Dataset Information

Landscape suitability in Botswana for the conservation of its six large African carnivores.

ABSTRACT: Wide-ranging large carnivores often range beyond the boundaries of protected areas into human-dominated areas. Mapping out potentially suitable habitats on a country-wide scale and identifying areas with potentially high levels of threats to large carnivore survival is necessary to develop national conservation action plans. We used a novel approach to map and identify these areas in Botswana for its large carnivore guild consisting of lion (Panthera leo), leopard (Panthera pardus), spotted hyaena (Crocuta crocuta), brown hyaena (Hyaena brunnea), cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus) and African wild dog (Lycaon pictus). The habitat suitability for large carnivores depends primarily on prey availability, interspecific competition, and conflict with humans. Prey availability is most likely the strongest natural determinant. We used the distribution of biomass of typical wild ungulate species occurring in Botswana which is preyed upon by the six large carnivores to evaluate the potential suitability of the different management zones in the country to sustain large carnivore populations. In areas where a high biomass of large prey species occurred, we assumed interspecific competition between dominant and subordinated competitors to be high. This reduced the suitability of these areas for conservation of subordinate competitors, and vice versa. We used the percentage of prey biomass of the total prey and livestock biomass to identify areas with potentially high levels of conflict in agricultural areas. High to medium biomass of large prey was mostly confined to conservation zones, while small prey biomass was more evenly spread across large parts of the country. This necessitates different conservation strategies for carnivores with a preference for large prey, and those that can persist in the agricultural areas. To ensure connectivity between populations inside Botswana and also with its neighbours, a number of critical areas for priority management actions exist in the agricultural zones.

SUBMITTER: Winterbach HE

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4065001 | biostudies-literature | 2014

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Landscape suitability in Botswana for the conservation of its six large African carnivores.

Winterbach Hanlie E K HE Winterbach Christiaan W CW Somers Michael J MJ

PloS one 20140620 6

Wide-ranging large carnivores often range beyond the boundaries of protected areas into human-dominated areas. Mapping out potentially suitable habitats on a country-wide scale and identifying areas with potentially high levels of threats to large carnivore survival is necessary to develop national conservation action plans. We used a novel approach to map and identify these areas in Botswana for its large carnivore guild consisting of lion (Panthera leo), leopard (Panthera pardus), spotted hyae ...[more]

PMID: 24949735

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Project description:Interspecific interactions can be a key driver of habitat use, and must be accounted for in conservation planning. However, spatial partitioning between African carnivores, and how this varies with scale, remains poorly understood. Furthermore, most studies have taken place within small or highly protected areas, rather than in the heterogeneous, mixed-use landscapes characteristic of much of modern Africa. Here, we provide one of the first empirical investigations into population-level competitive interactions among an African large carnivore guild. We collected detection/non-detection data for an eastern African large carnivore guild in Tanzania's Ruaha-Rungwa conservation landscape, over an area of ~45,000 km2. We then applied conditional co-occupancy models to investigate co-occurrence between lion, leopard, and African wild dog, at two biologically meaningful scales. Co-occurrence patterns of cheetah and spotted hyaena could not be modelled. After accounting for habitat and detection effects, we found some evidence of wild dog avoidance of lion at the home range scale, and strong evidence of fine-scale avoidance. We found no evidence of interspecific exclusion of leopard by lion; rather, positive associations were observed at both scales, suggesting shared habitat preferences. We found little evidence of leopard habitat use being affected by wild dog. Our findings also reveal some interspecific effects on species detection, at both scales. In most cases, habitat use was driven more strongly by other habitat effects, such as biotic resources or anthropogenic pressures, than by interspecific pressures, even where evidence of the latter was present. Overall, our results help shed light on interspecific effects within an assemblage that has rarely been examined at this scale. We also demonstrate the effectiveness of sign-based co-occurrence modelling to describe interspecific spatial patterns of sympatric large carnivores across large scales. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings for large carnivore conservation in modern African systems.

Dataset Information

Landscape suitability in Botswana for the conservation of its six large African carnivores.

Publications

Landscape suitability in Botswana for the conservation of its six large African carnivores.

Similar Datasets

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