| Movement decisions made by North American porcupines (Erethizon dorsatum) are driven by the distribution of seasonally important dietary resources and perceived risk of predation. However, during the summer of 2015, we observed porcupines making lengthy trips away from areas of high quality forage to visit areas typically used only during winter, where available forage is highly defended and nutritionally depleted. Because winter is a nutritional bottleneck for porcupines, we suspect these animals are exhibiting a prospecting behavior within home ranges during summer to inform the future selection of critical winter habitat components. To explore this idea, we fitted five porcupines with very high frequency/global positioning system (VHF/GPS) collars and deployed 30 camera traps under winter foraging trees during the summer of 2017 in Tolowa Dunes State Park in northwestern California. Animals were tracked and located via radio telemetry to measure physical and chemical characteristics of individual trees used by and available to porcupines during summer. Results from this study describe habitat use, microhabitat selection, and movement patterns of porcupines in a coastal dune forest during the 2015 and 2017 summer seasons. Implications of summer movement patterns and predictions of winter foraging selection will be discussed. |