Forest Owlet or Farmer's owlet: Scale-dependent habitat selection reveals conditional compatibility between Forest Owlet conservation and traditional agroforestry in Gujarat, India

Abstract

Understanding how species that are threatened with extinction utilise human-modified landscapes is essential for evidence-based conservation. We investigated multi-scale habitat selection by the Forest Owlet (Athene blewitti), an Endangered species, endemic to central India with fewer than 1000 mature individuals, in the Dangs district of Gujarat, the westernmost extent of its range. Using a hierarchical Bayesian occupancy framework, we examined how forest cover and three agricultural land-use types (dry agriculture with trees, dry agriculture without trees, and intensive agriculture) affected occupancy across three nested spatial scales: regional (81 km2), landscape (4 km2), and territory (0.25 km2). At the regional scale, the forest x agriculture interaction term was significantly negative ({beta} = -6.82, 95% CI: -9.87 to -1.59), indicating that owlets favour agroforestry-dominated regions over forest-dominated landscapes. Conversely, at the landscape scale, a significant positive interaction ({beta} = 1.36, 95% CI: 0.41-2.50) revealed synergistic benefits from forest-agriculture mosaics. Agriculture type strongly influenced landscape-scale occupancy: dry agriculture with trees showed positive effects ({beta} = 1.17, 95% CI: 0.43-2.02), whereas dry agriculture without trees had significant negative effects ({beta} = -1.19, 95% CI: -2.28 to -0.29). These findings demonstrate that Forest Owlets are not forest-obligate specialists but occupy complex agroforestry mosaics, requiring multi-scale conservation strategies. We propose that the traditional Malki agroforestry system, which incentives tree retention on farmland, offers conditional compatibility with Forest Owlet conservation, provided that mature cavity-bearing trees and small forest patches are explicitly protected.