| Abstract: | The location of Capercaillie lekking sites was compared in forest mosaics of different level of fragmentation. In north Finland the stand characteristics of the lekking sites did not differ from those of randomly selected stands in the 1950s judged from forestry maps and stand registers. In the 1980s, when forestry had considerably altered stand structure, lekking stands were older, larger and had a higher timber volume than random stands. These features evenly changed from the lek centre to the distance of 4 km, to which distance the adjacent areas were assessed. Southern and central Finnish analyses, based on topographic maps, showed that the proportion of forest distinctly decreased with increasing distance from a lek centre, up to a distance of 1–1.5 km. The average patch size of lekking stands were largest in the north (where both cut areas and remaining stands are large) and smallest in central Finland dominated by fine‐grained forest landscape. The results are discussed in terms of landscape ecology and forestry planning. |
