Spatial adaptive behavior of a captive-bred male European moose, Alces alces (Linnaeus, 1758), in north-eastern Leningrad Province

The article presents the results of telemetry observations of a young male moose. After spending its first year of life in captivity, the observed male was released into the wild in the Lodeynopolsky District of the Leningrad Province. As we expected, over 1.5 years of observations the moose demonstrated the life-cycle and behavioral features of wild conspecifics, specifically: (1) seasonal home ranges used by the moose in summer and winter were separated by approximately 15 km; (2) the moose showed preferences for typical seasonal habitat types (wetland complexes associated with streams and rivers in summer, the edges of raised bogs and areas with understory of forage species in autumn and winter); (3) the moose made seasonal nomadic movements (spring and autumn), while the spring “migration” to the summer range occurred within a single day. We recorded statistically significant differences in movement activity between seasonal ranges, as well as changes in movement patterns associated with daily rhythms and the rutting period. During its third year of life, the moose had a larger home range than in the second, made significantly longer daily movements and participated more actively in the rut. During winter home-range occupancy, daily path length remained below 1 km in 75% of observations, with daily displacement rarely exceeding 300 meters. In the summer periods, the corresponding values for daily path length and daily displacement were 2800 and 650 m in 2023, and 3700 and 1400 m in 2024, respectively. Our observations revealed close proximity and partial overlap of summer home ranges. The results of location clustering using different input parameters with the ST-DBSCAN method indicate the presence of fewer than 10 seasonally and territorially differentiated core-use areas. The range areas containing clustered locations did not exceed several thousand hectares according to the 100% MCP method. The most used areas did not exceed several dozen hectares according to the 50% KDE method.