof the hazel grouseand its habitat, the landscape scale also needs to be considered. We therefore evaluated whether habitat suitability for hazel grousecan be quickly, but adequately, modelled at the landscape scale with information obtained from aerial photographs. We mapped hazel grouserecords in a forested area typical of large tracts of the Swiss Jura mountain range, and extracted data on habitat composition from infrared aerial photographs applying a bird-centred sampling approach. We then used the hazel grouserecords together with an equal-sized data set of non- grouseplots to build predictive habitat suitability modelsusing a generalised linear model (GLM) and a cl...