Human Recreation and Fire History Shape Landscape Connectivity for an Endangered Forest Carnivore

ABSTRACT Habitat connectivity is critical for long‐term wildlife population persistence, yet the permeability of landscape features can vary with human activity and disturbance history. Characterizing landscape features influencing permeability is critical for landscape planning efforts, particularly for at‐risk species. We combined GPS telemetry from endangered southern Sierra Nevada fishers ( Pekania pennanti ) with high‐resolution human mobility data (HMD) to quantify how crossing probability of roads and trails changed with spatiotemporal variation in traffic volume and recreation intensity and wildfire history. Fisher crossing probability declined ~2.5× for roads and 3× for trails when comparing between low‐ and high‐human use periods for each feature. Surprisingly, both roads and trails were similar in permeability, with high‐use roads about as likely to be crossed as heavily recreated trails. Additionally, wildfire history modified these effects. Road‐crossing probability increased farther inside burn perimeters as time since fire increased, regardless of burn severity, whereas higher burn severity was associated with lower trail‐crossing probability. Incorporating temporally explicit HMD, which provided fine‐scale measures of human use across the study area, revealed patterns that would have been obscured using infrastructure alone or coarse proxies like day‐of‐week visitation. We found evidence that even within protected areas high‐use trails can impede fisher movement, suggesting that efforts to improve connectivity must address barriers within protected public lands as well as beyond. Our findings also highlight mitigation measures, such as targeted crossing structures, seasonal closures of trails, or quota systems that could be applied to both roads and heavily used trails in key habitats. Given projected increases in both recreation and wildfire in montane forests, connectivity planning should leverage high‐resolution animal GPS and human use metrics and fire history information to inform adaptive conservation strategies, including targeted seasonal trail closures, use limits, and crossing structure placement, especially for species sensitive to human activity and landscape disturbance.